I began a comedy

John Crowley, Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land: An imagining of Byron reimagining himself in novel form, exploring variations on established formats by both Byron & Crowley (as both are wont to do). "The Evening Land", annotated by his daughter Ada Lovelace, comes to light through rediscovered papers, comprising a parallel armature, an e-pistolary story which, though refracting Byronic attributes into modernity, functions primarily as didactic apparatus. The compulsion to explain belies a lack of confidence in the art or in the audience, which, for the former at least, is unjustified; similar purpose could have been better served by bracketing by modern introduction (here at the end) and afterword, and further development of Ada's notes. But the core, ventrisoliloquizing Byron, makes up for all that. (Post title from epigraph, from Byron's journal: "I began a comedy, and burnt it because the scene ran into reality—a novel, for the same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought always runs through, through . . . yes, yes, through." And I was amused by Harold Bloom's blurb, given his appearance in the armature, and nearby, by Crowley's anagrammatic agent Roony J. Welch, rather close by the by to that of a Columbia [sometimes even District of] bookreviewer of my cyberacquaintance.)