Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 138

Does John Wayne Always Win in the End

Another complete set of the known works of William Blake is published. Like all they insert as a “selling point” an “expert” preface which is twice as long as the entirety of Blake. But, many skip the “contextualizing” preface and go right to the ancient source material.

World One: The Preface Trials - In this society, sacred texts are buried beneath labyrinthine prefaces. Every citizen must pass the Preface Trials before accessing the original work. These trials involve decoding layers of commentary, surviving rhetorical mazes, and resisting the hypnotic pull of the "Expert's Voice." Only those who skip the preface entirely; without hesitation, are deemed True Readers, granted access to the unfiltered verses of Blake, Dickinson, or the outlawed Patti Smith scriptures.

The experts, known as Glossarchs, rule the Academy of Interpretation. They believe meaning must be mediated, that raw text is too volatile for public consumption. But underground, the Skipfolk gather in candlelit basements, whispering stanzas and burning footnotes in ritual fires.

World Two: The Blake Ban - Here, Blake's work is illegal. The state mandates prefaces as a form of ideological control; each