09
If there's one thing a laptop keyboard is bound
to do … it is to undermine if not completely destroy one's ability to type. A
laptop is not a typewriter but, like computers in general, a device whose keys
tend to be insufficiently responsive and too flat to permit of anything beyond
'keying-in', in somewhat laborious fashion, whatever it is that one is trying
to convey to screen. For, as you soon learn, keying-in and typing are two
entirely different things! Especially when you can type properly, not merely
use two fingers in typically untutored or indifferent vein.
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Have been reading, or trying to read,
Christopher Ailsby's 2005 edition of The
Third Reich Day by Day, which is evidently series 4 in Spellmount Military Handbooks. I say 'try to read' because
it is so riddled with typographic and other technical blunders that it seems to
be at war with itself, in spite of the immense efforts the author has obviously
made to gather together so many historical facts or details which have been
supplemented by an astonishing number of quality monochrome photos. One doesn't
wish to underestimate the historical significance of this project, but
unfortunately it has shot itself in the foot so many times – not least on page
187 where, under a photo clearly showing the Japanese ambassador's car flanked
by motorcycle police heading along a crowded German street lined by soldiers in
what I assume to be Berlin, the caption has words to the effect that the
Japanese ambassador is welcomed to Japan!!! (my
exclamation marks) – that I have even less respect for it than for the
biography of William Joyce alluded to above – less literary respect, that is,
and an overwhelming sense that such books cannot be evaluated by standards
proper to literature, not even to a minor branch of literature like biography,
but have to be indulged in terms of mentalities falling well short of – if not
being actually at variance with – literature in the technical sloppiness and
incompetence of the printed word, a factor which may be less attributable to
the author than to editors and printers and whoever it is that, as with so many
print books, signally lacks a capacity to excise typographical blunders in the
first place!
Frankly, I could well do without such books,
even from the local library, since they do nothing to allay my poor opinion of
modern book publishing in general, not least when the printing has been farmed
out, as in the case of this one, to a China-based printer presumably in the
interests of cost-cutting. Rather does it seem to be a case of the 'dead
burying the dead', with those of us who have any literary self-respect fending
for ourselves on an independent basis – independent of editors and printers and
others who would undermine it and cause us to regret that we had ever been
foolish or desperate enough to hand our work over to the likes of them in the
first place. For just imagine how the author feels when confronted by evidence
of such typographical incompetence!
It is surely no mere coincidence that the general
quality of book production has declined in proportion not simply in relation to
the extent printing has been farmed out to foreign printers, but also in
proportion to the general emergence of high-quality film production in the
late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, film being more representative
of the modern age than ever books are. Though even film is under threat, these
days, from other media, including, to a limited extent as yet, eBooks, much as
they may have some way to go to come properly into their own as a viable
alternative not just to books but also to films.
As for my
eBooks, all I can say is that I have never doubted the excellence of their
production, bearing in mind that, together with my eScrolls
(as I call those free-to-read texts presented on an italic writerly
white-on-black basis commensurate with a kind of Nietzschean
'transvaluation'), they are the means by which I make
my philosophy available for study. And my philosophy is, as far as I am
concerned, second to none in its metaphysical scope and depth. But, then again,
such a philosophy is not going to be read, much less studied, by the millions,
the masses, the newspaper readers and buyers of cheap paperbacks. On the
contrary, even if it were more accessible, it would not have popular appeal,
being somehow too ideologically and technically advanced, not to mention the
product of a certain ethnic bias which, although overhauled, can only further
limit its appeal to those of a like radical persuasion.
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When they say you've got to find it within
yourself, these gurus and so-called spiritual leaders, what they are implying
is that one shouldn't expect them to act like sunflowers or even roses, but
should be prepared to become more like a tulip or other inward-looking flower
or plant oneself. At any rate, that is part of the story. The other part is
that, as recognized gurus or 'spiritual leaders', they do have a reputation for imposing their teachings upon others,
else how would they have become recognized as such in the first place? All
authoritative figures impose their doctrines upon others, whether indirectly
(through books, pamphlets, and the like) or directly (through lectures,
meetings, and cult indoctrination). These days, however, any Westerner overly
into yoga or transcendental meditation could only be described as radically
petty-bourgeois, since the adoption of Eastern mysticism or spiritual devotions
is not germane to global civilization as a largely proletarian phenomenon
having intimate associations with electronic media, including film and
television.
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It was 'raining cats and dogs' outside but,
having just had a bath, I was 'sweating like a pig' inside. What could be more
ironic?
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Computer-related stress is surely one of the
most prevalent afflictions of modern life.
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Few if any of my thoughts come without a
struggle, though the main struggle is against neighbour and worker reaction and
opposition to the whole process of thinking and recording one's thoughts.
If there's one thing more important than
physical privacy, it can only be mental privacy, the privacy to think one's
thoughts and write them down without fear of neighbour reaction or premeditated
physical subversion, whether from kids, youths, women, or whatever.
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