The Story So Far
An Evaporation by Lorna Tracy

Being the second of the pair of initial chapters in an extended conceptual fiction-to-be (or not to be) that takes the form of an annotated Index followed by specimen texts complete with missing parts. The reader may access any index entry in any order using the FIND facility.*

*Some entries do not exist. And FIND doesn’t always work very well.

Preface

When Henry James and John Buchan, reading through the archive of the widow of Byron's grandson which she had asked them to do so as to give an opinion on the merits of the quarrel between Byron and his wife, this was their response.


BUCHAN: Reading the stuff almost made me sick, some of that special vileness, but James never turned a hair.


JAMES: Singular. Most curious. Nauseating perhaps, but how quite inexpressibly significant.


Baskerville, Jay: the unforgettable day; fooled by bird; jobless in the city; works as janitor at Fraudulent Enterprises plc; sacked from; forsakes conventional employment; founds Trocar Magazine; enters partnership with Leda Fanshaw; difficulties with adopted son; beautiful mind of; impulsive nature of; driving license revoked; suffers indigestion; discovers what the cannibal said; advised to go to hell; advised to go to another planet; writes
to Kilgore Trout; compares his virility to a great cat’s; changes the subject; compared to a carbuncle; endures troll storm.


Baskerville, Leda Fanshaw: unspontaneous nature of; cooking criticized; disrespected by a tree; electrifying displays of panic and rage; rigid personality of; experiences catharsis of invective [pp.1-257]; amuses greengrocer; feelings invoked by fatal ...