
The following week I fell ill, maybe as a result from swimming in the sea (no beach in the world is really clean anymore) and my fever and muscle aches lingered until this morning. But I can't complain. My book, The Postmodern Mariner, has just been published. Steve Upham gave me ten complimentary copies yesterday when I met him at the 'Space, Time, Machine, Monster' conference at the University of Glamorgan. In a previous post I gave the date of that conference as July 21. I was wrong by exactly one month: the real date was midsummer's day! I delivered a lecture on OuLiPo that was well received, although one person afterwards told me that my shirt was too 'distracting'. Courtesy of my publisher, the above photo shows me signing copies of my book in that particular shirt.