This is from the advance reader’s edition of Spooner, the forthcoming novel by Pete Dexter.

(I’m a huge fan of Dexter, and appreciate a good note to early readers.)

A note to early readers:

As far as I know, sometime in November of last year, the book you have in your hands was three years late. There are many reasons it was three years late, probably the most conspicuous being that it was once 250 pages or so longer than the version you hold, and it takes maybe half a year to write an extra 250 pages, and at least twice that to subtract them back out. I realize this leaves another year and a half unaccounted for, and all I can say about that, readers, is get in line. Whole decades are missing from my life, and I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have it any other way.

At any rate, it turns out that bringing a book home three years past deadline presents problems for the publisher. Publications have to be set (again), covers drawn, generous comments collected—god knows how many of my greatest admirers have died while I’ve been diddling around with this thing—and so you can understand, perhaps, that in the end somebody had to put his/her foot down and say enough, and in the end somebody did. Be assured it wasn’t me. I could have kept this up for another five years. Oh, and a title. They thought a title might be nice.

All to say that what you have here, while not exactly a first draft, is further away from the finished product than most advance readers’ editions are, and when you come across sentences you particularly don’t like, keep in mind that I probably didn’t like them either. On the odd chance that the bad sentences are still there when the book comes out, then you should keep in mind that you’re reading somebody who is still missing 18 months of the last 36, and has no idea about 2006 at all.

Pete Dexter

Even with the bad sentences, Spooner is terrific, and Dexter is a national treasure.