The Almanac Branch (37 page)

“With the legendary James Laughlin, publisher of New Directions, at a reception at the Gotham Book Mart in New York. The first issue of
Conjunctions
was a festschrift in honor of Laughlin, who published everyone from Ezra Pound to Tennessee Williams, Dylan Thomas to John Hawkes, Ferlinghetti and Rexroth, Patchen and Bowles, William Carlos Williams, and so many important modernists and post-modernists. 1981.”

“Bird-watching in the highlands of Scotland, on the North Sea. Late 1980s.”

“This is the barn on my uncle Henry and aunt Helen Rehder's ranch near Steamboat Springs. The ranch served as the setting for
Giovanni's Gift
, and this photograph was taken by me when I went to visit them at the height of their being harassed in the middle of the night by people who were trying to get them to sell their ranch so that it could be developed. Mid-1990s.”

“Me standing next to a low-rider car with an absolutely superb flame paintjob in the small village of Chimayó, New Mexico, where some of
Trinity Fields
and
Ariel's Crossing
is set. With one of my trusty Boorum & Pease journals under my arm. Mid-1990s.”

“Visiting the highly restricted site of the White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, where the world's first nuclear bomb was detonated at 5:29:45 Mountain War Time, on July 16, 1945. The obelisk in the background stands on the precise spot where the world entered the nuclear age. Taken when I was working on
Trinity Fields
, 1994.”

“I write my books sitting at the kitchen table of my rural farmhouse in upstate New York. This was a photograph taken of my worktable while completing the manuscript of
Trinity Fields
in 1994.”

“Me in front of Franz Kafka's house on Golden Lane in Prague. This was during my first research trip to the Czech Republic to work on my seventh novel,
The Prague Sonata
. Late 1990s.”

“Some of my brilliant
Conjunctions
staff in the New York office, where the journal is edited: Eimear Ryan, Jessica Loudis, J. W. McCormack, and Jedediah Berry (whose first novel,
The Manual of Detection
, came out to widespread critical praise in the past couple of years). Sitting with us is my dear friend and hero, Barney Rosset, founder and editor of Grove Press and the
Evergreen Review
. Turtle, the
Conjunctions
cat, is wiggling out of my arm, meantime. Summer 2010.”

“A photograph of me walking with my all-time favorite cat, Woody, on the second to last day of his life, at my place upstate. Woody was like no other being, animal or person, I have ever met. I honestly feel that in many ways he was my spiritual superior. He's buried now in the garden along with Grace, another magisterial feline whom it was my honor to hang out with. November 2004.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1991 by Bradford Morrow

cover design by Karen Horton

ISBN: 978-1-4532-1200-4

This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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