Here We Meet, On The Page, Naked

What Fiction Offers Us Is An Intimacy Shorn Of The Messy Contingencies Of Human Existence - Gender, Race, Class Or Age. Those Moments Of Transcendence When We Exclaim "you Know Exactly What I Mean!" Depend For Much Of Their Force On The Anonymous Character Of The Intimacy Between Writer And Reader.

We've Clearly Entered A Period In Which The Analog Of Text Is No Longer Important Or Relevant. All Text Will Be Electronic. I Accept That Fact. My House Has Thousands Of Books In It, And I've Started To Look At Them Completely Differently. They Now Seem To Me To Be Like Antiquarian Objects. Their Use Value Has Become Negligible To Me Because I'm Perfectly Happy To Read On An E-reader.

Of Course, With Well-masticated Food Playing The Role Of Social Glue, It's Absolutely Essential That Everyone Clear Their Plate. Sod The Starving Kiddies In Africa - It's The Overfed Ones Here We Need To Worry About.

As A Writer, I'm Not Convinced That We Are The Best Equipped To Understand How We Go About The Business Of Literary Production.

I Like Texting As Much As The Next Kidult - And Embrace It As Yet More Evidence, Along With Email, That We Live Now In The Post-aural Age, When An Unsolicited Phone Call Is, Thankfully, Becoming More And More Understood To Be An Unspeakable Social Solecism, Tantamount To An Impertinent Invasion Of Privacy.