by Eric Kraft

[Editor’s Note: This brief statement might just as well, mutatis mutandis, have been entitled “Mark Dorset” and me.  —MD]

or more than thirty years now, I’ve been working to construct a single large work of fiction composed of many smaller parts interconnected in intricate ways . . . like a complex machine or a multi-celled organism or a human society, or a bowl of clam chowder.
   My work began one cold afternoon in the winter of 1962, when I dreamed up the central character of this big work. Created would be far too grand a term, since I was dozing over a German lesson at the time. 
   I was a sophomore in college. I had settled myself comfortably in a study carrel in the library. My feet were up; my chair was tilted back. The room was warm; I was tired. I dozed. When I woke up, I was lying on the floor, my books were scattered around me, people were laughing, and I was embarrassed. I gathered my things and rushed out of the library. 
   In the cold air, the memory of a dream returned to me, something I had dreamt while I was dozing in the library. In the dream, or at least in the memory of it, I saw a nameless little boy, sitting on a dilapidated dock, in the sunny warmth of a summer day, dabbling his feet in the water, playing a game: he was trying to bring the soles of his bare feet as close as he could to the surface of the water without touching it. The memory of that dream has never left me, and it continues to surprise me. 
   I have told that little story so often now that I no longer know exactly which parts of it are true. I think that all the details are true, but I also think that in fact they were widely separated in time and unrelated. Over the years, I’ve brought them closer together to make a story, improving their relationship without really altering the truth of any one of them, although I've certainly altered the truth of the totality of them. This impulse to improve on the past has always been with me, and it's one of the traits I’ve given to the character who grew from the little boy on the dilapidated dock: Peter Leroy, the character at the center of all my work, and the narrator of it all. 
   He tells the sad story of his boyhood friend Matthew Barber in Reservations Recommended, the buoyant love story of his maternal grandparents in Herb ’n’ Lorna, the trials and eventual triumph of the sultry older sister of his imaginary friend in What a Piece of Work I Am, and who tells his own greatly embellished story in Little Follies, Where Do You Stop?, At Home with the Glynns, and, I hope, will continue telling stories in many volumes to come. 

A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it 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 guide 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 author. 

Portions of A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy (so far) were first published by Voyager, Inc., as part of The Complete Peter Leroy (so far).

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.