I fear this collection will strike its readers as peculiar. The following pages appear fragmented and, at times, incoherent, but this is an illusion. Order exists. I am sure of it. Though the faint outlines of a system have come into view, I have been unable to discover the precise dimensions of the machine. In place of direct explication, then, I will offer an account of the genesis of this book, a story that will, I hope, justify its publication.
I am a college lecturer and have spent my life studying Arthurian legend. The past three decades of my existence have been spent as an adjunct instructor at a small liberal arts college in Tower Gulch, Minnesota. Although the college is as rigorous as pedagogic fashion allows, its library’s holdings are inadequate and its atmosphere uninviting, an unfortunate but common state of affairs at smaller universities. Consequently, I often found myself traveling to Tower Gulch Public Library for both research and pleasure.
The TGPL, as it’s known by locals, is housed in a gloomy stone building, a kind of ersatz cathedral, and is administered by one of the finest librarians I have ever met, the supremely prim and dauntingly capable Mrs. Alexander. This remarkable lady is one of those unmistakably asynchronous characters, a spritely octogenarian who exudes in every miniscule move, indeed, in every twitch of her bespectacled, narrow face, the unmistakable marks of all-encompassing competence. In fact, her personality is so unique that it is difficult to describe. Suffice it to say that Mrs. Alexander clashes with the contemporary world in a delightfully affecting way, rather like the sight of an Amish carriage on a superhighway.
Since no one reads anymore, I was often Mrs. Alexander’s only company. This privilege allowed me to explore the library in solitude and immerse myself in its sensory phenomena: the scent of old books, the occasional and mysterious gusts of cool wind that would sneak down the back of my shirt collar, and the hollow, ghostly clack of Mrs. Alexander’s shoes reverberating off the tile floor.
The library’s holdings are small—Tower Gulch is a small town, after all—but the texts that are held have been chosen wisely and curated expertly. “No fat, all muscle” is the way Mrs. Alexander describes her domain, although no small thanks go to her predecessors who were every bit as meticulous. The whole place is like a portal or, perhaps better, time capsule. Though the world rushes madly, Tower Gulch Public Library remains, a great stone in the thrashing sea.
On a whim I decided to review the town’s historical documents. I am a transplant, and I felt it would be proper to have a better understanding of my surroundings. Tower Gulch has been my home for many years, and, after my retirement, it forcefully struck me how little I knew about my adopted community. It was on this mission that I first came to learn of the existence of a man who would change the course of my life, a chance discovery made while digging through the town’s records in the library’s subterranean corridors.
The library’s basement, I can’t help but add, is a singularly attractive place. But I do not mean it is attractive in the traditional sense—it is damp and dark, illuminated by flickering fluorescent light filtered through yellowed plastic, and the heating ducts (at least what I suspect to be the heating ducts) emit a persistent, though, in a certain sense, euphonic thrumming. But it is wonderfully cool, the sort of cool you can feel in your bones, and its shadowy quiet puts one’s mind (almost immediately) in a contemplative mood. Even the flickering lights aid in creating a state of receptivity, inducing trance-like states. This environment, in no small part, helped me understand the immense importance of what I had found.
In an inconspicuous corner of the basement stood a tall bookcase filled with odds and ends that did not have a place in the well-illuminated upper floors. An entire shelf was covered with the writings of a single author, a man known only as “the Prophet.”
I later learned that the Prophet was something of a folk legend in the town, though by the time I had found his extraordinary output he was largely forgotten. Some of the older townspeople remember him as a vagabond, while others, though usually corroborating the Prophet’s disheveled appearance, claim that he was the descendent of an ancient aristocratic family and likely quite rich. The only solid information I could find came from Mrs. Alexander. After repeatedly prodding her on the topic, she eventually opened the most precious archive in the library: her venerable mind. On a damp, drizzly afternoon, she allowed me to record her remembrances of the man. What follows is a particularly revealing segment of our conversation.
TRENCHWAY: Do you remember the Prophet well?
ALEXANDER: Oh yes. I remember him vividly. He spent quite a bit of time here, twenty some years ago. He wore an old olive suit and smelled of fast food and scotch.
TRENCHWAY: Did you like him? What was he like?
ALEXANDER: Most everyone thought he was a bit mad, but I liked him. He was a talker, though he rarely said anything memorable. But there were moments…moments when he’d say something, well, something arrestingly strange.
TRENCHWAY: Strange?
ALEXANDER: Yes. Strange. Perhaps “different” would be a better word.
TRENCHWAY: What sort of things would he say?
ALEXANDER: Let me think. The Prophet only spent about a year in Tower Gulch, but it was a productive year. He’d scrawl away in his notebooks in the basement, and I’d bring him food–check in on him, you know. We’d chat over a meal, sometimes for hours. He loved fast food: fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, all of it.
TRENCHWAY: What a privilege!
ALEXANDER: Yes, well, yes. And he’d often…he’d sometimes look up when we spoke, peering intensely from behind his bushy eyebrows, and say something disconcerting: “You know it’s ending, this lie, this story we’ve told ourselves. Things are unravelling. They’re coming apart. But the wheel turns. It always does.”
TRENCHWAY: Astonishing!
ALEXANDER: I suppose, but it was a bit off, not the sort of thing you’d expect between mouthfuls of fast food. We’d be having a perfectly normal chat and then something outlandish and, more often than not, apocalyptic would escape his lips. And never a warning. It’d just bubble up out of him. Frankly, he was impossible to fully understand.
TRENCHWAY: Brilliant minds are always difficult to comprehend.
ALEXANDER: Well, to be honest, I thought he was a tad batty, though in a harmless sort of way. I really don’t know why I kept his writing. I suppose I felt a strange sort of sympathy for the man, this…this wanderer.
TRENCHWAY: Go on.
ALEXANDER: Well, you know how particular I am about the library’s holdings.
TRENCHWAY: Admirably so.
ALEXANDER: I only keep the very best, and everything in me told me I should do away with the Prophet’s greasy notebooks, but I just couldn’t. I assess literary worth on its ability to last…
TRENCHWAY: Indeed. The ability of an author to project himself through time is a powerful measure of worth.
ALEXANDER: Of course. And here was this strange man, this, well, this daffy…
TRENCHWAY: Mrs. Alexander!
ALEXANDER: No, no, Trenchway. It’s true. But there was something about him. I’ll give you that much. And, as I was saying, I couldn’t bear to throw his notebooks away. Truth be told, I had become attached to him, protective even, the way one would feel protective of a stray, mangy dog taken in off the streets, I suppose.
“Daffy,” dear reader! Well, I shan’t complain. Mrs. Alexander was wise enough to preserve the writings of the Prophet for posterity, a service to humankind, if there ever was one. Yes, I’ll say it again—a service to humankind, for the writings of the Prophet deserve preservation, replication, and immortality. They deserve to be projected through time, to work their way into the great, humming mind of history. And how should I describe these works, these mesmerizing, hallucinogenic, contradictory texts that reach sublime heights and puerile depths? It is impossible. The Prophet’s dispatches are almost always short, but they contain riches, a reservoir of inestimable worth.
Unfortunately, the majority of the Prophet’s writings remain unfinished, and the poor condition of the manuscripts—which is to say spiral bound notebooks covered in what Mrs. Alexander believes to be chicken grease and barbeque sauce—make deciphering the already barely legible handwriting difficult. Consequently, I have selected only what I believe to be the choicest and most complete examples of the Prophet’s work, though I might release more at a later date. Also, I have (only occasionally!) filled in the blanks: that is, put in the words that were irrevocably lost under the layers of grime. But do not fear. I have made these minor additions and modifications with the utmost reverence, allowing the Prophet’s mighty spirit to guide my mortal hand.
To be frank, part of me feels that I am engaging in a sort of sacrilege by releasing this collection. I am intimately connected to the Prophet, a connection forged through the hours I spent with him in the basement of TGPL. The ecstatic moments of recognition, of sight—transcendent, revelatory—the hours of interpretive struggle—demanding, rewarding—have created a bond between myself and this man I never met, this man who vanished, leaving only his notebooks as a vestige of his singular mind. Put differently, I feel that something personal is being released, something private. And it is not only my own feelings that I must consider. It is also unclear if the Prophet wished for his dispatches to be subjected to the gaze of the public eye. Perhaps they were meant to be found by a select few, the world’s outcasts, wanderers who, like the Prophet, somehow found themselves in the basement of Tower Gulch Public Library: breathing, thinking, feeling under the hypnotic quiver of fluorescent light. But these are the worries of an old man. I have made a decision, and I must live with it. Here, then, seems a good place to stop—or, rather, begin.
M. Trenchway
