Dearest Anna:

I am the loneliest man in the world. A.E. Vithano, philosopher and eccentric, is the loneliest man in the world. Nobody believes anything he says. Nobody really cares.

Nobody reads his books. They all try to write their own. If I write 'god', Mssr. Leoni will say, in his next book, that it really means a cultural code; Lord Bingsham will pickle my brain and trace this irreverence to a traumatized childhood; Miss Carsley, the rising star, will note my usage of other words, like 'clergyman' and 'brother', and write in her next column that A.E. Vithano is a proponent of the masculinist discourse that is the sustenance of a phallocentric universe. I am everywhere read and re-read, at once perceived and re-assembled. In my books I am nothing before the world but so many words and so many senses.

Who am I to you? I know you do not care. I am your tenant, the man who passes you his shirts to wash, who watches you secretly (whom you let watch secretly). I am the man who writes the letters you don't read.

As Always,
A.E.