page_0: "--ON THE PROVENANCE AND GENUS OF THE PURPLE EDIBLE; AN OLERICULTURAL OR POMOLOGICAL INQUIRY--(review copy)

In all the annals of horticultural study, there is no debate so contentious or unusual as that of the taxonomic category to which the consumable violet spheroid belongs. It is a wonder this debate has raged so long, given that there are at least three canonical labels for this object, namely the official 'HealingFruit', the colloquial 'Fruit' and the idiomatic 'purpturd'. Despite this clear assignment to the field of pomology, the question remains as to what sort of fruit it truly is. A popular school of thought contends that it is an eggplant (technically a fruit), whereas the passionate opposition"
page_1: "maintains that the item is in fact a plum. One particularly outspoken and tireless intellectual has confabulated an entire mythology for the foodstuff with an undying fervour: he purports, on the basis of tenuous and anecdotal evidence at best, that the fruit is actually an overlarge grape or a bulbous grapevine. His arguments range from 'wine exists' (without proof that said beverage had been produced from said fruit) to 'they are too large to be eggplants or plums' (ignoring that all other known grapes are smaller still). One anecdote about this idiosyncratic theory is worth repeating here: at one point, his reasoning contra the plum camp was predicated on an alleged non-existence of fruit bearing trees in The City, provoking the obvious rebuttal that apples were commonplace."
page_2: "At one point this thinker claimed that, since he had never seen any fruit trees, ex hypothesi all fruit must be 'imported from elsewhere'; to this, one wry critic noted that, since he had likely never observed a moment of human copulation either, all people must also be 'imported from elsewhere'.

While the endless tirade of scholarly opinion is likely to persist seculo seculorum, one wonders why these bickering academics do not simply taste the damn thing. Nevertheless, the author anticipates that his thesis will be compelling, should it be followed the whole way through; or, if you like, 'ab ovo usque ad mala'

END INTRODUCTION"