At_Last

End notes:

Well, this has been a trip. As a literary person, my goal was to submit the words and thoughts of Gavin McGuiness to the scrutiny of history. History, is that which McGuiness, in one sense, envisions as a churning sea of past realities and then, in another more troubled vision - shuns as merely a surviving written record - a wall built by victors to keep out an ocean of unflattering truths. I think he is writing about his recent decision to write in the 'American' dialect when he observes :

Wall of Inclination

Mort'erd in the wall. Am I To damn the flow of questions why? In my cracking do I yield, Or, rather, greater weapons wield?

Given such complexity as McGuiness presents, I was pressed by a desire to not be embarrassed in print by naive stupidity. To this end, before writing the preface, I did my best to research the life of this man. That research consisted almost entirely of making a bazillion phone calls until I found the names of the very fewpeople who actually had some real information to share and were willing.

I bent over backwards to not embellish any material beyond that which was given by these sources, almost risking plagiarism so little of my own thoughts were in it.

Since the much smaller, pamphlet sized first edition "trial balloon", as the publisher called it, and as a result of that preface, I have been repeatedly assaulted, twice spending evenings getting stitched, and continuously threatened and driven into seclusion. For what? Poems? Are you all raving mad? Am I missing something here?

Maybe.

I was a peaceful fellow who sought no quarrels. But now I, too, am angry. The next bastard who tries his hand on me is in for a brief surprise.

Anyway, this book is not about me. It is about Gavin McGuiness and McGuiness is a wanted man. We all know that. It isn't questioned anywhere. But, by whom? There are no FORMAL charges against him in any, I repeat, ANY jurisdiction in the world. However,

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