POSTSCRIPT TO THE THIRD EDITION

In previous editions, I have been careful to respect the original wishes of the author, at least as described in the note found with the manuscript after his untimely death. While it was not always easy to decipher the note, clipped and cryptic as it was, the fact that it represented the final piece of writing in the author’s own hand was for me a compelling argument for its authority over the mostly, but not completely finished manuscript. In that spirit, the names of the main characters in the novel were replaced with the two pairs of initials at the top of the note. Readers only know them by their initials, but they were not always so. OJ, the conflicted protagonist, was originally “Philip Campbell,” and his on-again, off-again lover TP, she of the architectural practice and “hypnotically monochromatic apartment,” was originally “Karen Anderson.” Determining which shorter name stood in for which longer one was not a perfect science, but are decisions of that nature not the primary responsibility of an editor, executor, amanuensis, and friend, four jobs that I continue to hold proudly, even (or especially) in the author’s absence? Similarly, the place names on the note, though significantly idiosyncratic and at times even surreal, were duly substituted for those in the manuscript. New York City became Long Grain & Wild Rice. London became Lightbulb. The note also contained several brand names. I struggled with them at first, uncertain how they fit the novel’s overall scheme. About a week before the manuscript was to be submitted to the publisher, it came to me: they were a device for satirizing the consumerism of the world that surrounded its central couple, a world “loaded with signifiers that signified nothing other than themselves,” to quote a bit of the book’s most famous paragraph. And so, when OJ felt anger, it was rendered as “Pepsi.” When TP experienced lust, it was called “Kellogg’s.” The same principle held for Campbell’s (frustration), Kleenex (happiness), Clorox (fatigue), and V8 (ennui). I did not provide a key, as I felt that would interfere with the literary experience of the work, but given that I was assiduous in using the brand correspondence each and every time the pertinent emotion was mentioned, I believe readers were afforded ample opportunity to decipher the code. Those rules guided my editorial practice for the first edition in 1978, and the second in 1982. I must now report that a new biography of the author has proven conclusively that the note clipped to the manuscript was not a set of editorial instructions, but a grocery list. All edits have been reversed. 

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