There is no doubt that I have displayed a heightened interest in the fate of my Residua, and consequently in some apparently pedantic matters of organization, presentation, and completeness. Is this an early warning? Is it true that an increased concern with housekeeping is indicative of … the beginning of the end? Perhaps not, but can I simply disregard these premonitions? I thus wish to reassert that my Residua are not to appear in any other but their present order, nor in any other but this arbitrary selection. If that objective cannot be achieved, it is better to achieve nothing, nothing. The only value of all this is likely to be in the unadulterated record of anxiety and boredom today, and that must be experienced directly—without crippling guidance on anyone’s behalf.

Addendum I (December 22, 1984)

All this is premature. There has been only nine years since I started collecting my stray thoughts. The second layer of reflections, contained in the first layer of addenda, is still very thin, let alone the subsequent layers. Only after two or three decades of continuous weaving of the Residua could it be expected that a sufficiently rich structure might emerge. In other words, it is ridiculous to worry about publication prior to having something that would make sense to publish, that is, something that could indeed be disfigured in the process of editing. What I have now is but a flimsy foundation of an edifice the geometry of which is almost completely uncertain. The only thing that may be warranted at this point is an explicit request that the Residua be spared publication if insufficient time will be allotted me to complete something of lasting value. But who is to judge about such a thing?

Addendum II (December 23, 1986)

Graphomania (an obsession with writing books) takes on the proportions of a mass epidemic whenever a society develops to the point where it can provide three basic conditions:

1. a high degree of general well-being to enable people to devote their energies to useless activities;

2. an advanced state of social atomization and the resultant general feeling of the isolation of the individual; and

3. a radical absence of significant social change in the internal development of the nation.

But the effect transmits a kind of flashback to the cause. If general isolation causes graphomania, mass graphomania itself reinforces and aggravates the feeling of general isolation. The invention of printing originally promoted mutual understanding. In the era of graphomania the writing of books has the opposite effect: everyone surrounds himself with his own writings as with a wall of mirrors cutting off all voices from without.

From Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981 (first published in 1978), p. 92.

Addendum III (October 1, 1990)

All human error is impatience, a premature renunciation of method, a delusive pinning down of a delusion.

From Franz Kafka’s “Reflections on Sin, Hope, and the True Way,” The Great Wall of China: Stories and Reflections, New York: Schocken Books, 1970, p. 162.

Addendum IV (April 8, 2016)

Eight years into my writing project, I started feeling anxious about its fate. Back then, I was primarily concerned about its publication. Either it would turn into a proper book, or it would vanish without a trace. All that the original piece actually says is that my writings must not be tampered with after my death. Apparently, I was concerned that my literary executor would mangle my literary estate in some way. Although this concern is still with me, nearly all of my writings now appear on the World Wide Web exactly as I wish them to appear. This technological revolution did not even cross my mind when the last addendum was written. I put my Residua on the web only in 2000, when the new technology started threatening the publishing industry. To wit, Kafka’s admonition about impatience was right on the money an entire decade before my move. A bit more than a quarter of a century later, ten selections from my writings are also available on the web. The only anxiety that remains is the survival of everything that is already in public domain. And this is where a literary executor will still be needed after my death, for my literary estate has grown by leaps and bounds over the years. Which is why the anxiety from the original piece is with me to this day. Thus this addendum, too.