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proceeded to defend her editorial recommenda- tions, and as she lectured
me I thought: What a solid, rosy- face Dutch girl she isl Flaxen braids
that would be at home in the Palatinate. And a sharp mind. Dresden does
produce good citizens and that's what this novel is about. If she and
Zollicoffer like it, for their different reasons, it can't be as bad as
New York says. When I left, my mind was made up. I would call New
1 York to inform them that I would not do
the rewriting they had suggested. I was not unhappy with that decision,
bu the call was delayed, because when I reached home at eleven-thirty
Emma told me: 'Herman was so helpful the other day, and has been through
the years, that I invited and the Cut Off, and as we came down the
slope leading t the intersection where the Fenstermacher farm lay, we sa
to our)disgust that a big bulldozer was at work knockin down the very bam
from which I had rescued my three he signs only a few days ago. None
of us in the car was particularly distressed to see th wooden sections of
the old barn go, because generations ( improvident Fenstermachers had
allowed that part to fa into sad disrepair, but when the bulldozer started
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to atta that handsome stonework from which the wooden section arose,
Frieda cried: 'Nol Nol Save that one yet,' for with he stolid appreciation
of nice, she could visualize the variou uses to which the lovely wall with
its engaging shadows an rugged protuberances could be put. When the
massiv machine plowed ahead, crushing the wall, she almost wep 'They
could have let it stand already.' , My attention was focused on quite
another matter, fo from the hidden side of the bam there now emerged
second red bulldozer, smaller than the first but easier t operate. On its
seat perched the Fenstermacher boy, Apple butter, using his machine to
knock down the remainin wooden portions, crunching them beneath the treads
of hi dozer. As I watched him I thought he represented much o what I
had written about in Stone Walls: 'An oaf like hin wouldn't attack stone.
Too difficult. He'd always go for th easier wood.' Then suddenly I
shouted: 'Nol Stopl' an leaped from the car because Applebutter's machine
wa heading directly toward a fallen section of the wall tha contained
a splendid red-and-green hex sign of the size be suited to form the
central section of one of my paintings. 65
want thatl Applebutter, save that sign!' He must have hearl
my cry, for I was close to him when I shouted, and surel he saw me waving
my arms, but he headed his dozer ri at the fallen hex and pulverized it with
his massive treads. At lunch I said little, for ideas and images were
coursin,, through my mind, and it seemed to me that this lates
example of the humiliation of the land and its buildings wa exactly the
focus of concern in my manuscript, so I excuse myself to telephone Ms
Marmelle in New York: 'I staye awake last night, pondering our meeting
the other day. think I understand the points you and Mr MacBain wer
making, and I assure you I've reviewed them painfully. agree with what
you told MacBain: "The story line could b modified with a minimum of
trouble. Mr Yoder and I knov exactly what could be done." You were right.
It could b done, but it would very very wrong to try. Insofar as the bi
ideas are concerned, we'll let the novel stand as, it is,' an after a
few courtesy exchanges I hung up. The discussions I'd had in New
York, my moody reflections on the trip home, and my decision regarding the
sanctity of my manuscript propelled me into an evaluation of my life
as a writer, and that evening as I sat in my study facing my tvpewriter
but not using it, I started thinking: 'How strangel My life is kept in a
cocoon guarded by three women: Emma, Ms Marmelle, Miss Crane. I remain
here in my study with a typewriter and allow them to make the decisions.
So far they've protected me admirably, and I have no regrets, but I doubt
that a macho man would be content with the arrangement. I am. 'I live
in a world that changes so rapidly I can't keep up. I'd not like to guess
how books will be printed or distributed twenty years from now. That was
pretty scary, my article for the nature magazine in California. Candace
put it on a oppy disk here in Dresden, delivered it by phone to a
mpatible word processor in Los Angeles, where they made some editorial
changes and sent it on, again by phone to a printing firm in Palo Alto,
and they set it automatically into type and printed it in the magazine.
Amazing. 'On my typewriter I print the symbol m to represent a
significant part of the idea I'm playing with. Then my secretary reads my
symbol and uses her word processor to implant on her floppy disk not my
symbol m but the electrical representation of the concept m-ness. By
tele- phone that electrical representation is lifted across the
continent to a compatible processor in Southern California, where it is
massaged editorially, as they say, and sent by another telephone call to
the printer in Northern California. 'Now, what the printer receives is
still merely an electrical impulse that says: "At this point in the
finished product we want some visual representation of m-ness, but we
don't know in what typeface, what size, or what leading between the
lines, nor do we know how long the lines will be nor how many to a page.
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All we know is that it's a lower-case m, not a capital M, because if we
wanted that, the electrical reminder would be entirely different. 'So
the Palo Alto printer puts the California version of my floppy disk in his
printing machine and cranks in a handful of instructions: what typeface,
whether normal, boldface or italic, what size, what leading between lines,
etc., and when all the instructions have been entered and acknowledged,
the machine does the rest. Wherever my original concept of m-ness appears,
that miraculous machine translates it into a car mark on the printed
page. I communicate with my readers by electrical impulses. '~ 'If
the essence of my manuscript resides in the electrical impulses on that
floppy disk, the narrative could be lifted off and distributed in almost
any form that has been devised. Indeed, the time may come, and very soon,
when
67
there will be no necessity to bother with the intermediate
form of a book; the material on the original floppy disi might leapfrog in
some mysterious way right into the horne of the intended reader. No writer
in 1990 can visualize what form his or her book might take by the end of
this century., As I leaned back from my silent typewriter I f-"~ as if I
knew more about the mystery of writing than ever before., 11 may not
understand technical miracles but of one tbing I'm sure. Regardless of how
the industry handles the symbols of the writer when he gets through
assembling them, no matter how the book of the future is going to
look, it'll still need women and men who know how to move words about, how [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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