Author’s Afterword

This, the third volume of the Difficulty at the Beginning quartet, bears no direct relationship to the story of John Dupre’s life in the summer of 1965 that was published under the title of “South” as the first half of Cutting Through (General Publishing, Toronto, 1982). Although I did manage to salvage roughly four pages of material from “South,” I based this book entirely on an unpublished short story (now housed in the archives at the University of British Columbia library) that I wrote in the early 1970s; I kept the original title—Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes—thoroughly rewrote the story, added many new elements to it, and expanded it to approximately five times its original length. I consider this book to be a new work.

References to T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” were always present in the earliest drafts of the short story. Playing with literary devices that were all the rage when John was in university, I have amplified the relationship between Eliot’s text and mine, but I have tried to do so in a way that is unobtrusive. I offer my efforts in the same spirit with which John offers his toast to Eliot: “Here’s to you, master of the mug’s game.”

Lyndon’s Johnson’s speech to the nation was widely reprinted in the newspapers of the time. The cover of Seventeen that Zoë imitates in the photo shoot at the end of the book is that of August, 1965 (the same issue that she and John flip through earlier in the story). Except for my sketch of John Hunt Morgan and the mention of well-known public figures such as the ubiquitous president from Texas, none of the characters in this book are real. The summer of 1965, however, is just as real as I could make it.

Keith Maillard, Vancouver, January 12, 2006