ever the pen of Dan Spain.

However, upon going over the manuscript a second time, I found my
instincts as an editor overwhelming this excellent resolution. For
several months I was torn between my conscience as a writer with its
full sense of duty to a dead author and my editorial conscience with its
fuller sense of duty to the reading public--and I did nothing with the
manuscript.

But at last a great compromising thought occurred to me. I could leave
the manuscript stand intact, but I could write a preface in which I
could explain the dreadful dilemma in which the death of my collaborator
left me, and why I do not feel, under the distressing circumstances,
that I should be held responsible for those parts of Spain's draft which
do not meet my approval. My decision has made possible the publication
of "The Book of Gud"; for otherwise I should have burned my copy also.

It is my hope that this explanation will mitigate the wrath of many
readers, for it is a beautiful fact about human nature that it rarely
holds the dead as responsible as it does the living.

I frankly confess that it has been a task to hold to this resolution,
for I have been sorely tempted to delete as well as comment on some of
Spain's text. As proof of my integrity in this matter, I have even left
in the text of the book a note addressed to me by Spain in which he has
expressed his contempt for my work in a most ungentlemanly manner.

I hold that the canons of literary ethics do not permit one to alter a
dead man's manuscript. If they did, how quickly we could enrich the
literary heritage of American children by expurgating the classics of
Europe and rewriting them in a style acceptable to the American sense of
decency.

To some very literally minded persons it may seem that the view just
expressed is not consistent with my capacity as a joint author of "The
Book of Gud." Let me therefore discount any such criticisms by
explaining that the evil effects of literature all come from its
realism. "The Book of Gud" is romantic and symbolic. There is true
beauty in symbolism because of the variety of possible interpretations.
Each reader can gain the meaning particularly adapted to himself.

The greatest art is that which can be interpreted in the most devious
ways: Witness the character of Hamlet, the enigma of Mona Lisa, the
riddle of the Book of Revelations. To me Hamlet is the personification
of a weak will in a strong mind, due to the European