Literary Man goes 'bally up' about MIT

I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.
P. G. Wodehouse

So does Wodehouse's biographer, it seems.

Wake up, folks, storytelling is in peril! To the ramparts of fiction, tale tellers! Seriously, there can be no argument with Kirkpatrick's premise that 'civilisation needs stories as much as it needs wheels, fire and fibre optics'. Where sensible people will part company with him is in his conclusion. At the Centre for Future Storytelling, he says: 'We want to use technology to keep storytelling alive.'

Robert McCrum has a new column to fill.


Perhaps he hasn't heard about e-books, or multiple player online gaming, the slight problems that newspapers are having in print...tipping points even or YouTube? The key word in David Kirkpatrick's quote from MIT is not "storytelling", but "alive". Keeping stories alive will involve some innovations that result directly from technological advances. So why can't MIT investigate? Can't we give the new story a try?


I think we should return to this sentence of McCrum's soon, as well.

Now, if there is one thing about 21st-century culture that has never needed life support, it is our imagination and the means through which we enjoy it - books, cinema and the mass media in all their manifestations.

Robert McCrum wrote last year of blogging that:

...the democracy of the web is in danger of becoming a cacophonous nightmare. For every carefully crafted, thoughtful expression of opinion, there are a score of half-baked rants: ignorant, bilious, semi-literate and depressing.

I wonder if he has read Simon Cowell's autobiography?
Or, for something really hopeful and interesting about the consumption of storytelling, checked out the collective reading of The Golden Notebook online?


We need our literary folk to get it, just a bit - please?

The Golden Notebook project, leader already at page 201

"To show a woman loving a man one should show her cooking a meal for him or opening a bottle of wine for the meal, while she waits for his ring at the door." This paragraph has been on my mind for the days since I first read it; it is a moment again where Lessing reaches to film for a way to apply layers of complexity to a single image (in this case, orange slices). Anna makes this sound melodramatic (he looks the other direction, thinking of something else) but the idea that affection is expressed through everyday chores seems both sad and lovely. It strikes me that the examples Anna gives are all practiced in isolation - the women are alone doting on the men, waiting for doorbells to ring or peeling oranges (while men ignore them). These are very concrete expressions of an abstract capital-L Love.

A sample from the Golden Notebook reading project. Catch up with the live read here.


I'll shortly post a piece about some of the ideas behind this site, and my chats with Bob Stein and Chris Meade about the Future of the Book.

The Golden Notebook Experiment: Starts Officially Tomorrow

This is a really interesting experiment in collective reading and annotated texts online. In fact I am now reading offline in a rather nice Harper Perennial version. First time with Lessing - thanks to this project. Tomorrow I'm interviewing one of the creators, Bob Stein, of the Institute for the Future of the Book. First impressions? I cannot believe this book is 46 years old.


Check out page 44 of the English version:

‘What would they do, these men, without their stupid wives?’ sighed out Anna.

And the people that built the site.