“Olympia and the internet"
On the train to Derry I read an article by Northern Irish poet Derek Mahon with the title above. It celebrated three generations of typewriters: Adler, Remington, Olympia. And it cast a harsh eye on the internet age. A sampling:
“An analogue simpleton, I couldn’t be bothered with all that complicated stuff. (Technology sees me coming and starts acting up.) Besides, I was suspicious and never trusted the internet for an instant. Something to do with its strategical origins as military hardware, software; the gold rush, the hysteria, the data-mining, the intrusive sense of entitlement. It wants to know everything about everyone everywhere--for commercial reasons and perhaps for more sinister, political ones.”
Another:
“High-tech introduces, if we let it, a cognitive dissonance between subject and object. Rewired for electronic information, blinded by science, we’re in danger of losing touch with primary experience; the unmediated sea wrack on the strand is even stranger to us than it was to (James) Joyce.”
As I read this essay, I had two thoughts. One, the Irish Times is a treat--great writers writing about any number of things literary. I read an essay by Fintan O’Toole recently on Jonathan Swift (350th anniversary of his birth). And a cross section of Irish writers on the life of poet Patrick Kavanagh (20th anniversary of his death).
My other thought was that the reason I’m not a real writer (a creative writer penning clever pieces about the strange times we live in) is because I don’t have the ability to intensely observe and remember detail. I don’t know what brand my typewriters were. Nor do I recall specifics of the incredible experiences I had galloping all over Ireland (see yesterday’s post). I don’t have the nuggets in my brain to mine for golden prose. Nor the writing skill, as the previous sentence attests. I don’t lose sleep over this--it’s just an observation.
From the internet, so disliked by Derek: "Derek Mahon is widely regarded as one of the most talented and innovative Irish poets of the late 20th century. Affiliated with the generation of young poets from Northern Ireland who rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, Mahon is best known for illuminating the ordinary aspects of daily life through his skillfully crafted verse.”
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