"Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin chose to express their vigorous and abundant thoughts by writing at stand-up desks, and that's how Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1885) and Through the Looking Glass (1872). 'Standing at the upright desk he always used while writing,' his biographer Morton N. Cohen said, 'he managed to breathe life and laughter onto the dry leaves of paper that lay before him."


"Playwright August Wilson 'wrote standing up, at a high, cluttered accounting desk,' said John Lahr, drama critic of The New Yorker. For years, an Everlast punching bag was suspended from the ceiling about two steps behind.  When Wilson was in full flow and the dialogue 'was popping, he'd stop, pivot, throw a barrage of punches, then turn back to work."

~ Harry Bruce, Page Fright, McClelland & Steward Ltd., 2009.

View from my window ~

Three authors who wrote standing ~

"If I sit down, I write a long opinion and don't come to the point as quickly as I could.  If I stand up I write as long as my knees hold out.  When they don't, I know it's time to stop." ~ Oliver Wendell Homes, "the Great Dissenter," while serving on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Virginia Woolf had "a desk standing about three feet six inches high with a sloping top; it was so high that she had to stand to do her work.  Her 'principal motive' was that her older sister Vanessa, a professional painter whom she both adored and saw as a rival, stood before an easel as she worked.  Virginia feared her writing would appear less worthy than Vanessa's painting 'unless she set matters on a footing of equality,' and that was why 'for many years she stood at this strange desk, and, in a quite unnecessary way, tired herself."  ~ Quentin Bell, a nephew of VW.

"Winston Churchill composed his prose while standing and walking.  'He wrote forty-two books, five thousand speeches and articles -- in all roughly thirty-million words,' said Richard M. Langworth, founder of the Churchill Centre in Washington, DC.  'When he went to work, usually late at night, he shut himself up and arranged his papers at a stand-up desk.  And there, padding up and down in his slippers, he reeled off prose in the small hours.... 'Nearly 3,000 words in the last two days!'  he told his wife in 1928. 'I do not conceal from you that it is a task.  But it is not more than I can do."

Harry Bruce, FOIBLES and FETISHES of FAMOUS WRITERS / Page Fright.  McClelland & Stewart Ltd. 2009.

They Wrote Standing Up ~

"A website that advertises the J. Peterman Stand-Up Desk asks, 'Notice how you get some of your best ideas when you're standing there shaving or taking a shower?  How your thighs and toes squirm when you sit at a desk, then 'it comes to you' when you stand up and walk around?  The fact is, you think with your legs. . . .If you want to increase the vigour and abundance of your thought, I recommend this time-tested Stand-Up Desk.'  Sitting at a desk put heavy pressure on 'those shock absorbing discs between your vertebrae,' but standing instantly relieved it and thus eliminated the risk of back pain."

~ Harry Bruce, Page Fright, McClelland & Steward Ltd. 2009.

[Tomorrow:  Authors who wrote standing up.]

Thought for Today ~


"Nothing is more essential to our lives than stories ~ the only things of equal importance are food, shelter, human love and some kind of religious activity."
~ Hugh Hood (1920 - 2000) Canadian novelist, university professor, quoted by John Metcalf in sixteen by Twelve.  Made Officer of The Order of Canada.


"I don't believe that those stories should be recorded by anybody except us.  I don't think that you have any right to come into my community and tell my stories for me.  I can speak for myself.  I share them with you, and you can read them.  And if you come into my circle, and I tell you the stories, then you should respect that you're invited into the circle."~ Maria Campbell.  Metis storyteller and writer, interviewed by Hartmut Lutz in Contemporary Challenges:  Conversations with Canadian Native Authors (1991). Author of seven books, award-winning playwright.


Source: FAMOUS LASTING WORDS Great Canadian Quotations,  John Robert Colombo, Douglas & McIntyre.

White Horse Tavern ~ Greenwich Village / Where Thomas Drank Heavily Dying a Few Days Later 

Reading Dylan Thomas ~

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20 at 1:00 p.m. ~ "Third Thursday" in The Neat Little Bookshop

Laurie Miller will be reading and discussing the Welsh poet and writer, Dylan Thomas.  Everyone welcome. "Coffee Pot's Always On..."

Personally, we cannot think of a better introduction to Dylan Thomas than the brutally honest interview with Caitlin Thomas, widow of Dylan.  Find on YouTube: Dylan Thomas

"Kane on Friday ~ Leftover Wife"

The interview by Vincent Kane was originally broadcast in 1977 on BBC.

"Writing is an escape from a world that crowds me.  I like being alone in a room.  It's almost always a form of meditation ~ an investigation of my own life."
~ Neil Simon (b. 1927)  American dramatist

"The chief utility of the journal intime is to restore the integrity of the mind and the equilibrium of the conscience, that is, inner health."
~ H. F. Amiel (1821 - 1881) Swiss writer, philosopher, poet

"I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart."
~ Anne Frank (1929-1945) Dutch diarist

Third Thursday of every month in the bookshop we are entertained by a lively literary group.  The month of August is when we bring something of our own that would be of interest to the group.  It might be that family heirloom.  It might be that signed first edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez ~

Whatever the topic or item, we guarantee a round-table discussion!

See you on Thursday. August 21, 1:00 p.m.

"Everyone welcome ~ coffee pot's always on..."

[If you are publishing a book ~ great time to put it on display.  We will designate a table for local authors.]

Day of 1000 Canoes 2013 ~ York

"A Canadian is somebody who knows how to make love in a canoe."

~ Pierre Berton, author and television personality, quoted by Dick Brown in The Canadian, Dec. 22, 1973. [John Robert Colombo's FAMOUS LASTING WORDS, 2000]

"In John Robert Colombo's Canadian Quotations, Pierre Berton is quoted saying "a Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe."  Pierre says he didn't say it, or if he did he took it from someone else, but whoever the authority is, if that's the test, I fail.  I do know how to gunwale a canoe...portage it, right it without getting out of the water, and sail it home with my hockey sweater tied to a paddle.  But make love?  You got me."

~ Peter Gzowski, journalist.  The Private Voice:  A Journal of Reflections (1988). [John Robert Colombo's FAMOUS LASTING WORDS, 2000]

On Writing ~

"I usually feel happier either writing things in longhand or typing them.  It is odd how hearing your own voice makes you self-conscious and unable to express yourself.  It was only about five or six years ago, after I had broken a wrist and was unable to use my right hand, that I started using a dictaphone, and gradually became used to the sound of my own voice.  The disadvantage of a dictaphone or tape recorder, however, is that it encourages you to be much too verbose.
"There is no doubt that the effort involved in typing or writing does help me in keeping to the point.  Economy of wording, I think, is particularly necessary in detective stories.  You don't want to hear the same thing rehashed three or four times over."

~ Agatha Christie (Sept. 15, 1890 - Jan. 12, 1976) Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, Collins, 1977.



The Neat Little Bookshop

Smile for Today ~ On the subject of small talk

"Franklin Roosevelt found the polite small talk of social functions at the White House somewhat tedious.  He maintained that those present on such occasions rarely paid much attention to what was said to them.  To illustrate the point, he would sometimes amuse himself by greeting guests with the words, 'I murdered my grandmother this morning.'  The response was invariably one of polite approval.  On one occasion, however, the president happened upon an attentive listener.  On hearing Roosevelt's outrageous remark, the guest replied diplomatically, 'I'm sure she had it coming to her.'  (Maxwell Perkins, the distinguished editor, peppered his own small talk similarly at literary gatherings.  Evidently writers, as well as politicians, don't listen to one another.)"

~ THE LITTLE BROWN BOOK OF Anecdotes by Clifton Fadiman General Editor, 1983.

"Where Friends & Family Meet"

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you:  the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.  If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer."

~ Ernest Hemingway Old Newsman Writes.  From Esquire, Dec. 1934.

Jane Austen's defence to accusations of triviality of the novel:

"...there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit and taste to recommend them.  'I am no novel reader...I seldom look into novels...Do not imagine that I often read novels...It is very well for a novel...'  Such is the common cant.  'And what are you reading, Miss --?' 'Oh, it is only a novel!' replies the young lady while she lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame.  'It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda'; or, in short, only some work in which the
greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language."

~ Jane Austen, English novelist (1775 - 1817) in  Northanger Abbey [Posthumously Published in 1818]. 

A firm knock at the door;  "Is Jeff Deck here?"  A tall, muscular fellow squeezed into a tan uniform handed over some photocopied documents, "This is about a sign you vandalized at the Grand Canyon."
Appalled by the man's characterization of the act, Benjamin replied,"We corrected it."
"It was a hundred years old," the ranger said.
"Oh." Benjamin signed that he'd officially received the document.

The National Park Service was not grateful for the correction.The federal government advised that Jeff and Benjamin had "first conspired to vandalize and then vandalized a precious national historic treasure" and very much desired that they return to Arizona to appear in court.

Suddenly the saga of TEAL, the Typo Eradication Advancement League had taken a "bleak twist."  One bad correction had the power to negate hundreds of good ones.  Jeff took down his blog, the website; spoke with several lawyers and deleted the Grand Canyon entry.  They were guilty by their own blogged admission.
Banned from National Park territory, assigned a probation officer and left to pay expenses incurred (including $3,035 in restitution) Benjamin returned to his bookshop job;  Jeff was ordered to post public statements regarding the dangers of correcting typos.  He administers a website www.greattypohunt.com

~ THE GREAT TYPO HUNT / TWO FRIENDS CHANGING THE WORLD ONE CORRECTION AT A TIME.  Crown Publishers, 2010.  Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson.

www.greattypohunt.com  includes typos sent in by readers.

Robbie Burns told his own story "ingenuously and forcibly" in a letter to Dr. Moore.

[The first chapter of The Poetical Works of Robert Burns* consists of Burns's autobiography.]

"But before leaving my native country for ever, I resolved to publish my poems.  I weighed my productions as impartially as was in my power:  I thought they had merit; and it was a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears--a poor negro-driver; or, perhaps, a victim to that inhospitable clime, and gone to the world of spirits.  I can only say, that pauvre inconnu  as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their favour.  It ever was my opinion that the mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves.

To know myself had been all along my constant study--I weighed myself alone--I balanced myself with others--I watched every means of information, to see how much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet--

I studied assiduously Nature's design in my formation--where the lights and shades in my character were intended.  I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause; but, at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect.  I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty.  My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and besides, I pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds."

*Edited by John & Angus MacPherson.  The publication date is not stated; however, a personal inscription:  January 7, 1895.

Before writing TheFountainhead, author Ayn Rand spent six months working, without pay, in an architect's office. "Ayn's friends were aware that her social shyness had made it difficult for her to approach a stranger and request a favor; but they also knew that when her work was involved, she allowed nothing to interfere."
Lawyer, Ely Jacques Kahn, was the only one to know that Ayn's real purpose was research for a novel.

Source:  The Passion of Ayn Rand A Biography by Barbara Branden, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1986.

Authors don't always have it easy ~

Scott Fitzgerald wrote to editor Max Perkins:

Dear Max:

. . .

"My big mistake was in thinking I could possibly deliver this collection for this fall.  I should have known perfectly well that, in debt as I was to the tune of about $12,000 on finishing "Tender," I should have to devote the summer and most of the fall to getting out of it.  My plan was to do my regular work in the daytime and do one story every night, but as it works out, after a good day's work I am so exhausted that I drag out the work on a story to two hours when it should be done in one and go to bed so tired and wrought up, toss around sleepless, and am good for nothing next morning except dictating letters, signing checks, tending to business matters ect; but to work up a creative mood there is nothing doing until about four o'clock in the afternoon."

~ Baltimore, Mayland, November 8, 1934

~ Dear Scott Dear Max/ The Fitzgerald ~ Perkins Correspondence,  Edited by J. Kuehl & J. Bryer.  CASSELL & COMPANY LTD.  1971

Testament of Youth/Testament of Friendship/Testament of Experience ~

Vera Brittain was born at Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire in December, 1893, the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer.  During World War I she served as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse, an experience which interrupted her studies at Oxford and which she recounted in her autobiographical Testament of Youth (1933).
Although Vera wrote numerous volumes of poetry and fiction, she is more widely known for two later works:  Testament of Friendship (1940) and Testament of Experience (1957).

Her brother, her fiance and two close friends were killed in the war leading Vera toward becoming a pacifist.  She died in 1970.

Source:  The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Ian Ousby, 1993.

Today in The Neat L'l Bookshop the topic:  Poetry WWI including Vera Brittain ~ Dr. Alan Bishop.  Everyone welcome.

Photo: Wikipedia