Mark Dunn - Ibid - A Life

Pat Walsh

Editor

MacAdam/Cage Publishing

155 Sansome Street

San Francisco, California 94104

Dear Pat,

Greetings to you and all my other friends in the City by the Bay. I have just completed my latest book project, a biography of Jonathan Blashette, the child circus sideshow performer who later made his fortune in male deodorants before engaging in philanthropy and other high profile hobbies. Blashette, for all his accomplishments, is best remembered for having three legs.

Please find the manuscript enclosed. I am in the process of completing the book’s extensive endnotes and will send these along shortly. If you choose to consider the manuscript for publication, I ask only one favor: please take care not to lose it, as it is my only copy. I had a second copy, but it was accidentally shredded along with other typescripts given to my friend Ellen Zeisler. I was curious to see how her new shredding machine worked.

I look forward to hearing if another one of my offerings might find its way into the venerable MacAdam/Cage catalogue.

With all best wishes,

Mark Dunn

February 26, 2003

Mark Dunn

P.O. Box 40

Old Chelsea Station

New York NY 10011

Dear Mark,

Please brace yourself. Perhaps you should even sit down. I have some bad news.

Your manuscript has been accidentally — and tragically — destroyed.

Remembering that it was your only copy, I thought that I should make a xerox before leaving work yesterday evening, but I did not. I was simply too excited to get home and get into it, a decision I shall rue forever.

As you, and a precious few others know, I do all my editing in my bathtub. I find the fragrant bath-powdered waters conducive to exploring story arc, character development, correcting noun-verb disagreement, and discouraging the overuse of the passive voice. I had set your manuscript carefully upon the rounded edge of my ancient claw-foot, and went into the other room to find CDs for setting an appropriate editorial mood. (To accompany your book, I selected Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons , Blue Oyster Cult’s “Agents of Fortune,” and the soundtrack to Streets of Fire .)

While I was poking about in my music library and letting the tub run, my three-year-old son, Jack, who only moments earlier had been quietly contenting himself with seeing how far he could stick his finger into a ripe pear, decided to venture into the master bath in search, I like to think, of his father. Not finding me there, he turned his attention to your manuscript, and promptly deposited the loose pages into the rapidly filling tub.

I returned mere seconds later, but too late — sad to say — to rescue the manuscript. The agitation of the water pouring into the tub had quickly turned your paper to soggy pulp and the ink to purple broth.

I am completely at fault, something I am loath to admit (ask my wife). I trust that you will find it somewhere in your heart to forgive me. In the meantime, may I know if there is any chance you can recreate the book from notes or memory? We’ll happily send out one of our many hardworking interns to assist (perhaps the one who keeps leaving his lattes on my slush pile; I don’t like him anyway). Failing that, may I at least see the endnotes?

Call me. I know you never use the phone, fearing electrical shock. Perhaps you could make an exception, considering the circumstances.

Your editor, still…I think,

Pat Walsh

March 3, 2003

Pat Walsh

Editor

MacAdam/Cage Publishing

155 Sansome Street

San Francisco, California 94104

Dear Pat,

I am still reeling. It is hard for me to write, let alone pick up the phone and form coherent sentences. I forgive you, I do. But this is a blow.

I do not see myself rewriting the book. The original task took two years.

Per your request, I have enclosed the completed endnotes. Knock yourself out. I’m going into retirement.

Best wishes,

Mark Dunn

March 11, 2003

Clay Dunn

c/o InSouth Bank

6141 Walnut Grove Rd.

Memphis, TN 38120

Dear brother Clay,

My editor, Pat Walsh, has just made an offer to publish the endnotes that accompanied my now tragically water-pulped biography of businessman Jonathan Blashette.

By themselves.

I am quite torn over what to do. These notes, while extensive, are still, by definition, subordinate to the lost text — a text which I do not wish to invest another two years of my life attempting to reconstruct. While the notes illuminate the dusty, crepuscular corners of this man’s life, they tell its story only through sidebar and discursion. The book, therefore, becomes a biography by inference.

I should confess that over the last two years I’ve grown fond of both Blashette and the odd cast of characters that formed the retinue of his colorful existence. I wished that I had given more attention in the text to each of his girlfriends — the high-spirited childhood sweetheart Mildred; the former prostitute and Blashette’s odd soulmate Great Jane; homefront heartthrob Lucile; the spitfire bohemienne Winny; and Clara, his wife and mother to his only child; as well as to Blashette’s bumbling right-hand man Davison, and life mentor Andrew Bloor. Publishing these notes by themselves allows me the opportunity to examine the role that each played in the man’s life, in ways that I could not in the original text. There is a certain freedom here — stitching as I am upon the fringes of that life the kind of colorful piping that usually defines the whole garment.

On the other hand, can the cloth of a man’s life truly be defined by its embroidery?

What do you think? What would you do? How are things with you? How’s the ol’ back?

Your brother,

Mark

March 14, 2003

Mark Dunn

P.O. Box 40

Old Chelsea Station

New York NY 10011

Dear twin brother Mark,

My back is better. Thank you for asking. I think you should do it. Why not?

Good luck.

Your brother,

Clay

P.S. I don’t know what the word crepuscular means.

1. “’Turned out that womb of his mother’s wasn’t barren at all. A right healthy little fellow grew inside her, grew big and strong and popped right out on March 17, 1888.Interview with Jonathan’s first cousin Odger Blashette.

2. Barnum’s Dead; At least write to Pulitzer and Hearst.Nowhere could I find documented proof that William Randolph Hearst ever accepted Addicus’s invitation to come to Pettiville, Arkansas to see the “amazing quintuple-limbed child,” but there is ample evidence of Joseph Pulitzer’s visit, followed by a series of sensationalist articles in the New York World somewhat bizarrely illustrated by Richard F. Outcault, who gave Jonathan both the oversized ears and gap-toothed smile that would later characterize his “Yellow Kid.” Pulitzer never got to see the illustrations, however. A. Candell Moseley in his biography of the publisher, Pulitzer’s World (Chicago, Prather Press, 1968) notes that at this point in his life the publisher was almost totally blind. He also possessed a debilitating hypersensitivity to sound. His first words upon arriving at the Blashette house were, “Bring the baby to me. I want to feel that third leg. Spread sawdust upon the lane while I am here. I require almost total silence. And a cup of hot tea. With lemon. And a little nutmeg. Strange request, yes, but that’s me. Ah, there’s the leg. Fully formed. With all his toes. He shall have music wherever he goes. Waltzes. Teach the boy to waltz. He should be a natural.”