Clackity Clack

Cormac McCarthy is selling his typewriter.

I was given my first typewriter by Santa when I was seven. He had typed, 'From Santa Merry Christmas Aliya' on a clean sheet of paper. I typed my first play on it. It was about rats that sailed the custard seas and stole pies. Yes, it was called The Pierats.

I wrote my first novel by hand, but then typed it up using my second typewriter. An electric one. Boy, that took a long time. So when I got made redundant (throught absolutely no fault of my own) I used that pay-off to buy my first computer. That computer has long gone: outmoded, outperformed, thrown out.

But I still have my typewriters. In case of The Road-style world emergency, I'm grabbing a pen and paper (after Munchie and Hubby, of course). But after that, I might try to squeeze a typewriter into my shopping trolley. Us writerly types aren't very practical.

Books, free books and ebooks

Just a quick one - the nice people over at Editotum have launched their Scriptorium, a place to download ebooks (yes including The New Goodbye for free--actually, lucky me, it's the only book on the site at the moment). You can also buy real-life regular paper books from them too if you're so inclined.

A Selection of Books that I Love but am not Going to Read Again

...and therefore they have gone to a charity shop for rehoming. Sob.

- The Yiddish Policeman's Ball by Michael Chabon
- Lots of Charles Dickens
- The collected plays of Brecht
- A biography of Brecht
- Anything relating to Brecht. I love him, but life it too damned short.
- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
- Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks by Christopher Brookmyre
- The Victim by Saul Bellow
- The Mansion by William Faulkner
- Some Val McDermid books
- Some Ruth Rendell books
- Rites of Passage by William Golding
- All of my Amy Tan books because I've gone off her a bit
- The Golden Bowl by Henry James
- Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Black Boxes by Caroline Smailes
- an Orson Welles biography
- some David Niven autobiographies
- Money by Martin Amis
- Other People by Martin Amis

That's by no means exhaustive, but just typing out that many has exhausted me. Sob. I hope someone gives them a good home.

Little White Chap

My home town - summed up with a sperm logo.

Enough

I'm currently reading a collection of Patricia Highsmith's short stories, which is very entertaining. But part of me has begun to wonder what I'm getting out of it any more. Am I instructing my subconscious to pick up another writer's tricks? Is that what all we writers do when we read? Are we innovators or impersonators?

I'm reminded of an Orson Scott Card short story in which all the musicians on some undefined planet are kept absolutely separate from all previously produced music. They are encouraged from birth to create, and are given the instruments, but they are free from all structure and history - do they create something unique in this fashion? One of the musicians manages to get hold of some Bach, and then has to struggle so hard not to copy the wondrous thing he has heard. Of course, it's a giveaway to his listeners - all the Bach-like melodic counterpoints that occurred naturally in the musician's work are gone. He can't assimilate something so amazing - he either has to react against it, or copy it.

So maybe I should stop reading for a while, and try to write a novel with new solutions to old problems. Is that possible? It might be fun to try. Although, of course, it's too late for me - I've already read Shakespeare, and Eliot, and Frank Herbert, and Charlotte Bronte. And yes, listened to Bach too. Not that I'd have it any other way.

Dog Judo

This may warp your opinion of me, but I think this, Dog Judo, is brilliant.

New episode tomorrow, apparently.

More Moore

Am amusing story about the problems of being a library worker - it can lead to an Alan Moore obsession.