The Dice Man [antikvár]

Preface 'The style is the man,' once said Richard Nixon and devoted his Hfe to boring his readers. What to do if there is no single man? No single style? Should the style vary as the man writing the autobiography varies, or as the past man he writes about varied? ¦ Literary critics would insist that the style of a chapter ^ must correspond to the man whose life is being drama- ¦ tized: a quite rational injunction, one that ought therefore | to be repeatedly disobeyed. The comic life portrayed as t; high tragedy, everyday events being described by a madman, a man in love described by a scientist. So. Let us have no more quibbles about style. If style and subject t matter happen to congeal in any of these chapters it is a f. lucky accident, not, we may hope, soon to be repeated. A cunning chaos: that is what my autobiography shall be. I shall make my order chronological, an innovation dared these days by few. But my style shall be random, with the wisdom of the Dice. I shall sulk and soar, extol and sneer. I shall shift from first person to third person: I shall use first-person omniscient, a mode of narrative generally reserved for Another. When distortions and digressions occur to me in my life's history I shall embrace them, for a well-told lie is a gift of the gods. But the realities of the Dice Man's life are more entertaining than my most inspired fictions: reality will dominate for its entertainment value. I tell my life's story for that humble reason which has inspired every user of the form: to prove to the world I