Sunday, February 03, 2008
Prozzzzze
I think I might have stumbled upon the ultimate insomnia cure. I defy anyone to stay awake till the last sentence of this desperate piece of work, which I had the misfortune of hearing the good Professor deliver on Radio 4. Fabulously banal in content and wholly inert in style, it reads as if the Prof was sweatily checking the word count at every line turn - keep going, keep going, nearly there... To think that this is the same Point Of View slot that is occupied, from time to time, by the jewel-like, effortless and very funny contributions of Clive James. The one consolation is that Cannadine will surely not have persuaded a single listener to buy this wretched new book of his...
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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.
D. Cannadine is quite a readable historian, Bryan. But here's what kept me up until 2:30 a.m.: Ruth Rendell's "The Water's Lovely." I'm not much of a mystery reader, but someone urged me to try her stuff and.... She rocks!
ReplyDeleteP'raps you need murder mysteries, not histories, Monsieur Appleyard.
Is Nige Bryan now? How did that happen? Or is Susan...wrong? Whoah, logical impossibility ahead!
ReplyDeleteOops. I'm sleepy, Elberry -- I spent most of the night reading! Sorry, Nige.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm wrong all the time, Elberry -- why are you being waspish, boy? Not enough MILF?
Why not 'Big' Dave Cannadine? It has a certain 'Hey, look at me when I'm talking to you' feel about it. Anyway, I just made it to the end, which might suggest I'm every bit as boring as the Prof. But having ploughed through, I thought this reminds me of someone, and after racking my last viable brain cell I realised it was the great Jeffrey, no middle name, Archer. I immediately went to Jeffrey's blog for comparison purposes, and left minutes later feeling thoroughly ashamed that I could have linked Jeff's style with that of Big Dave, for I discovered that, in comparison, Jeff is a pulsating read, with every sentence primed to explode in the reader's senses, and all this so skillfully combined with an almost imperceptible subtleness as he hints (no more than that) that his latest book 'A Prisoner of Birth' has been reviewed by Publisher's Weekly in the USA in terms close to rapture. What modesty; what a writer; what a man!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post, Nige. If nothing else, it has made me realise what a jewel we have in Jeffrey.
Waspish? i'm being seductive and alluring. Note you've just fallen into my trap and offered the pleasures of your body up to me, at least implicitly. i'll be over in a bit, jet-lagged but horny.
ReplyDeleteWatch out, Elberry.
ReplyDeleteIt's okay, Frank, i can handle femme fatales. The thing is to try to commit suicide just when they're about to poison/stab you, it takes them aback and brings out their mothering instincts.
ReplyDeleteHe cannot be correct, when he mentions that there are 200,000 titles published in GB each year. Dear God, but I feel for the chaps at the BL, if it is so. 200,000 just seems to be taking the p....
ReplyDeleteYippee, as a professor who has leapt into prose, I feel vindicated.
ReplyDeleteNige, good spot. It is joyfully boring.
ReplyDeleteDavid Cannadine should stick to 'Kung Fu' and 'Kill Bill'.
Its 80,000 titles.
ReplyDeleteI left a comment for him-on possibly the dullest thing I have ever read..
ReplyDelete