Signed copy

Having recently looked into the in-print status of a certain author long deceased, I came across a publishing site whose basic set-up for each book provides for author contact information. If I would like to contact so-and-so and see about getting a book signed etc. Since the author was quite dead it provided food for thought. Could it be a job for Margaret Atwood's innovative and exciting Longpen technology I wondered? It would make a good New Yorker type of cartoon. Deceased authors lining up on the other side to sign books for the living. Jane Austen stepping back on Herman Melville's shoes as she backs away from Cervantes gesticulating in earnest as he explains a basic narrative premise to Goethe, and Henry James and Joseph Conrad at the end of the line looking the other way, confirmed in their belief that this was a bad idea altogether.

I do think the Longpen is quite marvelous. And Atwood, well, our resident genius.