Buzz, Hiss and Bang // A Novelist At Play in The Fields of Language

W. B. Yeats wrote of one of his poems that he "made it out of amouthful of air." All literature is made in this way, although wetend to think of it as a scratching of signs on paper. Literaturegives permanence to language: people learn Greek to read Plato andLatin to read Catullus. Language is books. But it is primarily somuch air, a mouthful at a time, modified by contortions of the vocalorgans. It is impermanent, evanescent, highly changeable, but it isthe primary reality, while writing and printing are of a secondaryorder. This book is a visual object and uses visual symbols, but isdedicated to the truth that language is what we speak and hear. Anthony Burgess A Mouthful of …