A Writer's Calendar

A WRITER’S CALENDAR Compiled by J. L. Herrera for my mother and with special thanks to Rose Brown, Peter Jones, Eve Masterman, Yvonne Stadler, Marie-France Sagot, Jo Cauffman, Tom Errey and Gianni Ferrara INTRODUCTION I began the original calendar simply as a present for my mother, thinking it would be an easy matter to fill up 365 spaces. Instead it turned into an ongoing habit. Every time I did some tidying up out would flutter more grubby little notes to myself, written on the backs of envelopes, bank withdrawal forms, anything, and containing yet more names and dates. It seemed, then, a small step from filling in blank squares to letting myself run wild with the myriad little interesting snippets picked up in my hunting and adding the occasional opinion or memory. The beginning and the end were obvious enough. The trouble was the middle; the book was like a concertina — infinitely expandable. And I found, so much fun had the exercise become, that I was reluctant to say to myself, no more. Understandably, I’ve been dependent on other people’s memories and record- keeping and have learnt that even the weightiest of tomes do not always agree on such basic ‘facts’ as people’s birthdays. So my apologies for the discrepancies which may have crept in. In the meantime — Many Happy Returns! Jennie Herrera 1995 2 A Writer’s Calendar January 1st: Ouida J. D. Salinger Maria Edgeworth E. M. Forster Camara Laye Iain Crichton Smith Larry King Sembene Ousmane Jean Ure John Fuller January 2nd: Isaac Asimov Henry Kingsley Jean Little Peter Redgrove Gerhard Amanshauser * * * * * Is prolific writing good writing? Carter Brown? Barbara Cartland? Ursula Bloom? Enid Blyton? Not necessarily, but it does tend to be clear, simple, lucid, overlapping, and sometimes repetitive. All this could be said of Asimov’s books but he is also a happy reminder that the well of invention far from running dry has a Malthusian element to it: the more you create the more creative you become. Asimov came to the United States as a boy with his Russian parents and he says of himself: “I had planned to make my living as a teacher and scientist. I wrote for pleasure and didn’t care whether I published or not; or, if published, whether I sold or not. When I received a check for a royalty from a single book that was equal to 3½ times my annual teaching salary, I rather got the idea that I had made it as a writer. If you don’t enjoy writing, there are other ways of making a living. If you are easily discouraged, there are other ways of making a living. If you don’t want to spend your life working in more or less isolation, there are other ways of making a living.” When he died he had written nearly five hundred books which ranged from humour to science fiction, from natural science to whodunnits, from short stories to limericks— yes, limericks. I was astonished to discover that Asimov had written seven books of limericks, starting with Lecherous Limericks in 1975. * * * * * Sir Edward Appleton, discoverer of the atmospheric layer named after him, expressed what could be taken as the underlying principle in Asimov’s work: “If you cannot put it down in simple language you have not got to the bottom of the subject yourself.” * * * * * Asimov, on his card, had nothing but— ISAAC ASIMOV NATURAL RESOURCE It reminds me of a committee meeting where someone suggested inviting Gwen Harwood to speak, saying, “Now that she’s a National Treasure”. Someone else, a popular politician with several books to his credit, said, “Excuse me—but who is Gwen Harwood?” Is there such a thing as a nationally-known writer, let alone one whose name sparks recognition anywhere? I doubt it. 3 James Herriot in The Lord God Made Them All writes: The wind whistled and once I heard the plaintive cry of a curlew, but the group around that prostrate animal might have been Trappist monks. I began to feel embarrassed. It wasn’t a difficult job, I didn’t need a hundred per cent concentration. With all my heart I wished somebody would say something. Then, like a glorious flash of inspiration I remembered the recent clamour in the newspapers. I could start things off, at least. ‘Just like Bernard Shaw, eh?’ I said with a light laugh. The silence remained impenetrable and for about half a minute it seemed that I was going to receive no reply. Then Mr Casling cleared his throat. ‘’oo?’ he enquired. ‘Bernard Shaw, George Bernard Shaw, you know. He’s broken his leg, too.’ I was trying not to gabble. The silence descended again and I had a strong feeling that I had better leave it that way. I got on with my job, dousing the white cast with water and smoothing it over while the plaster worked its way under my fingernails. It was Harold who came in next. ‘Does ’e live about ’ere?’ ‘No ... no ... not really.’ I decided to put on one more layer of bandage, wishing fervently that I had never started this topic. I was tipping the bandage from the tin when Alan chipped in. ‘Darrowby feller is ’e?’ Things were becoming more difficult. ‘No,’ I replied airily ‘I believe he spends most of his time in London.’ ‘London!’ The conversation, such as it was, had been carried on without any movement of the heads but now the three faces jerked up towards me with undisguised astonishment and the three voices spoke as one. After the initial shock had worn off the men looked down at the calf again and I was hoping that the subject was dead when Mr Casling muttered from the corner of his mouth. ‘He won’t be in t’farmin’ line, then?’ ‘Well, no ... he writes plays.’ * * * * * But surely a prize for being one of the most prolific authors in history should go to Martin Luther. H. G. Haile, in his biography of Luther, writes: “The sixteenth century had witnessed the concentration of enormous wealth. In this sense, the most influential European was certainly Jacob Fugger, by whose immense capital Charles V had attained to his outward show of authority. But to these sources of power, economic and political, a third was added around 1520, which no one yet fully appreciated: the power lent by technology. The printing press, in use for about three generations, quite suddenly became one of the major forces to be reckoned with in Europe. Historians often say it made the Protestant Reformation possible. They like to quote Francis Bacon’s remark that the printing press (together with the compass and gunpowder) transformed the whole face of the world. Such statements, though true, are misleading. By attributing everything to mere physical tools, they distract us from the forces which inspired their design, use, and change. Printing is history’s best example of a tool which was transformed by its employment. In the first heat of religious pluralism in Germany (1517-23) something entirely new in human affairs sprang into existence: general literacy. Print was used to bring it about, and the printing establishment was itself transformed in the process. Reading had been spreading among Europeans for some centuries, though only an infinitesimal fraction of the populace was involved. Growth had been gradual, 4 accelerated little by technological advances, such as printing from wooden blocks. The really decisive limit on book production in the early Middle Ages was the high cost of the page. A hundred head of sheep went to produce a vellum book. The success of paper mills in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries permitted a rapid and steady decline in cost of materials for about the next three hundred years (until the runaway inflation of the Thirty Years’ War). Still, the cost of paper remained larger than all the other factors in the price of a book. As people became more well-to-do, the expansion of trade and commerce quickened the spread of reading, but the most effective limit to book production was the relatively small readership ... The question posed by many authors is: what can have so long delayed the use of print for books? A “Moslem barrier” is sometimes cited, the Islamic objection to printing holy writings. A better explanation may be that the printing of books was simply not perceived as economical. The massive effort required to produce movable type wanted a mass readership. The “invention” attributed to Guttenberg was a marvel of synthesizing genius. Many technical problems had to be solved in such disparate fields as metallurgy, paper manufacture, and ink preparation (old scribal materials were not suited to the new process). An entirely new theory of mass production and the idea of interchangeability of parts had to be adapted, like the screw press from its use in laundry and vineyard. What can have motivated such an energetic breakthrough, probably by several collaborators? It is not at all to detract from the nobility of Guttenberg’s vision to observe that the use of movable type to produce books could not itself create a mass audience, but was rather predicated on one. Reciprocal interaction between available technology and social forces characterizes the history of the book. Literacy rates of the Middle Ages are anybody’s guess, but by the year 1500 they had grown to perhaps 3 to 4 per cent in Germany. The printing press had brought no explosion in literacy during its first half century ... The explosion in German book production was simultaneous with Luther’s sensational rejection of papal authority.

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