Unread novelists and long-lost typewriters

Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac says today, "It's the birthday of novelist Brian Moore, born was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland (1921). Not many people have read him, but he's considered by literary critics to be one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century. Three of his books have been short-listed for the Booker Prize, but none of them have won. When he died a decade ago in Malibu, his obituary in the LA Weekly began, "THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED AND LEAST fashionable writer in Los Angeles died last week.""

Not many people have read him.  That seems a curious statement, since he was a reasonably prolific writer, with some 27 novels listed on the Wikipedia entry.  Not winning the Booker Prize doesn't necessarily make you an unread author - in fact a lot of people don't read Booker Prize authors for the very reason that they've won the prize.   It usually indicates they're way out, or supra-literary, or so innovative that there's little story to read.   All of which is as much of a generalisation as the statement 'not many people have read him.'  

Talking of being prolific, I sometimes wonder if writers are now more prolific because they use PCs, or laptops, or netbooks or the like.  I know I am, but whether being more prolific necessarily means you're a better writer is another matter.   Blog posting doesn't necessarily bring out the best in you, for starters, and that's where a huge amount of my writing is done these days.   There was a time when I wrote by hand, though it's almost so long ago that I can't remember.   If my writing hasn't been done on a keyboard, it's been done on a typewriter - I taught myself to type almost as soon as I could earn enough money to buy a typewriter.   And a great thundering thing it was too.   Sometime later I bought a portable one, about half the size, and probably less than half the weight.  It was a great little job, but I have no idea what happened to it now - nor what happened to my first typewriter.   Perhaps I sold them....?   Who knows?

Going back to the draft

I began to reread the novel (My Twin is Dying is the working title) I've been working on for the last three or four years (very spasmodically) again today, just to see what I felt about it now. I'd revised quite a bit of the early stuff a few months ago, so the opening couple of chapters seemed pretty much okay. There are two possible criticisms my internal editor immediately pointed out:

1. the beginning of the novel might be a bit slow, maybe
2. there isn't enough 'texture': smells, sounds, touch sensations, those sort of things.

Well, there are certainly more than there were in previous drafts, but now they turn up in some sections and less so in others. This is certainly something that needs work. I'm off to read some more of it - and try and encourage myself that it's worth pursuing further.

(Before I did that, I checked out a shortish video on the Sony Vaio. It's worth watching, though there are so many choices amongst what seems to be a small group of laptops, that I quickly began to struggle to figure out which one would be of interest!)

Nothing's simple

I wonder who it was that decided the phrase notebook computer was more apt than laptop computer. Both of them are synonymous, as far as I can tell, so why have two names? The world is full of doublings-up. Here in Spain, where we’re sojourning, there seem to be two languages running along concurrently, as there are signs in both in most places. One of the languages is concise, the other uses more words to say the same thing. I don’t know which is ‘actual’ Spanish and which is something else (such as Catalan, which seems the most likely candidate, or Galician or Basque), but perhaps I’ll find out before we leave the country.
When you come to Europe you think everything is simple and that the people who live in Spain speak Spanish, the people who live in Switzerland speak Swiss (they don’t) and the people who live in Germany speak German (they mostly do). But nothing is simple, perhaps because human beings aren’t simple, and variety is the spice of life in every department.

Voicemail to Text

While reading the Vonage VoIP forum , I came across the following piece of news. Just when you thought you had everything on your mobile, along comes Vonage with their new voicemail transcription service, Vonage Text.

Vonage Text automatically transcribes voicemails to text and allows the mobile owner to read their voicemails anytime and anywhere. Subscribers can read, store, search, and respond to their voicemail messages not just on their mobiles, but on their laptops as well: anywhere, anytime and in any form. (I’m not quite sure what ‘in any form’ means in this instance, but that’s what they say on the forum.) They can check out new messages to sift through and find the urgent ones. No longer will someone have to strain to hear a voice message in a crowded place; it will be readable, just as texts are.

I guess this is the sort of thing businessmen and women on the move will appreciate. For me, at this point, it would avoid the sluggish process I have to go through on my mobile to get at a voice message, but it isn’t of great benefit to someone like me who’s really only a moderate mobile user.
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Coupon Chief strikes again!

I spent a bit more time looking at coupon codes today. (I mentioned them a while ago in one of my posts.) While doing so I found a link to Dell Computer’s ‘Dell Outlet’ where you can find refurbished Dell products and get discounts. This is interesting, because the ads for Dell give you the impression that every single Dell computer is built to specific requirements for a specific customer. So obviously this isn’t entirely the case, or else these items have been leased out and Dell has cleaned them up in some way.

I had a recent experience with Dell with didn’t quite endear me to them, although the laptop we bought from them is fine. My son and I worked through the Dell website at great length, picking and choosing what I wanted for the machine, and eventually finished up at NZ$1677. The first email confirmation from Dell confirmed this price. The next email said the charge was $2047!
Now Dell is not the easiest company in the world to get customer service from. The first person said the difference in price had to do with GST, which was piffle. The second person, whose first name was Annie, was more helpful, but didn’t really get hold of the problem for a while. The difficulty might have been that I was speaking New Zealand English and she was speaking Malaysian English, and only occasionally did we meet on common ground.
However, Annie stuck to her guns, and over two or three weeks we did manage to communicate a bit more effectively, mostly by email, but also, to my surprise, by cellphone. Presumably I put my cellphone number on the Dell site, but I don’t particularly remember doing so. Anyway, out of the blue, she rang me on it.
They’d charged me for two extra years warranty. In the end I think it was easier for me just to let them charge me and be done with it. At least I’m supposedly getting something for the price.
To go back to the Dell special prices site. I don’t find it easy to see what the special prices actually are, but then I find the layout on some sites isn’t as obvious to me as I’d expect it to be. Dell talk about free shipping and such, but that’s no big deal. We get that with a lot of their specials here, so I’d be interested to see what their real deals are!
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