Mea culpa from the Board of Directors
“Stoned.” An illustration from Fuzz Against Junk by Akbar Del Piombo.
We want to take this opportunity to recognize that our decision-making these last few months has at times strayed from the standard you rightly expect. As members of the board of directors our goal is to increase the valuation of this corporation while marginally enhancing the state of literature (we say marginally because literature is static, like history, neither improving nor worsening, but shifting imperceptibly and incoherently; everything has already been written, and if it has not been written, it has been said, and if it has not been said, it has been thought). It is obvious to us now that we placed too much pressure on Saint Drogo, our former editor, that we did not understand what he was going through, given his yearslong confinement to a stone cell and strict dietary and recreational regimen, and we regret that we did not take the time to find out. Saint Drogo served as perhaps the shrewdest editor this village press has seen, bringing us a study of refection by the preeminent Austrian documentarian Thomas Bernhard. But due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, he felt compelled to resign, and the interim editor who replaced him has made a series of costly decisions whose harm we acknowledge.
It is by now well-known that the interim editor acquired a work of true debauchery that is not fitting for this high-minded press. That is Arthur’s Whims, by Hervé Guibert, translated by Daniel Lupo. His decision was made alone; he consulted no one; and, we are told, he made this decision having read only a thirty-page excerpt that was delivered to him by a sea monk, so he says, while he lay on the beach excessively sunning himself and contemplating the mysteries of the sun (whose rays, he says, control the growth of his yellow-green toenails). The book had never appeared in English before, so he gambled. Thus he did not know there were chapters lustily depicting the podiatrist’s profession or fleeting pornographic scenes, nor of course did he know that the work would deviate so far and in such a grotesque fashion from the usual and respected literary depiction of the saint. Nonetheless this was only the tip of the iceberg.
Our surveillance team informs us that the interim editor urinated on book galleys and had to be physically restrained from doing the same on books en route to be distributed, that he drank and used root intoxicants to such excess that he was unable to proofread although he signed the solemn proofreading acknowledgement (“SPA”), that he submitted hundreds of lewd cover designs which he scribbled himself on the paper provided for him to draft contracts (all of which were immediately rejected and burned), that he kept small misshapen dogs and other animals and assigned to them the highest ranking editorial roles, that he vomited into clear jars that he arranged on the bookcase where our titles once stood (from the darkest to the lightest colored jars), and that in fact he exposed himself during a meeting at which a decision was made with which he disagreed. That decision, of course, was to terminate him.
We hope that our mea culpa will be read not only by our shareholders, readers, and workers, but also by Saint Drogo. We believe he has vanished into the desert to focus on his journey to rectitude. No one has heard from him, not even his youthful surveillance companion who returned to the village alone, and who has since taken a hallowed vow of muteness. Thus perhaps it will be some time before he reads this communiqué. Nonetheless we are hopeful, knowing what an illuminated and illuminating thinker he is, what a hardworking person he is, and refusing to believe that he has left Spurl Editions forever behind.
Printed on acid-free paper.