Close Reading

This is a week of close reading. Yesterday I sent off my final edits for Mentoring and Creative Writing, the book I have written with Sara Maitland which should be released this summer. This morning the postman buzzed, and the proofs of Suffer and Survive, my new J. S. Haldane bio (out August 6th), were laid before me.

I quite enjoy this stage. There's little can be done to the text, only appreciate its typography and stay attentive for the typoes. Instead I read and marvel, my eyes smarting with appreciation for all the book has become. I am very fond of this book, so glad to have come to know J. S. Haldane through it. He is now an established feature on my dinner party wishlist, inviting any figures from the past.

One odd thing about writing books is that you seldom get to read the work in book form. You fondle that finished product, reposition it in bookstores, admire it, read selections aloud to audiences, but never sit down and really enjoy it. The proofs is as close as you get to such unsullied reading. Since this work is filled with stories and knowledge that I never had, I feel quite sweetly disassociated from it ... truth to tell, I'm somewhat revelling in the tale.

(The picture shows J. S. Haldane doing some close reading of his own, on the Acropolis in Athens, 1936)