At least temporarily, I have overpowered the vain desire to see my notes published by a bona fide publisher. After all, books are for friends, not for markets. Let the marketers indulge in their bestsellers—cookbooks and manuals.

Mimicking Slawomir Mrożek’s preface to The Police, I should add that these notes do not contain anything except what they actually contain. Together with him I could write about what these notes are not, but it is not my duty to explain what they are. This must be discovered by the reader. Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli.

Addendum I (January 8, 2000)

Sometimes I worry that I am becoming ever more rabid and that my rabidity is becoming ever more difficult to check, let alone channel. I worry that this may be something connected to ageing, to the creeping senility, and to the devilishly curling eyebrows, to the unfathomable depths of biology. It is thus comforting to stumble upon a piece like this, written full two decades ago, suggesting that my rabidity is rather old, rather tested and tried. Of course, the danger is that this discovery will only encourage me to go even farther, to push my luck with abandon, to plunge into the depths of rabidity. Tremble, dear reader! Tremble!

Addendum II (January 21, 2019)

Things have changed over nearly four decades, it goes without saying. To begin with, my Residua website was born a month after the previous addendum was penned (“Emerging Anxiety,” February 6, 2000). The site was refurbished in 2008, when it became a blog, technically speaking at least (“Blogging for True,” January 9, 2008). Next, my Ca’ Bon Gallery site was born four years after the first and central one (“Ca’ Bon Gallery,” February 18, 2004). Ever since, quite a few selections from my magnum opus on various subjects have appeared on the gallery site. There, they are available in Portable Document Format, and for free. To conclude, the two sites make me my own publisher (“My Own Publisher,” February 7, 2008; “My Own Publisher, Again,” August 27, 2014; and “My Own Publisher, Again and Again,” February 8, 2016). And everything I have ever written that matters to me to this day is in my own able hands. As far as I am concerned, bona fide publishers can go fly a kite. The World Wide Web be praised!