Wednesday, June 09, 2010

A quick stop at a bookstore


Road Trip Day 7

As I strolled through Nottingham, I happened across one of the three remaining bookstores in England. I walked in to see if they had Stewart's latest book, Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie. While my copy was waiting for me somewhere in London, I thought I'd take a quick peek at the work. I asked the clerk and she laughed.


"Oh, don't you know the joke? It's really an open secret in the industry. Stewart Home does not exist. "He" [air quotes] is actually a computer program that randomizes text and spits the results out as a novel. In any case, I heard that this latest work has been declared out of print. And this is before it has actually been printed! Which is quite an achievement."


She gave me directions to a bookstore in Milton Keynes, and suggested I try there. I thanked her, although I thought her theory about Mr. Home to be ludicrous. How could someone with a webpage not be real?


My webpage exists, therefore I am.


6 comments:

Christopher Nosnibor said...

Nottingham is a strange place, and a rough one.

Everyone from Lincoln who's a bit 'alternative' aspires to move there. This probably explain why Nottingham is a strange place. Etc.

For th record, I really don't exist. I'm a writing machine. One day, someone might actually program me to type a bit better.

Rev. Michael Roth said...

I knew that no human hand could have authored the Plagiarist!

Actually, I missed out on Nottingham when I was last in England years ago. I meant to go but ran out of time. Maybe next time around.

Mister Trippy said...

And don't forget kids, when Stewart Home makes public appearances you're actually seeing Tony White, an actor hired to play 'him'.

And I've heard Nottingham doesn't really exist either!

Mister Trippy said...

And don't forget kids, when you go to a Stewart Home event you're actually seeing an actor called Tony White who is hired to play him!

And I've heard Nottingham doesn't really exist either!

Mister Trippy said...

You can tell I'm computer code coz I keep spewing out variations on a theme....

Rev. Michael Roth said...

The invasion of the spam bots! The robot takeover has begun!