Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere... You don't have to dress up for instance and you can't hear them boo you right away.

I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former production and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone I can hardly accuse myself of a personal intrusion.

To own the dominant or only newspaper in a mid-sized American city was for many decades a kind of license to print money. In the Internet age however no one has figured out how to rescue the newspaper in the United States or abroad.

One already feels like an anachronism writing novels in the age of what-ever-this-is-the-age-of but touring to promote them feels doubly anachronistic. The marketplace is showing an increasing intolerance for the time-honored practice of printing information on paper and shipping it around the country.

We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them however has not changed.

But look I was born in 1956 the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and by and large people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.

I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.