Alan Jacobs

The weird, accidental material conditions of the practice of software development have an impact on the sort of practice it facilitates. For example, the separations created by long compiles created invitations to pursue other practices… but since software engineers are still tied to their desks, more or less, and since they once didn’t have all the Internet to peruse or gossip upon, a relationship with reading was a natural thing to develop. I’m sure not everyone chose to pursue the craft practice of programming like Jock did, but I bet a great many were already thinking about algorithm design and performance optimization and the like, and the everyday routine of software development facilitated that sort of knowledge development.

The point isn’t nostalgia, that things were better in simpler times, but that the conditions we create (deliberately or accidentally) for and around the practices we pursue have a tremendous influence on the ways we carry out those practices. In the case of computer programming in particular, the apparent benefits of speed, efficiency, accessibility, and other seemingly “obvious” positive virtues of technical innovation also hide lost virtues, which of course we then fail to see.

There are intimations of the abyss: wars and rumors of war, our television and our politics, the expression that’s always on Donald Trump’s face, the lack of expression that’s always on Calista Gingrich’s face. There is, honestly, just Donald Trump in general and Calista Gingrich in general. There is a mad, ravenous vanity loose in our land and everywhere a thundering babyish will not to know, and we have the vicious and vastly small culture to prove it. Which is to say that these can seem to be bleak times, at least if you do something like idly read the news while watching a football game on television.

In our strange cultural moment it is necessary to make a distinction between religious propaganda and religious thought, the second of these being an attempt to do some sort of justice to the rich difficulties present in the tradition. The great problem for Christianity is always the humility of the figure in whom God is said to have been incarnate, and the insistence of the tradition that God is present in the persons of the despised and rejected. The failure of the notionally Christian worlds of Russia and Mississippi to be in any way sufficient to the occasion of Christ among them would be a true report always and everywhere. But theology is only in part social commentary. Crucially it has to do with the authority of a vision, of a world that is only like this world in essence. The sermon interprets Benjy’s wordless first chapter, a tale told as passionate memory of gentleness and love, Faulkner interceding to evoke for Benjy thoughts that are too deep for the words of any writer but one who is generous and also great. Everyone knows that life is profaned when such thoughts are neglected, as they so often are. As a statement about human consciousness and the reality that contains us, this vision is always familiar and never easier to accept. Paul quotes an ancient hymn in his letter to the Philippians that says Christ “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” And this recalls the servant described in the book of Isaiah, “one from whom men hide their faces,” who “was despised, and we esteemed him not.” In its emphatic insistence that the burden of meaning is shared in every life, the Bible may only give expression to a truth most of us know intuitively. But as a literary heritage or memory it has strengthened the deepest impulse of our literature, and our ­civilization.

Writers of all kinds, from the nakedly commercial to the wilfully abstruse, look for two things: love and money. The traditional publisher, to a greater or lesser extent (this is part of his/her competitive edge) provides this. As the Hachette memo states, the publisher both curates new and continuing talent (with a “gatekeeping” function) and also acts as a banker (or patron).

This traditional model is simple, but also highly evolved. No amount of “self-publishing” (which I use to describe the many alternative models on display) can equal this, at least when harmoniously engaged with the retail and copyright sectors. That’s the issue. The Hachette model used to be fully integrated with the literary marketplace. Not any more.

And here’s my second point. For 50 – perhaps 100 – years, writers, publishers and booksellers followed a literary map which a) they all believed in and b) described the cultural landcape perfectly.

Some time between 1990 and 2005 – we can debate the actual tipping point – this map became irrelevant and then redundant. The many book tribes (writers, agents, editors, booksellers) on the lonely route from the moment of putting black on white to the point of sale found that the map they’d relied on for generations no longer described the environment they inhabited.

Welcome to the world, @micheleherold!

Should driver-less cars become a commonplace way of getting from here to there - Google is already sending them out on public roads - Koushik Dutta posits that instead of vehicles that sit idle most of the time, as is now the case, our collective fleet will be more like commercial airliners, which are almost always in use.

The result: fewer total cars.

Volunteers in white lab coats, surgical gloves and masks stood on the back of a pickup truck along the banks of the Nile in Cairo, rummaging through stacks of rare 200-year-old manuscripts that were little more than charcoal debris.

The volunteers, ranging from academic experts to appalled citizens, have spent the past two days trying to salvage what’s left of some 192,000 books, journals and writings, casualties of Egypt’s latest bout of violence.

The Institute of Egypt, a research centre set up by Napoleon Bonaparte during France’s invasion in the late 18th century, caught fire during clashes between protesters and Egypt’s military over the weekend. It was home to a treasure trove of writings, most notably the handwritten 24-volume Description de l’Egypte, which began during the 1798-1801 French occupation. It includes 20 years of observations by more than 150 French scholars and scientists, was one of the most comprehensive descriptions of Egypt’s monuments, its ancient civilisation and contemporary life at the time.

It is probably now burned beyond repair.

People just get things wrong. They read them wrong, or remember them wrong or the way they want to, or the information they read right was wrong in the first place. You hear the same a fact a thousand times, but if you track down its origins, you find out all the repeaters are using the same source, and source zero was just guessing, or citing a highly questionable source or study. Or misciting a highly questionable source or study. Or confusing the details, so that by now, everybody’s under the erroneous impression that a shot of espresso contains more caffeine than a cup of coffee.

Lucia Etxebarria has every right to feel furious. The Spanish prize-winning author recently learned that her most recent novel has been downloaded illegally so often that it has decimated sales of the hardback. Her previous books have been bestsellers, whereas The Contents of Silence languishes at about 23,500th position on Amazon’s Spanish site.

By way of protest, Etxebarria has announced that she will now fall silent. According to a message on Facebook she has given up writing for the foreseeable future. The game, she explains, isn’t worth the candle. There’s no point in agonising over your prose for three years only to find no cheque at the end of it. Etxebarria says she has been offered a job – which, given the state of the Spanish economy, makes her a winner – and thinks she’s going to take it. …

Let’s imagine that Etxebarria is, indeed, going to teach creative writing. What she’ll discover on her first day is that the students in her seminar room have very little interest in how much money they are likely to make from their published work. I teach on just such a course at UEA, and I can report that no one tries to write, starts to write, keeps on writing, because they think it would be a handy way to make a living. I’ve never yet had a student ask about the finances of publishing – how much they might get for a piece of work, as if it were a piece of velvet or a stash of jewels. They don’t ask about sales, either. They write – just as published authors write, and will take the most congenial job that allows them to carry on writing – because it is an innate drive, an itch that won’t go away.

There’s nothing remotely noble about any of this. Authors write not to communicate great truths, but to make their own tiny mark. They want to be heard, and noticed and even sometimes loved. They do it out of a deep narcissism because, quite literally, nothing and nobody else matters. A cheque is nice, but it is never the point.

We invite you to celebrate New Year’s Eve 2012 at The Aviary.

Doors will open at 9pm on Saturday, December 31st. The evening’s festivities will feature passed Aviary Cocktails and Bites, with a Champagne Toast at midnight. A limited number of Tickets for Admission are available at $250 per person. (Service is included, sales tax will be charged additionally).

A reserved package including dinner at Alinea (9 course tasting menu with wine pairings) followed by admission to the party at The Aviary is available to a few groups of 4 people. Limousine transfer from Alinea to The Aviary will be available; the price of this package is $700 per person.

‘The Office’ will also be available that night, for $500 per person, sold individually. If you would like to book the entire room, we can tailor the perfect package for your group of 15-20 people. Please inquire, we’ll be happy to respond with further details.