The Dregs of Memory and Awareness

Last night in re-reading a favorite writer I happened upon this line: " ... a contemptible falsehood -- a poor hoax -- the lees of the invention of some pitiable penny-a-liner." So I must have run across this phrase before, "penny-a-liner," for hack writer.

I wrote down part of Poe's line, to help me remember.

To show that my mind even in this rediscovery was not wholly alert, I note that this morning I was thinking about "racking," a word not used in the winemaking sense by non-winemakers nor non-brewers, so far as I know. Racking refers to using some means to draw the clear liquid off the sludge or dregs that will accumulate at the bottom of a fermenting vessel.

The other day I was doing my racking quite inefficiently. Some of the wine we made last summer and fall went into odd-sized secondary fermenters, because we were running out of gallon jugs. Since we have no siphon-pump to fit in a smaller-size bottle, "racking" a liter bottle, for instance, means pouring it off into another same-size bottle -- as carefully as possible, to minimize the inevitable stirring-up of the yeast that has settled out.

So this morning in thinking about racking, it struck me that, of course, the dregs or sludge is called "the lees." I had read the word in Poe's line thinking it more-or-less meant dregs, without thinking past that meaning to its winemaking reference. I felt pleased enough about finding "penny-a-liner" -- and I could have felt twice so.

Cheers ...

Fresh from Cradle, and Cribbing

The news last week about "novelist" Helene Hegemann, of Berlin, Germany, seems less like news than a re-run confirmation that our Age of Masses is insane in a way quite different from the way the Modern was. Hegemann has used cut-and-paste methods in "writing" her novel -- a natural outcome, perhaps, of living in a global culture in which cut-and-paste refers to an activity no longer restricted to kindergarten.

Hegemann's being up for an award worth $20,000 from the Leipzig Book Fair, however, gives belated recognition to the artistic success of the Activity Book of our childhoods, which usually was printed on newsprint and was meant to be "read" with blunt-tipped scissors and colored wax crayons at hand. We can only hope the Leipzig Book Fair judges have these essential tools within reach; and we can hope the local kindergarten can spare a teacher to supervise judging.

Hegemann's "novel," of course, is only a pimple on the face of a society that has been eating factory food. It comes in for mention here as an example of what this effort of mine, this discussion, stands against.

With all due respect I would suggest Hegemann try to write a short story using a pencil. Writing is the finding of a line to follow -- usually a line that is invisible until the setting of pencil to paper. While a pencil may be used in cribbing, it is such a fine tool for finding lines that reveal inner worlds as well as outer ones that its use might shame even a plagiarist into removing the horrifying mask of Age-of-Masses stupidity.