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In the beginning was Chance, and Chance was with God and Chance was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Chance and without him not anything made that was made. In Chance was life and the life was the light of men.

There was a man sent by Chance, whose name was Luke. The sere came for a witness, to bear witness of Whim, that all men through him might believe. He was not Chance, but was sent to bear witness of Chance. That was the true Accident, that randomizes every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of Chance, even to them that believe accidentally, they which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of men, but of Chance. And Chance was made flesh (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Great Fickle Father), and he dwelt among us, full of chaos, and falsehood and whim.

from The Book of the Die

Preface

`The style is the man,' once said Richard Nixon and devoted his life to boring his readers.

What to do if there is no single man? No single style? Should the style vary as the man writing the autobiography varies, or as the past man he writes about varied? Literary critics would insist that the style of a chapter must correspond to the man whose life is being dramatized: a quite rational injunction, one that ought therefore to be repeatedly disobeyed. The comic life, portrayed as high tragedy, everyday events being described by a Madman, a man in love described by a scientist. So. Let us have no more quibbles about style.

A cunning chaos: that is what my autobiography shall be. I shall make my order chronological; an innovation dared these days by few. But my style shall be random, with the wisdom of the Dice. I shall sulk and soar, extol and sneer. I shall shift from first person to third person: I shall use first-person omniscient, a mode of narrative generally reserved for Another. When distortions and digressions occur to me in my life's history I shall embrace them, for a well-told lie is a gift of the gods. But the realities of the Dice Man's life are more entertaining than my most inspired fictions: reality will dominate for its entertainment value.

I tell my life's story for that humble reason which has inspired every user of the form: to prove to the world I am a great man. I shall fail, of course, like the others. `To be great is to be misunderstood,' Elvis Presley once said, and no one can refute him.

I tell of a man's instinctive attempt to fulfil himself in a new way and I will be judged insane. So be it. Were it otherwise, I would know I had failed.

We are not ourselves; actually there is nothing we can call a `self' any more; we are manifold, we have as many selves there are groups to which we belong. . The neurotic has overtly a disease from which everybody is suffering. J. H. VAN DEN Berg