THIRTY PAGES [Preface]

Having completed (in rapid order) a series of 30 short stories -- or short somethings (I'll title this sequence -- if simply for sake of some greater generality -- "thirty pages"), allow me here, Gentle Reader, to point out two things about the collection.

The first is simply that it is conceived as a sequence per se. That is, it has a beginning, a middle, an end, and even (perhaps) a quality one could venture to characterize as "development."

The second (which fairly flows from the first) is that, preferably, it could be read sequentially (that is, from item #1 through item #30).

[tangent city: Really of course, a writer has no absolute right (or, come to that, ability) to enforce any whim of readerly behavior whatsoever. Far be it from me to imply any such notion! Indeed, the reader (naturally) is invited to read in any such way, place, manner, and order as she or he might please! Read only on escalators! Read only while riding midnight subways! Read strictly and specifically in non-franchise coffee bars! Read under cover of night, light of moon, reflected through a series of mirrors, if not to say through a glass darkly. Read haphazardly, out of sequence, out of control, out of bounds, . . . ] am I out of space?

Strictly speaking, no. Still, something of manners would encourage something toward terseness.

So: what I did wish to suggest (in my point #2 above) was merely the possibility of reading the 30 stories from start to end (somewhat in preference to reading them -- as a blog-reader beginning at TOP and proceeding toward BOTTOM of a virtual page, might be inclined to do -- in reverse order).

By way of (perhaps) aiding the following of this modest proposal, and by way, too, of cataloguing the stories-as-sequenced, I hereby present a hyperlink Table of Contents, for your esteemed, maybe-convenience.

yours cordially &c,
[the author] d.i.

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1 |   The Puppet Show
2 |   "Lovely"
3 |   Postcards
4 |   "Parade"
5 |   Newspaper
6 |   "Hello"
7 |   Starbucks
8 |   "A vacation"
9 |   "Next week"
10 |   Closing
11 |   The snow
12 |   Opinions
13 |   Hurry
14 |   A book
15 |   Secretly
16 |   Philosophy
17 |   Picasso
18 |   "Babe"
19 |   A sneeze
20 |   Streets
21 |   Attention
22 |   "Molecules"
23 |   To elucidate
24 |   Genealogy
25 |   Sometimes
26 |   "Important"
27 |   "Bargains"
28 |   High gear
29 |   "Words"
30 |   "Yad rakh"


ps: of course, an alternative way of reading the stories in sequence (alternative to using the above hyperlinks), would be simply to scroll way down to story #1, then (item by item) scroll UPwards thru the sequence. [Eventually, the whole lot of them will exist simply in the December 2005 Archive -- together with (likewise) this present Preface item.]