Giles Goat Boy Read Online Free Page A

and such nice imponderables as the fact that it was Editor A who gave me my first job in the publishing field, or that Editor
D
—present whereabouts unknown—happens to be my only son); one sees further something of what either option stood to cost. One sees finally what decision I came to—with neither aid nor sympathy from the author, by the way, who seldom even answers his mail. Publishing
is
a moral enterprise, in subtler ways than my dear A asserted; like all such, it is spiritually expensive, highly risky, and proportionately challenging. It is also (if I understand the Goat-Boy correctly) as possible an avenue to Commencement Gate as any other moral enterprise, and on that possibility I must bank.
    Herewith, then,
Giles Goat-Boy:
or,
The Revised New Syllabus
, “a work of fiction any resemblance between whose characters and actual persons living or dead is coincidental.” ‡ Let the author’s cover-letter stand in all editions as a self-explanatory foreword or opening chapter, however one chooses to regard it; let the reader read and believe what he pleases; let the storm break if it must.
    T HE E DITOR-IN -C HIEF
    * The computer’s assumption of a first-person narrative viewpoint, we are told, is one such “basic artifice.” The reader will add others, perhaps challenging their “necessity” as well.
    † Not to injure unnecessarily the reputation of that splendid (and presently retired) old gentleman here called
A
, let it be said merely that his distinguished editorial career never regained its earlier brilliance after the day some years ago when, in a decision as hotly contested as the present one, he overrode the opinions of myself and several other of his protégés to reject the novel here cited by
B
, which subsequently made the fortune of our largest competitor. No further identification of the book is needed than that it concerns the adventures, sexual and otherwise, of a handsome, great-spirited young man struggling against all odds and temptations to fulfill what he takes to be his destiny; that the plot was admittedly not original with the now-famous author; and that the book bids fair to remain a best seller forever.
    ‡ In the absence of any response from the author, whom we repeatedly invited to discuss the matter with us, we have exercised as discreetly as possible our contractual prerogative to alter or delete certain passages clearly libelous, obscene, discrepant, or false. Except for these few passages (almost all brief and of no great importance) the text is reproduced as it was submitted to us. [Ed.]

COVER-LETTER TO THE EDITORS AND PUBLISHER
    Gentlemen:
    The manuscript enclosed is not
The Seeker
, that novel I’ve been promising you for the past two years and on which you hold a contractual option.
The Seeker
is lost, I fear; no use to seek him, or any other novel from this pen: I and the Muse, who in any case had not cohabited these many months, are now divorced for good and all
a vinculo matrimonii
. The wonder is not that our alliance has ended, but that it lasted and produced at all, in the light of my wrong-headedness. I will not admit that it was a mistake to wed her; matrimony may be the death of passion, but need not be of production. The error (by no means my only one) was in believing anything could endure; that my or any programme could
work
. Nothing “works,” in the sense we commonly hope for; a certain goat-boy has taught me that; everything only gets worse, gets worse; our victories are never more than moral, and always pyrrhic; in fact we know only more or less ruinous defeats.
    Ah well, now I have caught Knowledge like a love-pox, I understand, not that my former power was a delusion, but that delusions may be full of power: Lady Fancy
did
become my mistress after all;
did
mother offspring that my innocent lust got on her—orphans now, but whose hard neglect may be the saving of them in the long run. Think it if you will a further innocence on my part; I stand