Pandora by Holly Hollander

Is this a historical novel?, you ask. Nope. This is just one that took a real long time to sell. (Except in France, so vive la France! It almost makes me wish I’d taken French instead of Latin.)

It’s also the only book of mine to sell, so far. I started writing it the day after I moved in with Blue, but it took over a year to get it finished and it hung around various publishers’ offices for about as long as it would’ve taken me to get through college, assuming I’d gone to college.

Then Ms. Sudden down at the BPL introduced me to this real writer who knows Joe Hensley and everything. We got to talking, and it turned out that I’d had three or four classes with his daughter. So he wrote it all over again putting in a lot more commas, and they say they’re going to run his name on the title page with mine. Only Hartwell wanted more about Larry Lief, so now we’ve put that in, too.

Altogether it’s been one hell of a time, but Barton hasn’t changed a lot. (Here I’m awfully tempted to tell you all about how I met Abbie Hoffman, and the first time I smoked dope, and the last time, and bunches of other stuff. But that’s all after the end, so why should you care?) The Ben Franklin Store’s been squeezed out by more boutiques. Some new people own the Magic Key now, and they don’t call it that. The worst thing by a long shot is that Uncle De Witte Sinclair’s dead. I could tell you quite a bit about that; but you wouldn’t want to read it. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t want to write it. So long, Uncle Dee. Kisses.

Holly H. Hollander

Barton, Illinois

1990