If only we could take the human element out of Literature -- Margaret Atwood has!

Hi, I'm Margaret Atwood. You know, being a bestselling author is a really super job. I have tons of money, people everywhere know my name and think I'm great. But for as much as I enjoy the lifestyle my bestselling novels afford me, it does have some drawbacks. Chief among them is the dilemma my peers and I face on a daily basis: "Gosh, I love taking my readers' money to fund my lavish lifestyle, but these goddamned Philistines are so tiresome, banal, and unwashed, I wish I never had to be in the same room with them again!"

Well, I have developed an invention that will make being a bestselling author just a little more livable -- The LongPen machine.

Sick of listening to droning fans tell you how much they enjoy your work? Tired of sitting at the head of long lines of admirers who bore you with their prattle? Weary of interacting with intellectual and creative inferiors? Then the LongPen machine is for you!

With the LongPen machine, you can sit in the lavish study of your gratuitous mansion, or by your Olympic-sized swimming pool, or perhaps on your magenta supersonic jet, and sign copies of your books for the masses without ever having to physically see another fan, reader, or admirer again... Shit, you can hire a staff to sign books for you -- who's to know it's not you? Best of all, you keep those dollars rolling in. The rabble have their heads patted, you sell a few more books -- it's a win-win situation!~

Follow-up by author Matthew St. Amand:

Maybe I am simply a neophyte, a rube from Onion Field, Ontario, so awed and blinded by the shine of my own books in print that I am unaware of the brass tacks of being a working, living bestselling writer. Call me crazy, I absolutely love interacting with my readers.

Are literary fans so bothersome that authors of Margaret Atwood's stature would prefer to use this Dr. Strangelovian device to autograph books? The derisive contrarian in me enjoys such examples of excessive, ridiculous uses of technology, and the satirist in me is tickled by Atwood's LongPen machine, but the human being booklover in me is appalled and disgusted. This is one of those overt examples of overbearing technology -- and the spooky mind behind it -- making the process it's seemingly simplifying utterly meaningless.

Call me crazy, old-fashioned, out-of-step, but the only signed copies of books I'm interested in having were once actually touched by the authors who wrote them.

Thanks, Peg, not interested.