Now keep in mind, he's the one put "Hell" in the title of the damned book! This was meant to be a surprise for my friend, the novelist, the one who'd asked me to give him some illustrations for each chapter of his forthcoming novel about the fall of a great bookstore. (It's fiction, please note.) I'd avoiding drawing anybody in it, other than anonymous hands, and one pair of feet. The idea was just to add little visual jokes at the head of each, brief chapter. Some were pictures taken from the scenes described. Some where book jackets of the classics mentioned. Some were simply objects commonly found about a bookstore, though some of these were meant to suggest, slyly I hope, the individual narrator of the chapter, or the locale, etc. (Doubt anyone will see those jokes but me.)
Anyway, the point of this last was to surprise the author with a wee caricature of the gentleman himself, as Pan, or Puck if you will, grinning as these revels ended. Sent it in with the rest to the dear woman producing the book on the EBM, but not to the novelist who was not meant to see it until the book was printed. Didn't quite come off, my plan.
He saw it, and in his wonderfully gentle, Jesuitical way, he suggested in an email that he would like some simple drawing, perhaps of books scattered on the floor, just at the end of the book, as a last comment on the action. Sort of a coda...
Finally had to admit, as I'd immediately suspected on receiving his email, that in all honesty, he didn't much like the horns I'd given him.
Here it is then, anyway. I've done just as he asked, I hope, for what will now be the last picture in the book. Meanwhile, I still rather like my wicked Nick, Ol' Mr. Scratch,my little God Pan.
Waste not, want not, I always say.
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