Author's Intent

My intent in writing The Passing of Merlin Zauber was to create a great book on the afterlife.

I've wanted to do this even before I fully appreciated what that might entail. In the 1950s, when I was in high school, one of my teachers asked me what was my "greatest goal in life." My spontaneous response was that I wanted to write a "great book that accurately describes the afterlife." The teacher laughed, and said, "Too late: Dante has already done that, in his Divine Comedy."

I immediately went to the school library and checked out a traslation of Dante's poem. After carefully reading it, I told the teacher, "Unfortunately, Dante didn't get it right, so my goal is still to contribute an accurate account of the afterlife."

Whether I've succeeded in that goal is for the reader to decide. The greatest debate I've had with myself is whether to attempt a scholarly, objective account, based on the considerable primary sources that are now available, or to give it a literary expression. I am confident that if The Passing of Merlin Zauber was not the better choice, it is still an acceptable choice and I am hoping that it represents a karmic debt that finally, after an unconscionable delay, has been paid in full.