"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol09)

Night 251.
When Michael Ramer had finished reading his latest story...

This was heavily emended and then struck through, and was replaced
by a new, separate title-page (made when B had been completed):

Beyond Probability (6)
or
Out of the Talkative Planet.

The Ramblings of Ramer
being Nights 251 and 252 of The Notion Club Papers.

[Little is known about this rare book, except that
it appears to have been written after 1989, as an
apocryphal imitation of the Inklings' Saga Book. The
author identifies himseif with the character called in the
narrative Nicholas Guildford; but Titmouse has shown
that this is a pseudonym, and is taken from a mediaeval
dialogue, at one time read in the Schools of Oxford. His
real identity remains unknown.]

An aside to the audience. While listening to this hotch-
potch (if you do), I beg of the present company not to
look for their own faces in my mirror. For the mirror is
cracked...

This is followed by a list of the persons who appear (see p. 151). It
seems clear that at the stage when the text B was written my father's
idea was far less elaborate than it became; intending perhaps, so far
as the form was concerned, no more than a jeu d'esprit for the
entertainment of the Inklings - while the titles seem to emphasise that
it was to be, in patt, the vehicle of criticism and discussion of aspects
of Lewis's 'planetary' novels. Perhaps he called to mind the witty and
ingenious method that Lewis had devised for his criticism of The Lay
of Leithian in 1930 (see The Lays of Beleriand, p. 151). - So far as I
can see, there is no indication that at this stage he envisaged the form
that Part Two of the Papers would take, and definite evidence to the
contrary (see pp. 281 - 2).
There are several drafts for a more circumstantial account of the
Papers and of how they came to light, preceding the elaborate form in
the final text that follows. They were found at the University Press
waiting to be pulped, but no one knew how they had got there; or they
were found 'at Messrs. Whitburn and Thoms' publishing house'.(7)

The mediaeval dialogue from which the name Nicholas Guildford
is derived is The Owl and the Nightingale, a debate in verse written
between 1189 and 1216. To the Owl's question, who shall decide
between them, the Nightingale replies that Maister Nichole of Gulde-
forde is the obvious choice, since he is prudent, virtuous, and wise, and