Back matter · Errata corrige
A printed book cannot delete its mistakes; it tips in a slip and owns them. This one does the same. Every substantive correction since the first impression, in the old form — for x, read y.
For a painted ocean in motion, read paper. The moving sea was struck from the plates entirely; the paintings stayed still, as paintings should.Corrected 9 July MMXXVI
Throughout the catalogue, for Plate read Opus. The works of an opera were never plates; the book's own plates reclaim the word.Corrected 1 August MMXXVI
In the author's ledger, for MMIV read MMV. The author had aged himself by a year; medicine notwithstanding, the correction ran the other way.Corrected 19 July MMXXVI
For a heavier instrument, read the original. An attempt to give the reader's mark mass and momentum was withdrawn within the day. The hand knows best.Corrected 18 July MMXXVI
The slip is complete: what is not listed here was either right the first time, or not worth the ink. New corrections are added as they are made, never silently.
The slip above corrects the book. This one corrects its author. Anyone can hold large ambitions at twenty-one; the list that can be checked is the other one, gentle reader: what he held, the year he held it, and the thing that took it off him. The old reading is struck and left legible. A register is corrected in the margin, not by burning the page.
A book has to sound solemn in order to be taken seriously.
Struck byTwo months of printing pages that nobody who knows me recognised, and one evening spent reading them out loud.
Now readsA book is taken seriously when it carries the objection to itself on the same page.
Ruled and empty. The line is drawn before there is anything to write on it.
Ruled and empty.
One entry, and two lines ruled for whatever comes next. You will say that a man who has retracted once by twenty-one has not been thinking hard enough. Fair. I do not change my mind easily, which is a spine about as often as it is a fault: the register is here so that the next time it happens there is nowhere to put it but in public.