life)
to Alexander (‘Esa’) Plaksin
27 years of snailmail communing
made us friends, brothers, comrades-in-arms
See you, buddy
You know yoursel
Foreword, a sort of
1. Excuses & Apologies
Haunted by crush landings in however modest try at giving fantasy a free rein, aggravated, on top of that, by being all thumbs at spinning yarn, I am cornered and left out any other option but telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In other words, no merry sallies outside the straitjacket of my personal experience. Such, muchly rueful, limitations cancel any hope to ever reach the stardom of the literary conveyer-line celebrities bell-jingling as requested by the bestselling practices at the fantasy, science, thriller, mystery, action—each and every, you name it—twist of fiction in the field… Born to crawl, go and fly a kite.
Still—poor, yet proud—I hereby declare that not anything at all would fit under your skin glib and smoothly, neither would you offhand pull off any fancy whatsoever, like, walking thru the walls and/or over the waters, not to mention the shameful inclination for the unhealthy recreational addiction to sucking strangers’ blood in totally unsanitary environs. (A sigh.)
2. Structure & Texture & Content
Sprung from its lengthened title, the novel goes thru this here Foreword, sort of, to be followed by the epigraph—curt, but to the point—and then flows into the narration of not excessive terseness—4 books, all in all—where some passages might arise reasonable doubts whether my pledge of the forthcoming truth was made in good faith.
So again: my objective is keeping true to life as close as I can. But then, not every truth is met with a warm hug, there’s no guarantee from someone tossing up their back and yelling, “Bullshit! Not a chance of selling that to me!” My most amicable, immediate advice to hard-duty skeptics is to put The Rascally Romance off until they, hopefully, got it that even truth can have, now and then, surprises up its sleeve to make a Holy Cow or 2 moo and moo from envy. And if the truth of this here observation stays dim for some obtuse dunce, then it’s my turn to envy their blest innocence.
The text flow assumed for this work follows the simplistic block style of separate paragraphs, episodes, parts, and books to make reading engagingly easy. At times you come across a little bit deeper aligned stretches started with “(…” and concluded by “…)”, as follows:
(… this here formatting indicates that you are within a footnote raised up into the text body for reader’s convenience while presenting an appropriate comment or tangential point, simple and handy…)
Quotations are served on separate lines offset like this:
“ Shine! Shine on! You! Crazy Diamond!
Last but not least, watch out for the only picture someplace in the text validating that all this is not just another screenplay for one more animation blockbuster and stuff but just as is. If this is not the most ergonomic approach, I don’t know what else can be.
And, yes, my main concern throughout the work was providing adequate fabric to pull over so elegant framework. Stay assured, neither jerky sketches nor psycodelic splotches, nope! I/we/us were/are/and will be pulling for simple machines and leverage lucidity. I mean you don’t have to sharpen your comprehension’s edge by use of this or that dope for following twirly quirks, and fancy whimsicalities, and cerebral-tissue-busting niceties.
Though a first-person story, The Rascally Romance, nonetheless, is not a swaggering report on Me, Myself and The Number One. No, I’m not up for narcistic self-portraits. What? This mean and stupid rascal me? Alas, but not, ‘tis gone, ‘tis gone! So, pray, desist! It’s sooner, a cross-section of the whole generation. The unvarnished Night Watch of the period, if you like, from the most breathtaking, unequaled, and fascinating era since the Creation.
Now, full of bitter comprehension, I witness the glorious period packed, cinched, and sealed, tight and proper, 2 labels, crisscross—«stagnation»><«restructuring»—all ready get dumped into the bottomless bin of Past. Yet, neither smart labeling nor shifty package tricks would ever obscure the fact that the entire history of mankind owns no period to match the one when so naively young we were.
3. Style & Language & Age Restrictions
Sure enough, each and every generation inevitably enjoys or lives thru their own youth, yet some of them miss out to erect an epistolary pillar to mark the fact appropriately.
The erection at hand abides by the style of… mm… How will you name the critter? OK, let’s christen it Rabid Realism because this particular ball is ruled by Mrs. Naked Truth and no soft soap is handed out here to any written or tacit law.
The style is characterized by noble restraint in choice of means, limitlessly so. All’s kept radiantly simple, no need to enroll an online group for joint munching—a chunk a week—to get to juicy innuendos in gnarly concoction by the author along with sniffing out the pans in his pun-kitchen… Not in this case. Firstly, you should be dead to see such honor. Remember that German fellow? The one who unearthed Shakespeare and kicked off the successful ad campaign about his writing skills among his myopic compatriots? He came 200 years after the poor Will’s bones went asleep beneath their tombstone. Dig it? Can you read Shakespeare today? It’s when those eggheads step into picture to collect their flocks of mutts… But while you and I are still around I tried to make of the process of reading an old good DIY entertainment.
And it would be only fair to note that grim-mouthed pearl-clutching language purists might disapprove of absolutely casual taboo words in The Rascally Romance. Fully grasping their venerable point, I would willingly pull along with the sentiment but for the fear to look a petty diddler. In a true-to-life presentation, you just cannot hold back them those words because life, as it is, would differ from a family movie. For which reason, I expressly discourage any person under 18 years of age to read any further.
I am serious: DROP IT RIGHT AWAY, KID! Before it’s too late…
4. Technical Notes & Self-Appraisal
Letters are not supposed to be split into chapters or parts—which technique would only push the addressee towards unnecessary associations— they just flow on and on, and on, to their end. However, leaving Reader without any map or compass midst hundreds upon hundreds of pages in any direction, depriving them of sort of a guiding star or two seems nothing but inhuman sadism. Not my style, eh? Gentlemanly full of caring compassion for humanoid brethren and sistern, I couldn’t suppress kindhearted addition of The Table of Contents to the work.
Though what else could you expect of a fucking philanthropist, eh?.
5. Acknowledgments & Disclaimer
I thank you all, whose names appear in the tale, as well as those who are not in here (you are indefinitely more in numbers and your contribution to The Rascally Romance having been written after all is equally important).
And of no less significance is Your, Dear Reader, tagging along up to this very line. Because any book can only be produced by the collaborative team of 2: the reader and the author. Thank you, I—(dead serious and no horsing)—am hugely honored by Your most kind cooperation.
And now we’ve just reached the point when everyone has to decide for themselves whether to return to their pursuit of customary business and/or pleasures—to
