Engines of the Night concludes with the short story "Corridors" (that very short appended "L'Envoi" is only an entry for a biographical dictionary which does not exist) and Breakfast In The Ruins, for consistency, should end with the short story "The Passage of the Light" . . . but in 1980 I had subterranean hope that Engines might sequelize, as it has a quarter of a century later, and therefore needed no last word. This time I acknowledge the actuary; in another 25 years I will be 91 and I am not expectant. Nor am I optimistic about the state of publishing at that time.
So this briefest of Afterwords, avoiding the temptation of the Saroyanesque ("This book was compiled through the activities of typewriter, computer and dull pencil, assembled from simple, common, dusty materials in an aspiration for Holy Grace") or the precious Cult Of Salinger ("In the spirit of pressing upon Stephanie Malzberg, then nine months, a spoonful of farina, I gently ask that the reader accept this pretty skimpy book") but instead in memory of Ruthven: I tried in my own poor way to get back there, to truly know it, to find the light against the light. In which we all must hope to dwell.
The light against the light.
—December 2005: New Jersey