Baccano! - Volume 3 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

First, thank you very much for reading this section, too, even though it has nothing to do with the main story.

I’m sorry about always starting these the same way, but as usual, I have absolutely no idea what to write in an afterword.

However, lately, I’m told that the number of people who decide whether to buy the book by looking at the afterword is on the rise. I wonder… What if the author’s the sort of writer whose afterwords and main stories are completely different in everything from style to atmosphere? Are there people who, after they make their purchase, think, I was tricked by the afterword! and cry all over the book? I’m really concerned about that.

—But I digress.

All right: In this story, for almost all of it, I moved things along within the confines of a train.

The train gimmick has been depicted in media in all sorts of genres, and I think the really interesting part is the uniqueness of the train element itself. I’ve always been fascinated by how this set—which you could call a moving locked room—is used in a variety of stories in a variety of fields, and each time, it’s used in a different way. There really are an infinite number of ways to use it, mixing in similes and metaphors about the changing scenery and the travelers, the rails and roads. I think when railways are used as stage devices, it’s particularly easy for these things to show up clearly.

I’ve been thinking constantly about how someday I’d like to write a story that uses a train in a different way from the one I’ve used here.

In this story, I wrote about incidents that occurred during the same time frame as the previous book but focused on different characters and showed things from different perspectives.

This isn’t especially original: Changing the perspective is a technique that’s used in all sorts of genres. Lately, I get the impression that it’s used particularly often in games. As I wrote, I thought, I want to use this structure, which is one of a huge variety of techniques, to write a story that’s as dumb as possible. I can’t even begin to imagine how readers took it, though.

“It’s a pointless, dumb story… But it’s fun.” If they said that, I think it would be the best compliment ever. At least for books with the Baccano! title, I plan to focus on creating that sort of story.

Parenthetically, when I first showed my editor, Suzuki, the manuscripts for Local and Express, he said, briefly, “It’s loco.” …What does he want from me?

I’d like to write all sorts of other things in the future, from more long series to one-shot stories, and I want to get good enough to write dumb stories and stories that aren’t dumb, stories with absolutely no substance and stories with quite a lot of substance, and stories with all sorts of different orientations.

At the very least, as I work every day to make sure the good people of the sales department don’t threaten me with demon masks and the words Your books don’t sell, so quit writing, I want to keep writing stories that ultimately have some sort of influence, both on myself and on the people who are kind enough to read them. That’s my current goal.

Rrgh…… I’m pretty sure I remember writing something like this last time…

In any case, I’ll follow the example of the other Dengeki Bunko authors and experiment with different things in an attempt to establish my own unique afterword style, so please humor me.

* As usual, everything past this point is thank-yous.

Regarding this release: To Chief Editor Suzuki, for whom I’m constantly causing trouble, and to the good people of the sales, PR, and editing departments.

To the proofreaders, who always check for typos, dropped characters, and ungrammatical sentences.

To my family, friends, and acquaintances, particularly everyone in S City, who help me out in all sorts of ways.

To Okayu and Torishimo, who helped me at HP, and to “bludgeoning” supervising editor Unimaru.

To Katsumi Enami, who draws characters that seem to evolve every time I see new pictures, and whose fantastic illustrations took this book to the next level.

And to the people I mustn’t forget: the readers who picked up this book.

Thank you so much, this time and always!

From here on out, I think I’ll work on moving both my stories and my afterwords in all sorts of different directions. I hope you’ll stick with me on this leisurely journey as we travel from station to station…

June 2003, at my place

Playing the opening animation of PARTY 7 (directed by Katsuhito Ishii) on repeat.

Ryohgo Narita

* This is the second volume of a two-part story. For those of you who read it and thought, “I only read this one, and I didn’t really get it,” please take a look at Baccano!: 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local, released in August.