Above
Poster by graphic designer Tad Klenske for an exhibition of student posters about
historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department
of Art, University of Northern Iowa.
•••
Bernard Wolfe, Memoirs of a
Not Altogether Shy Pornographer (Garden City NY: Doubleday and Company, 1972),
p. 47-48—
Paradox: the more you comb
through your insides the less you come up with to write about. Besides, there’s
more to look at out there than in here, and it’s less fogged over. You’ve go to
learn more from three billion people than from one, it’s a matter of
arithmetic. Again, it’s the writers who keep their eyes on the world about who
tell us the most about themselves. What’s a man after all but his vision?
Blinders and all? What’s he going to convey to us about his vision if he keeps
it trained on his own insides, which he’ll never see? But I suppose every
writer has to do this me-myself-and-I softshoe one time out, to show how
versatile he is and that he hasn’t got two left feet.