A Reader, A Writer, A Novel

The historical record has always been a shabby construction. Some people's meticulously precise movements throughout their lives have been tracked throughout all time. One might even contend that precise historical account of certain individuals predate history itself or are the cause of it, the rough stone idol work that would later become history proper. And other people, meanwhile are left completely out of the history making, all recording process even up to our present day with the ever accelerating means of seeing, recording, retaining and attempting to put to use of every scrap of life. And the nature of time and chance says that you'll never know who in advance you should have been keeping tabs on because you'll never know who was worth knowing about. So you end up with the boring lives of kings, the mundanity of the wealthy. Meanwhile Homer is nothing more than a mythical sketch who may or may not have existed. Shakespeare is more or less a ghost possibly undergoing a process of doubt that could leave him as potentially nonexistent as Homer within a few short hundreds of years. There is always the possibility however, that these yarn spinners wanted it that way and found creative ways to duck the all seeing eyes, stay out of the public records, at least in any way they couldn't get their hand on. That's got to be the case now with Charles. A bit of chanced luck and a couple right moves and most of what we have left first hand is a signed paystub helpfully punctuated: Charles, Author.