(Howell Creek Radio address for February 17, 2010 -- ) Thinking In Ribbons and Smudges ================================== I'm having a bit of trouble getting my thoughts onto paper tonight, so I am going to break out the typewriter. Charles Dickens is enjoying something of a rennaissance at Howell Creek. Trixie and I, having just got through the complete audiobook of _Nicholas Nickleby_ on our iPods, and after only a short break from old Charles D. by way of _The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler_, have plunged ahead into _Our Mutual Friend_ -- unabridged -- all thirty-six hours strong. (This heavy dosage may find its way into my writing in some form or other, I must warn you.) So on my weekly or semi-weekly visits to Half Price Books, where once my undiscerning eyes would have glossed over volumes bearing the old master's name, I find now that it stops and stays a moment, rather like Poe's raven _didn't_. One particular book caught my eye: a photocopy of Dickens' complete autograph of _A Christmas Carol_, the original handwritten manuscript. He wrote all of his books that way, you know. I leafed through it -- it was almost like finding a clue to something. There was Jacob Marley, wondering in his wretched way why he had never raised his eyes to that blessed star -- in the original handwriting of the man that had first seen him doing it! I found myself wondering how much of Dickens' style, his famous phraseology, was simply a result of the physical limitations of this mode of composition. Often when writing in my own journal or notebooks, I have hit on a phrase that served me infinitely more better than the one that had at first suggested itself to me, simply because I was running out of room on the page and didn't want to start another, fearing lest my invention should not be equal to a fair use of the page following (there you see, I'm doing it again). I wonder if Dickens ever found the same thing to be true -- not to compare _myself_ to that worthy, but you know...just the idea of the thing suggests itself to one. Of course together, Nature and Nurture must account for the lion's share of his output, and his way of holding it forth, but mightn't a sliver of credit go to these mundane and homely features that attend anything written by hand? Mightn't Olver Twist's having famouly asked for more, for example, been even in part unconsciously suggested by Chaz Dickens' pen running out of ink? How many of the surprising and well- played turns of phrase, that, taken together, add up to a voice in English literature beloved across generations, fell out the way they did because in the course of penning his lines the author cut and dealt his deck so as to avoid an impending page break? It is a well-known fact that even tasks seemingly unrelated to writing or creativity, such as shaving or mowing the lawn -- mundane tasks which put the mind into a low-focus, meditative state while the motor skills are otherwise occupied -- are especially fertile grounds for good ideas and creative breakthroughs; why not, then, the act of writing _itself_, of putting pen to paper? The linguists have agreed that we can only think in no more exalted terms than our particular language has _words_ to express. The same principle must somehow be in effect when I find that, sitting here behind this typewriter, I think differently than I do when I am holding only my pen. And someday, when the last typewriter has failed to sell at the last-ever garage sale, and there are no more parts or ribbons left to supply it with, I will never be able to think that way again! * * * * Synopsis: ----------- Radio address for February 17, 2010, guest-starring my Smith-Corona Super Sterling (not, as it might sound, a gun, but a typewriter). The excerpt at the end is from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, Book I, ch. XV. A [smudgy PDF transcript][1] of today’s address is available. The music cue is _Sir Roger De Coverly_ from _A Charles Dickens Christmas_. [1]: http://jdueck.net/files/hcr-2010/hcr-2010-02-17-Transcript.pdf "Original typewritten draft of this podcast"