The gravitas of originality

Even though years have passed since I read Roland Barthes’ essay The Death of the Author, I still ask myself who is writing when I form words into sentences and then separate them by paragraphs. Is it me, being original, is what I have written influenced by the people I have met, the landscapes I have travelled, the beers I have drunk and my general approach towards the world? Or am I just a channel for the words of other writers — and if so, who were they channelling when they wrote? This thought returned to me after the latest issue of Original Gravity went to press last week, when I was editing one of my reviews on the Tasting Notes page. I had written about how the beer’s bone-dry finish ‘lingers like a police informer in a dubious cafe in postwar Vienna’. In thinking about this, I wondered if I was being original (I’d just finished the first volume of The Demons by Heimito von Doderer, where a lot of the characters drink and talk in Viennese cafes, though there are no police informers as far as I know), or was I channelling an image/a phrase from, say, The Third Man (both the film and the book)? Who was writing? Me or someone else? Or was this the sum of all my cultural influences and not original at all? At the moment I have no answer and it all might seem a bit navel-gazing, on a par with wondering if this beer or that beer is craft or a Twitter poll asking if respondents have special drinking clothes. However, I suppose in the same way that some beer-orientated writers are transfixed by such moods and thoughts, I still remain fascinated about where words come from, especially when I write about beer. I know where beer comes from (the land), but I am not sure where words come from — and this endless fascination and sense of inquiry and need for clarity is what keeps me trying to make sense of the world of beer, whoever’s words I speak.

Sharp

The sign makes me smile. It’s outside a pub on the road to Exeter, a pub that is primed and cocked for the Easter weekend. As we drive past I see the sign that makes me smile. ‘Something for the kiddies, Good Friday Easter egg hunt, 3pm, SHARP!’ So what makes me smile? The use of the word kiddies seems archaic, as if the person who wrote it wasn’t used to dealing with kids; it makes me wonder if this Easter egg hunt for the kiddies is something that has been put on under pressure perhaps, from an area manager, brewery rep or partner. And then the exclamatory use of ‘SHARP!’ — now that really made me smile. If dealing with kids you’d expect a free and easy manner, but this suggests something closer to a sergeant-major ordering reluctant recruits about, getting them to do something on the double. And this sign makes me then think about the language that publicans and brewers and their PR people use — sometimes it feels as if a Thesaurus has been dredged with a deep sea net and all manner of words have been brought to the surface, some of them lying there, flapping about and gasping for breath. Things are, of course, awesome; let’s smash it (what? a window, a tea cup?); it’s all been brought to the customer with passion (what with blood, sweat and tears? sounds a bit unhygienic to me); and naturally everyone is ready to rock. And back in that pub this afternoon the kiddies will be expected to turn up sharp at 3pm and look for their Easter eggs. Woe betide any that turn up late.