The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

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Mighty are the labours of the redactors of Odrum, and merciless is their diligence. As it endured redaction in the dungeons of Odrum, the Text which follows became encumbered by a full two million words of explication and interpolation. In the interests of convenience, readability and sanity, most of this overgrowth has been cut away.

The enormity of the labours expended by Odrum upon this Text boggles the imagination. Upon the foundation of this historical account there was erected a terrifying redactatorial monument complete with an elaborate apparatus of footnotes, screeds of etymological speculation and hundreds of thousands of words of textual analysis.

Only a few (a very few) of the comments by some of the more prominent redactors have been left to give a faint indication of the flavour of the Text in its redacted form. The rest of Odrum’s additions have been soundlessly elided. Which is only fair, since Odrum’s scholars were equally ruthless in their abbreviation of the Originator’s writings.

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