(In the finished text, lines like "Well, let's shut up about it" are more in the spirit of their unconsummated affair).
Since the finished text was, in any case, only one facet of the fable, the model book gave evidence of other aspects of the story and its telling.
"If I'm going really, really fast, I can do a page of finished text a day, on average," he says.
It wonders why the government refuses to publish the exact wording of its proposals for public comment, so that lawyers can give useful opinions before the finished text is submitted to Hong Kong's Legislative Assembly.
And the finished text shows none of the PowerPoint insipidness we associate with committee-speak or with later group translations like the 1961 New English Bible, which T.S. Eliot said did not even rise to "dignified mediocrity".
Young went on to speak at length to McDonough during the early 1990s, as well as granting the writer access to individuals from his past whose own detailed recollections would be blended into the finished text.
In the finished text, he sardonically hints at the scope of the growing divide between both parties in a section where he briefly recalls a conversation between himself and Young's manager, Elliot Roberts.
In deciding on the finished text, publishers have the following options: the version that shows the final wishes of the author; an "ideal" version that shows all collaborations; the very first version without any intrusive tidying up; or a text with multiple versions showing everything, but with a "reading text" to guide the reader through the story.
The finished text expresses his vision of design, accompanied by a dazzling range of references including the writings of Hermann Hesse and Arthur Koestler, post-industrial housing at Drop City, a 1960s commune in Colorado and a Californian pig farm powered by the manure of its 1,000 pigs.
Ted Morgan, the fastest scribe since Sanche de Gramont, actually bats out finished text on a laptop right there in the archive.
