It seems that articles, essays, blog posts and other screeds are being written about the death of writing, publishing, literacy, and so on every day. I very rarely (read: never) like them. I'm too innately optimistic, I'm too tired to worry about the problems of The World At Large, and I don't like running around being scared of things except after dark on Halloween (and not very much even then).
Not surprisingly, however, Garrison Keillor's op-ed on this subject in last Wednesday's New York Times won me over. It's charming. It's rueful. It's clever. It reminded me of my days in Manhattan in its image of a roof party at which "...authors and agents and editors and elegant young women in little black dresses, standing, white wine in hand, looking out across the Hudson at the lights of Hoboken and Jersey City, eating shrimp and scallops and spanikopita on toothpicks, all talking at once the way New Yorkers do." Once upon a time I too was at such parties (I was the waitress in the corner sticking spanikopita in her pocket as a nice change from Ramen Noodles). I particularly love the ending of the piece--an ending that reminded me that Garrison Keillor doesn't much like running around being scared of things either:
Children, I am an author who used to type a book manuscript on a manual typewriter. Yes, I did. And mailed it to a New York publisher in a big manila envelope with actual postage stamps on it. And kept a carbon copy for myself. I waited for a month or so and then got an acceptance letter in the mail. It was typed on paper. They offered to pay me a large sum of money. I read it over and over and ran up and down the rows of corn whooping. It was beautiful, the Old Era. I’m sorry you missed it.
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