A: Jerome Bray to the Author. The Gadfly Illuminations.

C: Ambrose Mensch to Yours Truly. A lull on Bloodsworth Island.

L: The Author to Jerome Bray. Admonition and invitation.

F: The Author to Jacob Horner. Accepting the latter’s declining of his invitation of May 11 and thanking him for several contributions to the current project.

A: The Author to A. B. Cook VI. Expressing dismay at the latter’s presumption and withdrawing the invitation of June 15.

C: The Author to Jerome Bray. Some afterthoughts on numbers, letters, and the myth of Bellerophon and the Chimera.

6: R

N: Lady Amherst to the Author. The Sixth Stage of her affair. The Scajaquada Scuffle.

O: Lady Amherst to the Author. The Sixth Stage continues. The Fort Erie Magazine Explosion and Second Conception scenes.

V: Lady Amherst to the Author. Distress at Mensch’s Castle.

E: Todd Andrews to his father. 13 R, a visit from Polly Lake, a call from Jeannine.

N: Todd Andrews to the Author. A series of 21’s and an intention to bequeath.

O: Jacob Horner to Jacob Horner. His rescue of Marsha Blank from Comalot Farm, and present anxiety in her behalf.

U: Jacob Horner to Jacob Horner. His last Progress and Advice session before “Saint Joseph’s” deadline.

D: A. B. Cook VI to his son. The third posthumous letter of A. B. Cook IV: the Battle of New Orleans and Napoleon’s surrender to Bellerophon.

R: A. B. Cook VI to his son. The fourth posthumous letter of A. B. Cook IV: plans for the rescue of Napoleon from St. Helena.

E: A. B. Cook VI to his son. The fifth and final posthumous letter of A. B. Cook IV: Napoleon “rescued.”

C: Jerome Bray to Bea Golden. Inviting her to star in the first epic of Numerature.

H: Jerome Bray to his parents. An ultimatum.

H: Ambrose Mensch to Yours Truly. His final such letter: the plan of his abandoned Perseus story, conformed to the plan of his own life.

I: Ambrose Mensch to the Author. A left-handed letter following up a telephone call. Alphabetical instructions from one writer to another.

T: The Author to Ambrose Mensch. Soliciting his advice and assistance in the LETTERS project.

U: The Author to Ambrose Mensch. Replying to the latter’s telephone call of the previous night.

7: S

E: Lady Amherst to the Author. Explaining her fortnight’s silence. The Burning of Washington. Two more deaths and a memorial service. Preparations for the Bombardment of Fort McHenry and for her wedding.

L: Lady Amherst to the Author. Her wedding day and night. The Dawn’s Early Light sequence and the Baratarian disasters. Her vision of the Seventh Stage.

F: Todd Andrews to his father. His last cruise on the skipjack Osborn Jones.

I: Draft codicil to the last will and testament of Todd Andrews.

S: Jacob Horner to Todd Andrews. The end of Der Wiedertraum.

A: A. B. Cook VI to his son. A summons to Fort McHenry and to the Second 7-Year Plan.

M: A. B. Cook VI to his son and/or prospective grandchild. With a postscript to the Author from H. C. Burlingame VII. Each explaining A. B. Cook VI’s absence from the yacht Baratarian.

O: Jerome Bray to his grandmother. His business finished, he prepares to ascend to her.

M: Ambrose Mensch to Arthur Morton King (and Lady Amherst). Proposing marriage to Lady Amherst. She accepts.

A: Ambrose Mensch to Whom It May Concern (in particular the Author). Water message #2 received. His reply. A postscript to the Author.

A: The Author to Germaine Pitt and Ambrose Mensch. An alphabetical wedding toast.

L: The Author to the Reader. LETTERS is “now” ended. Envoi.

1

~ ~ ~

A: Lady Amherst to the Author. Inviting him to accept an honorary doctorate of letters from Marshyhope State University. An account of the history of that institution.

Office of the Provost

Faculty of Letters

Marshyhope State University

Redmans Neck, Maryland 21612

8 March 1969

Mr John Barth, Esq., Author

Dear sir:

At the end of the current semester, Marshyhope State University will complete the seventh academic year since its founding in 1962 as Tidewater Technical College. In that brief time we have grown from a private vocational-training school with an initial enrollment of thirteen students, through annexation as a four-year college in the state university system, to our present status (effective a month hence, at the beginning of the next fiscal year) as a full-fledged university centre with a projected population of 50,000 by 1976.

To mark this new elevation, at our June commencement ceremonies we shall exercise for the first time one of its perquisites, the awarding of honorary degrees. Specifically, we shall confer one honorary doctorate in each of Law, Letters, and Science. It is my privilege, on behalf of the faculty, (Acting) President Schott, and the board of regents of the state university, to invite you to be with us 10 A.M. Saturday, 21 June 1969, in order that we may confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa. Sincerely hopeful that you will honour us by accepting the highest distinction that Marshyhope can confer, and looking forward to a favourable reply, I am,

Yours sincerely,

Germaine G. Pitt (Amherst)

Acting Provost

GGP(A)/ss

P.S.: A red-letter day on my personal calendar, this — the first in too long, dear Mr B., but never mind that! — and do forgive both this presumptuous postscriptum and my penmanship; some things I cannot entrust to my “good right hand” of a secretary (a hand dependent, I have reason to suspect, more from the arm of our esteemed acting president than from my arm, on which she’d like nothing better, if I have your American slang aright, than to “put the finger”) and so must pen as it were with my left, quite as I’ve been obliged by Fate and History — my own, England’s, Western Culture’s — to swallow pride and

But see how in the initial sentence (my initial sentence) I transgress my vow not to go on about myself, like those dotty women “of a certain age” who burden the patience of novelists and doctors — their circumstantial ramblings all reducible, I daresay, to one cry: “Help! Love me! I grow old!” Already you cluck your tongue, dear Mr-B.-whom-I-do-not-know (if indeed you’ve read me even so far): life is too short, you say, to suffer fools and frustrates, especially of the prolix variety. Yet it is you, sir, who, all innocent, provoke this stammering postscript: for nothing else than the report of your impatience with just this sort of letters conceived my vow to make known my business to you tout de suite, and nothing other than that vow effected so to speak its own miscarriage. So perverse, so helpless the human heart!