Letters from Conrad, 135 x 210mm, 192pp, £7 paperback
If you would like to own a copy, drop me a line at michaelbrunstrom@hotmail.com. For non-friends-and-family of Conrad, the price is £7.
By way of a taster, here is my short Preface to the book:
PREFACE
The fact that Dad once compiled a list of fifty letters he had written doesn’t necessarily imply that he planned for them to be published; he often made lists of all kinds, simply as a matter of habit. However, this collection does contain all the letters on that list, as well as other letters, scraps, notes and miscellaneous writings, some of which belong to alternative incomplete numbering schemes, or are clearly much older but impossible to date with any precision. There exists plenty of further material that I have left out because I couldn’t get hold of it, or because it was repetitive, or because it wasn’t very funny.
While it’s clear that Dad often printed lots of copies of each letter and sent them out in one big mailshot, it is also true that he liked to personalise and adorn them with prefaces and in-jokes. Certain stories appear in numerous different forms, apparently having been tinkered with, rewritten from scratch, or reworked into other material. Any ambiguity about whether or not a particular letter was written with you in mind was deliberate, as shown by the fact that Dad would type the recipient’s name at the top of every letter, then cross it out, then write it back in again by hand.
There can be, then, neither a definitive set of Dad’s letters nor a coherent chronology to them. Rather than impose a rationalisation antithetical to their character, I have just stuck them to the pages of this book in an arbitrary manner pleasing to me, and added an index to help the reader who is in a hurry to find their favourite.
Dad sent his letters to anyone who wished to subscribe to them. So at first it seemed to me that a blog was the most appropriate and germane way to publish them. But he would much have prefered his letters in the form of a book – something that can be passed round at the pub, and which can be personally owned with pride. This is it!
Michael Brunström, August 2012
