Baker, Nicholson (b. 1957)

The Fermata

New York

Random House

1994

"Because you are traveling right along with him as he forms his sentences, making each word he says appear as a little clump of letters on your screen, you begin to feel as if you are doing the thinking yourself; you occupy some dark space in the interior of his mind as he goes about his job."

But why is it that I so like typing tapes? I've seen word-processing operators throw their headsets down after several hours of transcribing, shouting, "I hate doing this!" Yet I even liked typing Fleury's tapes. For one thing, I like that I'm fairly good at it--I can, for instance, often engage in a little parallel processing, typing the sentence that just passed while listening to and storing the phrase that I'm currently hearing: I enjoy seeing how long I can go without resorting to the rewind half of the foot-pedal. But mainly I prefer doing tapes to typing handwritten documents simply because you can hear the dictator thinking. You can hear him groping for the conventional formula that will cover a slightly unusual case. You can occasionally hear undertones of irritation or affection. It is a great privilege to be present when a person slowly puts his thoughts into words, phrase by phrase, doing the best he can. Because you are traveling right along with him as he forms his sentences, making each word he says appear as a little clump of letters on your screen, you begin to feel as if you are doing the thinking yourself; you occupy some dark space in the interior of his mind as he goes about his job.
(p. 36)

Light::Darkness Uncategorized::Interior Population

Reading

Baker, Nicholson. The Fermata (New York: Random House, 1994).

10/03/2010