Herb ’n’ Lorna (A Love Story)
Preliminaries, Annotated |
by Eric Kraft, as Peter Leroy, annotated by Eric Kraft, as Mark Dorset | ||
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For Bill
’n’ Edna
The idea that one has long held of a person is apt to stop one’s eyes
and ears; my mother, for three whole years, had no more noticed the salve
with which one of her nieces used to paint her lips than if it had wholly
and invisibly dissolved in some clear liquid; until one day a streak too
much, or possibly something else, brought about the
phenomenon known as supersaturation; all the paint that hitherto passed
unperceived was now crystallized, and my mother, in the face of this sudden
riot of colour, declared, in the best Combray manner, that it was a perfect
scandal.
One never knows, do one?
Venn diagrams, named for the English logician John Venn, who devised them in 1880, depict graphically the relationships defined by logical statements about classes of things and, in the words with which the great Polish-American metamathematician Alfred Tarski began his discussion of operations on classes in his Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of the Deductive Sciences, “certain operations which, if performed on given classes, yield new classes.” Over the years, it has occurred to me that a similar kind of diagram, the Dorset Diagram if I may be permitted to call it that, can be used to depict the relationships that certain operations establish between people; specifically, the Venn diagram that depicts the product of the multiplication (in the logical sense) of two classes can be used to depict the product of that complex operation (or, to be more accurate, set of operations) that we call love, operations that join two people, bind them, link them. The linking image is particularly nice, I think, because the diagram resembles two linked rings. . . . Over the years some lovers’ circles become so overlapped that only the
thinnest crescents of lunes remain at the outer edges . . . they fill the
lens of love so full, . . . become so completely a couple that they belong
together in that strong way we acknowledge in things by joining them in
speech with ’n’ instead of and, as if the attraction between the things
joined was so strong, so magnetic, that they had rushed together, crushing
their conjunction between them, collapsing it at both ends: flotsam ’n’
jetsam, Scotch ’n’ soda, ham ’n’ swiss, ham ’n’ eggs, macaroni ’n’ cheese,
thunder ’n’ lightning, cares ’n’ woes, death ’n’ taxes, life ’n’ times,
time ’n’ tide, stuff
’n’ nonsense, rock ’n’ roll, Laurel ’n’ Hardy, Mutt ’n’ Jeff, mom ’n’
pop, Herb ’n’ Lorna.
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DEDICATION
CONTENTS EPIGRAPHS COPYRIGHT NOTICE
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HERB 'N' LORNA
| ANNOTATIONS CONTENTS | ANNOTATED
PREFACE
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Support the Work
I should like to see the custom introduced of readers who are pleased with a book sending the author some small cash token: anything between half-a-crown and a hundred pounds. Authors would then receive what their publishers give them as a flat rate and their “tips” from grateful readers in addition, in the same way that waiters receive a wage from their employers and also get what the customer leaves on the plate. Not more than a few hundred pounds—that would be bad for my character—not less than half-a-crown—that would do no good to yours. Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise
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Herb ’n’Lorna is published in paperback by Picador, a division of St. Martin's Press, at $13.00. You should be able to find Herb ’n’ Lorna at your local bookstore, but you can also order it by phone from: Bookbound at 1-800-959-7323You can order it on the Web from Amazon.com Books. Libros en Español: Herb ’n’Lorna is also available in Spanish from Ediciones Destino. |
LITTLE
FOLLIES
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CONTENTS EPIGRAPHS COPYRIGHT NOTICE |
Text of Herb ’n’ Lorna copyright © 1994 by Eric Kraft Annotations to Herb ’n’ Lorna copyright © 2002 by Eric Kraft Herb ’n’Lorna and its annotations are works of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in them are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book or its annotations may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Herb ’n’ Lorna was first published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group. Now available in paperback from Picador USA,
a division of St. Martin's Press.
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