March 10, 2008
Joseph Conrad cured my RSI
I swapped my vintage desktop for a laptop (a refurbished MacBook) recently, but after writing with my nose pressed against the screen for a few days, I was afflicted with a serious case of RSI in my right wrist. I was seriously considering investing in Voice Recognition software until a novelist friend with similar RSI problems, sent me a paragraph about Conrad which she spotted in a recent copy of the TLS:
".....therefore it comes as a shock, in reading the collected letters of Joseph Conrad to to read of the degree to which it (gout) afflicted this lean and grizzled figure. His attacks were frequent and severe, and though he didn't have a diagnosis until 1898, when 'gout or some other devil' SO INFLATED HIS WRIST THAT HE WAS UNABLE TO WRITE, (his legs had first began to swell soon after his return from the Congo.) It punctuated book after book, it broke his rhythym and kept him in bed incapable -- or so it seemed to him -- of writing anything but one letter of complaint after another. There were other illnesses. He never fully shook off malaria; his recurrent fevers would leave him shouting in Polish. There was dysentery, inlfuenza, angina eventually and some form of depression almost always. Both his children were desperately sick (and) ...Conrad was without enought cash to pay the doctor's bills. His wife Jessie lived in constant pain (undergoing a twenty year series of operations on her knees)."
(Meanwhile he wrote, among other things, Under Western Eyes, Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim).
After reading this, I was so cheered up, I have started to gingerly key-tap again. (Holding my wrist under scalding hot water for long periods helped too).
Posted by frances on March 10, 2008
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