Arjun and the Good Snake, being an Ophidiological Account of Six Weeks in India without Alcohol

[Rick]

This is the 'blurb' (how demeaning) from the late colleague of Slavoj Žižek, a brilliant linguist and thinker, Dr. Janez Justin:

Arjun and the Good Snake is a unique book from father to son, written in a brilliant style by an expat writer of stunning originality. A moving exploration of a father’s love for his young son, it is also a multifaceted search for the meaning of life by an author whose confession of his alcoholism is the least of the confessions made in this book by an extremely sensitive intellect.
His peerless narrative and autobiographical prowess, the fantastic, if not allegoric, and yet realistic tales about venomous snakes caught in places one would expect to be concerned instead with the UNO human development index instead of this gallows humour … Snake catching being a metaphor not only of death but also a symbol of the thrill of being alive, either in the US or in India or a small Mediterranean town whose only real hero – besides its current inhabitants, who have a daily drink or two in one of the anonymous seafront bars – is a rancid, pathetic character who lived 240 years ago, who weaseled his way into Casanova’s memoires during the latter’s escape from a Venetian prison…It is up to you, the reader, to answer the following question: Are we facing another Casanova’s attempt at escaping a prison, this time the prison of addiction, an attempt made by a 21th century Casanova, a Mediterranean wine drinker – an attempt at escaping a prison of love for his son and, in the background, for the dark figures of a woman (a certain Sasi) and their daughter, who are omnipresent and yet almost absent in the story told by an author who is half way between twice-expat and native…
Yet this book is not about its writer–it is about the human race searching for the criteria on which to base our decision to persist in the world … Are we dealing with an author who is willing to transpose to literature Camus’ idea that the only true question for a philosopher is the question of suicide? I do not think so. His own work contradicts that – there is this tremendous vitality of imagery, incessant current of vibrant narration that causes vertigo in a reader and devours anything standing in its way – statistics, newspaper articles, unreliable, alcohol-soaked reminiscences, simple lies and invented stories (that are in the author’s honour) with anecdotal details of the author’s life on the Slovenian Mediterranean coast; it is his explosively vitalist imagination … Do not worry, dear reader, that the book is about other people. I assure you, it is – just as any exceptional book is – about you, the reader, about you and me.
Janez Justin, Professor, Institutum Studiorum Humanitatus, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Professor of what? (‘I suppose I possess a lot of stupid titles, most of them worthless,’ Janez)

[Rick]

Sounds good. Luckily, I brought back a hundred of these from Ljubljana yesterday, revised largely according to Jim Gauer's notions, which, whenever I was certain what they were, were always on target.
The book is yet another pocket book, with a few flaws that have nothing to do with the text. The spine was an emergency collaboration by Zachary Tanner, and Darinka of Primitus, our printer. The problem was that the design was not meant to go straight to the printer but to someone one knew what the printer needed. The person who would normally do that was on vacation, and the publisher of my parent company is ill. So Darinka did a great job, but adhered to Zach's design in one place too many, the spine, the upper half of which is terrific and the bottom half is blurry from a distance of a centimeter or more. The rest is terrific and is already one of my favorites. But then there is the colophon. The copy feller who put the book together just threw in some stuff, because the aforesaid publisher makes the colophon page. I mentioned the need for the colophon page too many times to the ill publisher, and surely he is worse off for it. Still, I was alert for the correct information you will find on the bottom half of the colophon page. Unfortunately, by that time I was just glad to see that ISBN and the secret Slovene scribbles and didn't make sure the nonsense at the top was fixed. What is should read up there is all there, but there should be nothing about an introduction by Clare Vassallo or a drawing by my ex-wife. Those were in Skulls of Istria.
The book itself has one known flaw that I allowed to persist. This is a book about India, and other matters, but India is a strong ambience, and India is a place where time is subject to subjection, and there are passages that should have been italicized to put them in the right time frame, but when I saw they were not, I decided that was fine. The reader will find the time.

[Rick]

I find it explicable.