A Note On The Accuracy Of The Text

The core of this book is derived from my letters, notes and diaries spanning nearly ten years. I have a contemporary manuscript for each of the pieces in the text, but not one of them is included without editing. Much of the editing corrects grammar, spelling, and lapses into the colloquial that my correspondents accepted with good grace, but which I find "unmusical" in this presentation. However, sometimes I have cut text because it was redundant (usually because I was repeating to one friend news that I have included in a letter to another), and sometimes I have added something that is needed to allow the present reader to understand context that was known to my correspondent. I have not indicated any of these changes.

I did not invent any of the people or events. The people are real people, whom I love and respect. The events took place. I have been as accurate about time, place and details as I could. Most important, I have been as true to my feelings at the time as the universal tendency to revise memory allows.

A few of the unmailed letters are not marked as such in the text. If you are one of the people I was writing to, and you either didn't get the letter I say you did or you don't recognize the version of something that I have included here, I apologize for the long time it has taken to deliver it properly to you. For once the U.S. Postal Service is probably not at fault.

Although I have used quotation marks throughout, dialog is almost always a paraphrase.

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