In my Stephen Hawking piece in The Sunday Times yesterday, I mentioned in passing that Hawking had once attacked me in print as a failed intellectual. This, I wrote, I wore as a badge of pride - what other kind of intellectuals are there? Now the great and good Frank Wilson has suggested the formation of a Failed Intellectuals Society.
'I think we should assume,' Frank writes, 'since Hawking directly designated you as such, that you are, as it were, the first in line of apostolic succession, with the power to confer dignity and powers on others.'
I have, with a simple but infinitely graceful flick of my diamond-encrusted mouse, accepted and given myself the title of Supreme Failure. Frank is vice-president. Others will be accepted according to demanding criteria which I haven't yet invented and following a ceremony much more bizarre than anything dreamed of by the Masons, though I may steal their noose and rolled up trouser leg.
Monday, December 04, 2006
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Count me in.
ReplyDeleteAnd me.
ReplyDeleteI recently had a book review of mine fail to be approved at Amazon UK. This presumably marks me out as the most abject of intellectual failures. However, I was, and still am proud of this piece which was on Umberto Eco's Baudolino. It was titled "Lots of Words", and went as follows.
ReplyDelete"This book has lots of words. Some good, some not so good." And the intellectual fascists wouldn't show it. A previous film review titled "Worth a Look" was similarly dismissed. It went- "I haven't seen this film but I've heard it's worth a look." Maybe these pieces are genuinely not up to the required standard but I tried my best.
Alas, most of us can only dream of such lofty, noble failure - failure in the pursuit of knowledge. A few rungs down the ladder of losers, people like me routinely fail, but ours are lowbrow, banal, grubby little fiascos. Well done, Bryan and Frank. May you both continue to fail spectacularly in the future. I wish you every success.
ReplyDeleteYou may remember me from a piece called "The End of History".
ReplyDeleteInquiring (intellectually challenged) minds want to know:
ReplyDeleteIs there a secret decoder ring and a badge? How many Kaboom box tops does it take to join?
Back in my day, they used to say "there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." Damned bad luck that my ship sank, or you'd be talking about *my* theory of Natural Selection.
ReplyDeleteI'm still mad at Chuck for not waiting.....
Though I should add my only mistake was failing to take humans into my equations. Other than that I was "spot on".
ReplyDeleteI had a theory, too, but I've forgotten what it was. There's a strange quality of light here, like golden smoke over a roiling sea, and I'm looking for someone, or something. An Eff-effigy, I think. And a Rose. I do not think that I shall find them toether.
ReplyDeleteCan I join?
ReplyDeleteIgnore email - normal service resumed. As I was saying - you need a treasurer. Guaranteed, accounts not filed on time. Where do I sign up ?
ReplyDeleteI would be willing to start, and of course fail, at the southern American version of this endeavor.
ReplyDelete