The Goatibex Constellation

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A certain Moscow publishing house once asked me to write an introduction for the Persian language edition of my short stories. I got to work on it, and what emerged was a story equal in length to those it was supposed to preface.

I don’t know how this happened, though I may have been somewhat influenced by the fact that the introduction was to be paid for in the usual fashion — that is, according to the number of pages.

“A strange introduction,” said the editorial assistant despondently as he took the manuscript in hand and began counting the pages. “Why, this is as much as a tenth of the whole book.”

“There’s a way to get around that,” I suggested.

“How?” he asked, brightening.

“What’s to prevent your increasing the overall size of the book, thus cutting down on the relative size of the introduction?”

“No,” he replied, for some reason offended by my proposal, “our Persian readers would never forgive us for that.”

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