Sometimes it’s just too easy
From an article about The Pain of Modern Technology:
Whenever I see a handwritten manuscript of one of the great novels, Jane Austen’s for instance, or Ernest Hemingway’s manuscript rapped out on a manual typewriter, I imagine what a different world they inhabited.
Annnnnnnd….what handwritten manuscript of a Jane Austen novel would that be, now? Unless you count the canceled chapters of Persuasion, on display at the British Library, none exists.
September 14th, 2006 at 9:48 am
I have to believe it was a slip of the word processor. He probably hasn’t ever seen an Ernest Hemingway manuscript, either. He must have meant seeing them in his mind’s eye.
Frankly, I don’t understand how she or other authors of the time did it. On a second (or later) reading I find a detail close to the end that confirms or references a point in chapter 2 or 3, and I say, “Wow!” Everything ties together. All in longhand, with no search facilities to cross-reference passages. She probably edited and re-edited hundreds of pages of text, and then she must have re-wrote the entire text in its final version before submitting it for publication. To do that, I guess you really have to love what you’re doing.
September 14th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I agree. You have to love it. She did comment once about how much work she put into her writing. A comparison to painting I believe, can’t remember it exactly. I can’t imagine writing entire volumes in longhand.
September 14th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
He must have meant seeing them in his mind’s eye.
He could have said “think of/imagine” then.