182: My relationship with . . .
Little Follies, “Call Me Larry,” the Preface
Preface
Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.
James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
Are there perhaps other worlds more real than the waking world? . . . Often we have before us, in those first minutes in which we allow ourself to slip into the waking state, a truth composed of different realities among which we imagine that we can choose, as among a pack of cards.
Marcel Proust, The Captive, (translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff)
Eric Kraft . . . looks exactly like my mind’s-eye picture of Peter Leroy: wiry build, wacky smile, bright eyes.
Susan Orlean, “Getting Serial” in The Boston Phoenix
MY RELATIONSHIP with Larry Peters is a complex one. In the simplest terms, I owe my livelihood to him, but, far more than that, I owe to the series of adventure novels in which Larry has appeared for some thirty years—and to their pseudonymous authors—the discovery of an avenue to a feeling of artistic freedom without which I might never have managed to write any of my personal history, adventures, experiences, and observations.
In the pages that follow, I’ve tried to narrate the origin of that relationship and explain its complexity. I fear that in the process I may have slighted the authors of the original Larry Peters books. That was never my intention. Because I know far too well how much effort goes into the writing of even the thinnest books, I would never intentionally belittle anyone who attempts it.
Peter Leroy
Small’s Island
December 10, 1984
[to be continued on Thursday, January 27, 2022]
In Topical Guide 182, Mark Dorset considers Other Worlds and Imagination from this episode.
You can listen to this episode on the Personal History podcast.
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At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” and “Take the Long Way Home,” the first seven novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.