Pretty Little Village on The Grand ~
Friday, March 27, 2015
"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.
"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.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
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.
"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.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
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.]
"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.]
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