Monday, March 09, 2009

Ineluctable modality of lying

Some kind of survey: most people lie about reading books they haven't read.

Why?

To impress people.

No, why?

Is there any evidence this approach has worked? Are there women out there who dream of being wooed by someone who has read Ulysses? Are there men who could never love someone who has not read 1984? Has anyone ever decided that someone was, in fact, less than the total tosser they appeared to be because they had read the Bible cover to cover?

Lying about things you have read, but do not want to admit to having done so, that I could understand. Readers with impressive memories might recall that there are those who would take against a Flashman fan. More generally, being over-read may make one appear a dweeb; the sort who would bang on about modernist classics or lengthy Russian potboilers. A friend of mine was once approached by a bar maid in a pub in Dagenham while he was flicking through a book - Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes. (NB: it was mine. I was in the gents at the time). "What's that you're reading?" she asked him. "A cultural history of Russia," he replied. "What's wrong with you?" she asked. "Why can't you read things that normal people read, like Martina Coles?" He could not answer.

Don't forget the fun of celebrating the gaps in one's own knowledge.

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Monday, July 07, 2008

Six-word classics

Further to the six-word short story challenge, and in particular Dominic's precis of Crime and Punishment in the comments, here's the follow-through: six-word summaries of the literary classics.

These are my first efforts, I daresay more will occur to me over time and – I hope – to you too. Consider this an open challenge – in the comments or your own blogs – to outdo me.

The Odyssey

Sorry I'm late. I got lost.

Hamlet

I should be King, shouldn't I?

Pride and Prejudice

'I won't. 'He's rich'. 'I will.'

The Brothers Karamazov

Guilt? Leave all that to God.

War and Peace

Napoleon invaded. But life goes on.

The Great Gatsby

I love her. Let's all party.

James Joyce and PG Wodehouse are proving especially tricky to do in this format. More to follow, no doubt.

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Thursday, May 08, 2008

Tagged again

Locker requests that I

Pick up the nearest book
Open it at page 123
Find the fifth sentence
Post the next three sentences

Here's what happened.

When love once enters into the breast of one who has any sparks of generosity, it stirs the heart up to the most noble actions; in this dilemma, she showed, that she cared more for his life than she did for her own; for she took a resolution of quarreling with this fellow herself, and having challenged him ashore, she appointed the time two hours sooner than that when he was to meet her lover, when she fought him at sword and pistol and killed him on the spot.

It is true she had fought before, when she'd been insulted by some of those fellows, but now it was altogether in her lover's cause, she stood as it were between him and death, as if she could not live without him. If he had no regard for her before, this action would have bound him to her for ever; but there was no occasion for ties or obligations, his inclination toward her was sufficient; in fine, they applied their troth to each other, which Mary Read said she looked on as a marriage in conscience, as if it had been done by a minister in church; and to this was owing her great belly, which she pleaded to save her life.

Damnably long 17th century sentences, aren't they? Anyhow, it's taken from A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson (who may or not have been Daniel Defoe writing under a pseudonym). The section quoted concerns the life of Mary Read.

I would not be so ungentlemanly as to importune anyone to follow this game. However, I know that some of the commentators here do not have their own blogs. Consider the comments here an open invitation to follow suit. Other comments are, as ever, welcome.

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Saturday, April 26, 2008

If you must write prose or poems

In David Lodge's Changing Places at one point the characters play a game called Humiliation, a form of intellectual strip poker in which the participants name literary classics they haven't read; the winner is an English professor who hasn't read Hamlet. Appropriately, I haven't read Lodge's novel, but it makes a good starting point to my follow-up of this literary A-Z of works I have read.

Thanks to those of you who posted your own lists (and well done for Driss for having read a book by an author whose name begins with 'Q', I've shamelessly appropriated it for this list.) Feel free to out yourselves this time round.

Same rules apply to the last list, so I've restricted it to novelists. If I've never read a word by them, I've listed the complete works. If the books are classics or modern day classics, so much the better. A few international stars also make the list. If the writer's obscure, you can guess I was stumped.

NB: I have a degree in English literature so there are some particularly glaring gaps in my reading here; that's what I get for wasting my time at college reading things like The Prelude and Troilus and Criesyde.

Achebe, Chinua: Things Fall Apart
Balzac, Honore de: Complete Works
Colette: Complete Works
Dickens, Charles: Hard Times, Oliver Twist, Bleak House
Eliot, George: Complete Works
France, Anatole: Complete Works
Grass, Gunter: Complete Works
Heller, Joseph: Catch 22
Ishiguro, Kuzuo: Complete Works. (I did like that film, too)
James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady
Kafka, Franz: Complete Works
Lermontov, Mikhail: A Hero of Our Time
Mahfouz, Naguib: Complete Works
Naipaul, VS: Complete Works
Oe, Kenzaburo: Complete Works
Pater, Walter: Marius the Epicurian
Queneau, Raymond: Complete Works
Richardson, Samuel: Clairssa
Stendhal: Le Rouge et Le Noir
Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
Updike, John: Complete Works
Vonnegut, Kurt: Slaughterhouse 5
Wolfe, Tom: Bonfire of the Vanities
Xu Xi: Complete Works
Yates, Richard: Complete Works
Zamyatin, Yevgenny: We

I should also add that Edith Wharton, Orhan Pamuk and Jeffrey Archer very nearly made the list.

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Thursday, April 24, 2008

If we must

Locker, damn his impertinence, has tagged me with a request to reveal six random facts about myself. Here goes then:

1. I dislike revealing things about myself intensely, but don't mind sharing ideas. And I enjoy arguing with people.

2. I would urge people not to take sides if at all possible. People who are "pro-Israeli" or "pro-Palestinian" who have never been to the Middle East (or who go there to help "their side") fill me with alarm. People who cheer for their political party as if it were a football team depress me (though Labour supporters seem far more passive and forgiving when led by a disastrously inept numpty compared with, say, England football supporters).

By way of illustration, I was born in England of predominately Ulster Protestant and Irish Catholic antecedents; just what is "my side" in Irish matters? (It's worth adding, too, that the Ulster Prod side includes, among others, Irish-speaking Catholic clerics who switched sides to keep their ill-gotten cash and leaders of the United Irishmen.)

3. I don't take most things seriously because most things are, frankly, laughable. The trick is knowing what to take seriously; and recognising that serious matters are often absurd.

4. In my experience of women from three continents, the problem with them (or me, depending on your perspective) is they tend to like me, and want to be friends with me. Arguing with them (see No 1) and trashing their deeply held views is surprisingly effective in remedying the situation.

5. Places I have never visited and would like to have done so: Cornwall; the northern and western Highlands of Scotland, the islands too; Australia; Ireland's western coast - from Dingle to Donegal; Australia; Latin America and India. I have, however, lived in Dundee and Sheffield. (In fact, I was born in the latter).

6. The title of this blog comes from the time I was Paxmanned on University Challenge after buzzing in prematurely and then suffering a mental blank. (For the record we lost – fairly narrowly, but it was a loss nonetheless – to the eventual winners. They were all postgrads, which isn't quite cricket).

I'm not going to tag anyone; but if you have a blog and feel like responding, consider this an open invitation.

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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Letters

Here's a fun, if slightly anoraky game. Take all the letters of the alphabet and give the name of a novelist and one of their novels which you have read for each letter. Here's mine.

Amis, Kingsley: Lucky Jim
Buchan, John: Greenmantle
Camus, Albert: The Plague
Dostoevsky, Feodor: The Brothers Karamazov
Elroy, James: American Tabloid
Fitzgerald, F Scott: The Great Gatsby
Grossmith, George and Weedon: Diary of a Nobody
Houellebecq, Michel: Platform
I -
Joyce, James: Ulysses
Kurkov, Andrey: The Case of the General's Thumb
Lawrence, DH: Sons and Lovers
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia: 100 Years of Solitude
Nabakov, Vladimir: Lolita
O'Brien, Flann: The Third Policeman
Peacock, Thomas Love: Nightmare Abbey
Q -
Rankin, Ian: Black and Blue
Sade, Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de: Justine
Trollope, Anthony: Phineas Phinn
U -
Voltaire, Francois-Marie: Candide
Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray
X -
Yerofeev, Venedikt: Moskva-Petushki
Zola, Emile: Nana

From this you may deduce that I have never read anything by Ishiguro or Isherwood, Updike or – well, I can't even think of any Xs (anonymous works don't count, do they?) or Qs.

It might be more fun, and more revealing to do the same with a group of writers whose works I have missed out on. Or, failing that, books. Watch this space.

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