More exhibits from the realm of superceded technology. My husband told me that, in the village where he grew up. he used to go and watch the blacksmith shoe horses. He remembers the intense fire and the fascination of watching the work. I never had the chance to see a blacksmith at work.
But I did have the chance to follow Gay Talese in A Writer's LIfe as he follows his curiosity wherever his fancy leads. It teminded me of nothing so much as of Winnie-the-Pooh ambling through the Hundred Acre Wood in search of honey. And since Talese is almost the same age as I am, we ambled through the American zeitgeist together, except I had a less high-profile amble and much less dining in restaurants.
Here's his take on it.
"I think most journalists are pretty lazy, number one. A little lazy and also they're spoon-fed information, such as the weapons of mass destruction back in 2003....you have these people who create a package of news, develop it as a story line, a scenario, and they find, as Mailer once said about the press, that they're like a donkey. You have to feed the donkey. The donkey every day has to eat. So [special interests] throw information at this damn animal that eats everything. Tin cans, garbage." —Gay Talese (as quoted in Wikipedia)
More to come (although I have found it is folly to promise to finish something on a blog) on some of my recent biographical and autobiographical reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment