Plot Introduction
In a series of (fictional) letters exchanged between the author, Mark Dunn, and his editor, it is explained that the only copy of Dunn's excessively and exhaustively researched and documented biography of one Jonathan Blashette - a circus performer born with three legs who goes on to make a fortune in the deodorant business and becomes a famous philanthropist - was accidentally knocked into a bathtub and destroyed. Luckily, Dunn had not yet sent along his voluminous endnotes and they survived, so the editor convinces Dunn to make a virtue of necessity and publish the endnotes by themselves. The reader is left to try and ferret out the details of Blashette's life story through the marginal asides and tangents related therein.
Read more about this topic: Ibid: A Life
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