Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
There is also the fact that a lot more effort has been put into trying to keep open. In the first lockdown, most coffee shops etc just shut. Now they are open.
And why is that? Because the financial support simply isn't there. Why is Daughter still doing takeaways (and very safely too)? Because the financial support now is very much less, what has been promised still hasn't been paid, furlough is less than it was and the bills still need paying.
Both sons work in food shops. One has been sent home to isolate because a co-worker caught Covid and so he's waiting for a test to see whether he's got it. I pray daily that he doesn't because it puts my husband and other son at risk. But at least his employer is still paying him. Others are not so fortunate. Sunak's meanness with support is undermining what is necessary on the health side.
If the government imposes more restrictions without providing more support then it will simply lead to a greater economic collapse than we're already facing.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
It is a fantastic book and I loved it. When I was twelve. It's hardly SK Tremayne now is it?
Citing it as great writing is the same as citing Harry Potter as great writing.
Who decides what is good writing? I think everyone accepts that mere popularity doesn't indicate quality of a work, but when a work is so influential as a result of the effectiveness of its story telling I'm not sure what is gained from snobbery about its, IDK, academic or artistic quality.
As it happens I think LOTR, despite being one of my favourites, has some pretty obvious flaws in structure and style - the man really could have used an editor - that books in the same genre have bettered, but is it still great writing despite those flaws because it is so impactful?
I think it would be pretty easy to find examples of some officially approved 'great' writing that tells a shitty story with shitty characters and disappeared without a trace.
So I'm not sure that the line between great and not great writing is really as identifiable as we might wish.
LOTR is simply a fantastic story. Its crowning achievement is to invent a wholly new plot, which is usually thought to be impossible. Invading Sauron's lair and doing him in would be commonplace; having to invade it with the pacifistic-looking purpose of throwing a ring into a hole changes the dynamic of the whole story.
Crying out for editing, mind. Why does it take 1,000 pages to get to the Council of Elrond, and what is that hippified bore Tom Bombadil for?
The movies, though not perfect, really did make some improvements in that respect. I used to read it about once a year, but it has been quite a while now, and it is more of a slog than it used to be (worth noting that plenty of fantasy stories are far longer than LOTR, but don't necessarily feel it.)
The movies were a disaster, a cgi fairground ride through toy town devoid of any cinematic worth.
If there is a point, underlying reason for existence to all the phooey LOTR nonsense, Gandalf rides away from them to visit Tom. Wait, they say, we need help in the Shire. What do you think your experiences in the real world was meant for, he replies. True enough, thanks to rite of passage they return changed, made bigger, not just by the Ent Draughts. They become Masters and mayors.
Jackson cut all that to have them second fiddle to large root vegetables. Removed the works only nod to true value.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
Matches the observation that schools are a lot less empty than in March. Employers are being less community-spirited in the extent to which people can childmind at home, because the funding isn't there.
I wonder also if the vaccine good news is being misread. Yes, vaccination is happening, but it's not going to solve the immediate crisis.
I think the fact that it is now winter is the main driver of any difference in outcomes, rather than tinkering at the edges re: garden centres.
My main treat of the week is now a takeaway tuna melt panini at Caffe Nero on a Saturday, and I will be absolutely fuming if the 'hide under the duvet on a public sector furlough' brigade scare the govt into mandating that takeaways be closed. Given I do all the cooking, its more the break than the product! I look forward to it from about Thursday onwards. Quite a difference to trips across Europe buying books, visiting old friends and staying in nice hotels. It is amazing how quickly my life has become so very small.
Twitter claims they plan to end support bubbles.
Madness. Quite literally. Have they asked the psychiatric service (already under severe strain) an opinion on plunging millions of single people into complete social isolation (unless they have to physically go to work)?
I totally agree.
Stop trying to control people's lives even more than is already happening, and start focusing on rolling out the vaccine faster....
Absolutely spot on. I'm amazed how much I agree with you these days.
Shows that even political opponents can find fertile common ground.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Well said. I'm bemused by the entire brevity is the only key to great writing idea.
Since fantasy writing has been brought up, I am a tremendous fan of epic fantasy. Game of Thrones has made this much more popular, but Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is my favourite. I'm guessing Mysticrose would hate it - 14 books (3 finished posthumously by a different author from his notes), mostly about 800 pages each, plus spin off books; brevity is not its strong point.
But what Jordan is good at is creating an epic world, in the mould of Tolkien. Hundreds of characters that come alive, dozens of locations spanning a continent that comes alive. Rose would no doubt say it needs an editor and you could probably chop hundreds of pages from each book without losing any of the key plot - but it would lose the elements that flesh out and invest the reader into what is happening.
I think @MystichardlyJKRowlingrose got themselves in a tizzy because they first started saying a thread should be concise which view certainly has merit.
But then LOTR and The Great Gatsby were chucked in to muddy the waters; using LOTR as an example of great literature in a discussion about how less is more is certainly an interesting approach.
Many literary “snobs” who would scoff at Tolkien, in part for his long-winded waffling, would die in their trench to defend Proust, who is the very definition of waffle.
I’ve read Swann’s Way, and it was very fine, but I’m not sure my life is long enough to do the whole damn Temps Perdu. Perhaps in my 90s.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
She's almost an afterthought though. I struggle to think of more than one or two lines of dialogue spoken by a female character in Fellowship of the Ring and much of the Two Towers involves the actions of a whole species whose women just upped and left a couple of millenia before.
One of the smart moves Peter Jackson made was to replace the vanishingly thin character Glorfindel with Arwen. That worked well in the dash to Rivendell.
Tolkien was very much an old school bachelor though and it does show through.
Tolkien was married for 55 years and had four children.
The government reckons at least 12 million people in England have already had Covid. A huge number. Many of them will have been asymptomatic, so won’t know, but many WILL know, from obvious symptoms, from catching it in an infested household, or, of course, from a test. And we have done tens of millions of tests.
Let’s say just half those 12 million KNOW they’ve had Covid and survived. That’s 6 million people who are now, very likely, immune. And every day thousands more are added to this crowd of immune people, through recovery or vaccination.
If I were definitely immune, unable to catch the virus and much less likely to hand it on (especially as time passes), I’d be very tempted to resume a more normal life as well. Meet other immune friends. Have a life. Have sex. Are these the people now going out and about?
Could be. And I’m not sure it’s even moral to keep these people locked indoors, going mental, if there is no more risk to them, and, increasingly, they are no risk to others.
Yes. And add to that huge and growing number the huge and growing number who haven`t had Covid but have been vaccinated.
This may in the end be our route out of this. Public pressure. Maybe with pressure on the NHS easing the balance will gradually change from minimising health consequences to gradually restoring liberties even though there is risk in the system still. We have to live with this at some level.
Long time lurker here. I wanted to make one point on Lockdown compliance similar to Leon's. In my area of North London 50%+ of our peer Group have had covid. It is extraordinarily difficult to instruct such people to continue to follow lockdown rules when they face little risk themselves and pose little risk to others. This issue will only grow.
I thought scientific jury was still out on whether those who have had Covid and recovered - or been vaccinated - could still carry the virus and transmit it to others?
Though its true that they face little risk themselves.
There's some evidence that all three reduce viral shedding quite a bit, but whether that prevents people from being infectious is not easy to say.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Well said. I'm bemused by the entire brevity is the only key to great writing idea. .
No it's not. But you'd better have a bloody good reason for using 10 words when 1 will do.
I'm lucky to have a great agent, one of the most successful in publishing history. I've learned a lot from him and I read voluminously. I doubt there's anyone on here who has read as many books as I have. That's not bragging just something I've always loved doing. My Oxford don said he'd never come across anyone who had read so much.
The point is that you start to recognise when a writer has got into a mindset where they think verbosity is smart. It's rarely the case. Keep it clean. More is less.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Well said. I'm bemused by the entire brevity is the only key to great writing idea.
Since fantasy writing has been brought up, I am a tremendous fan of epic fantasy. Game of Thrones has made this much more popular, but Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is my favourite. I'm guessing Mysticrose would hate it - 14 books (3 finished posthumously by a different author from his notes), mostly about 800 pages each, plus spin off books; brevity is not its strong point.
But what Jordan is good at is creating an epic world, in the mould of Tolkien. Hundreds of characters that come alive, dozens of locations spanning a continent that comes alive. Rose would no doubt say it needs an editor and you could probably chop hundreds of pages from each book without losing any of the key plot - but it would lose the elements that flesh out and invest the reader into what is happening.
I think @MystichardlyJKRowlingrose got themselves in a tizzy because they first started saying a thread should be concise which view certainly has merit.
But then LOTR and The Great Gatsby were chucked in to muddy the waters; using LOTR as an example of great literature in a discussion about how less is more is certainly an interesting approach.
Many literary “snobs” who would scoff at Tolkien, in part for his long-winded waffling, would die in their trench to defend Proust, who is the very definition of waffle.
I’ve read Swann’s Way, and it was very fine, but I’m not sure my life is long enough to do the whole damn Temps Perdu. Perhaps in my 90s.
The whole point of Proust is the waffle.
Anyway the key is to find the right translation. There are some right stinkers out there.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Haha. What.
I believe Jackie Collins and Tom Clancy were also exceedingly popular. Very hard to repeat what they do, too.
Tolkien will be read, revered and remembered for many decades. 99% of writers are forgotten the day they die, or long before, and this is equally true of esteemed literary fiction as it is of best-selling popular fiction.
The first WINNER of the Booker Prize, in 1969, was.... “P. H. Newby”
I can’t remember who said it, some famous novelist I believe, but there is a celebrated adage in publishing: any author is extremely lucky if his book lives longer than the average cat.
I was amazed, some years ago, when Oryx and Crake came out. Here was the first work for a while, from a literary great, an event.
And in the Sunday Times, it duly came in at No.1 on the best seller lists. Having sold a grant total of 3,450 copies. OK this was before The Handmaid's Tale took off on Netflix but even still.
We really don't read as much as we think we do here.
We certainly don’t read as much “literary fiction” - the stuff that, I presume, Gardenwalker is referring to. The genre is dying on its arse in terms of sales. Advances are now a fraction of what they were. Very few writers can make a living from it.
Why?
Shorter attention spans. Smartphones. And competition from TV drama, which is now so good it makes many novels look painfully boring. But also this (whisper it): a lot of literary fiction is shit, and barely readable, because it has no story. No plot. And that’s what people want. A GOOD STORY, which is much harder to do than a good paragraph.
I am not really talking about the distinction between literary and popular fiction.
Literary fiction can also be bad writing: obscure, prolix, academic.
Good writing is good prose.
Tolkien may tell a great yarn but his prose is wooly, repetitive, and cliched. His characterisation is paper-thin. Hence his main audience is pre-pubescent boys.
That he should have a devoted coincidence on PB is no coincidence. We also have a high number of IT professionals, model toy enthusiasts, and moth-botherers.
That's a lot of words to write: I'm a giant snob.
Which is just weird as several people have managed to list valid criticisms of his work without being snobbish.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
It is a fantastic book and I loved it. When I was twelve. It's hardly SK Tremayne now is it?
Citing it as great writing is the same as citing Harry Potter as great writing.
Who decides what is good writing? I think everyone accepts that mere popularity doesn't indicate quality of a work, but when a work is so influential as a result of the effectiveness of its story telling I'm not sure what is gained from snobbery about its, IDK, academic or artistic quality.
As it happens I think LOTR, despite being one of my favourites, has some pretty obvious flaws in structure and style - the man really could have used an editor - that books in the same genre have bettered, but is it still great writing despite those flaws because it is so impactful?
I think it would be pretty easy to find examples of some officially approved 'great' writing that tells a shitty story with shitty characters and disappeared without a trace.
So I'm not sure that the line between great and not great writing is really as identifiable as we might wish.
LOTR is simply a fantastic story. Its crowning achievement is to invent a wholly new plot, which is usually thought to be impossible. Invading Sauron's lair and doing him in would be commonplace; having to invade it with the pacifistic-looking purpose of throwing a ring into a hole changes the dynamic of the whole story.
Crying out for editing, mind. Why does it take 1,000 pages to get to the Council of Elrond, and what is that hippified bore Tom Bombadil for?
The movies, though not perfect, really did make some improvements in that respect. I used to read it about once a year, but it has been quite a while now, and it is more of a slog than it used to be (worth noting that plenty of fantasy stories are far longer than LOTR, but don't necessarily feel it.)
The movies were a disaster, a cgi fairground ride through toy town devoid of any cinematic worth.
Interesting thread from observers on the ground. The utter lack of federal forces or even basic event security cannot be anything other than deliberate. Which points quite firmly at it being an organised coup attempt.
If there really were 'machinations' to have no security at the Capitol, it surely points more to events there being an orchestration against Trump, not by him.
Why? The insurgents taking hostages was a key part of his plan. Whip up the crowd. Withdraw security. Stop the certification. A hostage crisis. Martial Law.
Next you'll be telling us how they were all Antifa.
By all accounts, 'the Capitol Police were offered help but refused it:
That points to the most likely thing being sheer incompetence / not expecting the demonstration to turn violent. To be fair, there is the suggestion the Police were stung by the criticism they received last year for how the DC demonstrations were handled. Also, rallies where Trump speaks don't have a history of violence afterwards.
Mind you, it does look like one BLM chap was there:
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
I don't mind people spounting off about how they were right about seeing the threat that Trump posed, if they did (and if their reasoning was right) - as long as they have a similar record of flagging up equivalent threats from elsewhere on the political spectrum too.
There are no equivalent threats in any developed country anywhere else on the political spectrum. There's a genre of journalism where you pretend that there's an equivalence somewhere for the sake of balance, but I don't think it convinces anyone.
Bizarre whataboutery from Herdson. There are some really mad takes from this Trump biz.
It's not whataboutery and it's not bizarre.
The point is about consistency and judgement. Someone who has railed against Trump for years might well have done so because they understood his nature, his methods and his threat. Fair call. Chapeau.
On the other hand, they might have done it because he is a crass boor and aligned to the populist right - neither of which is necessary nor sufficient of themselves (or even together), to point to his true threat to the system and to freedoms and safety.
Where the critic's reasoning is the latter, it's much more likely that (1) they'll have given similar but misguided threats about many other politicians on the right, and seen such predictions go wrong; and (2) not made any predictions of that nature about others who do pose systemic threats but do so from a different angle of attack. The context and the reasoning of the critic is essential to understand whether they actually had good judgement or were simply a stopped clock at the right time.
This is angel-counting guff while the tanks are circling Berlin as far as I’m concerned.
The problem is Trump and the safety of democracy in the USA, not phantoms from “different angles of attack”, whatever they are supposed to be.
If people want to feel smugly vindicated in their antipathy to Trump, more power to their elbow. His anti-democratic instincts may not have been completely obvious but it was clear from the outset that he was happy to whip up hate against minorities, immigrants, the disabled, women etc.
He was always more than “just a crass boor”.
Let me put it this way then. Yes, of course Trump was more than just a crass boor. But how many of those who've said "Trump was always this massive threat" have said the same about, say, Johnson?
An inability (or disinclination) to distinguish between populists and how far they would be prepared to go renders a lot of their analysis worthless if it pronounces them all much of a muchness, when they aren't.
Although via Cummings he clearly mimicked him at crucial moments, such as the boorish and inflammatory "surrender bill" , and at other times some of the more ironic nudge-and-wink extremity, Johnson still isn't quite the same sort of populist as Trump.
It's been Cummings that was the loudest voice of British Trumpism into his ear. During the menacingly shameless downing street press conference, which could have been Trump's, he also suddenly modulated his voice to a more of a local Durham than I've ever heard from him. It was the 'unashamed streetwise against worthy, liberal delusions' schtick again.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
It is a fantastic book and I loved it. When I was twelve. It's hardly SK Tremayne now is it?
Citing it as great writing is the same as citing Harry Potter as great writing.
Who decides what is good writing? I think everyone accepts that mere popularity doesn't indicate quality of a work, but when a work is so influential as a result of the effectiveness of its story telling I'm not sure what is gained from snobbery about its, IDK, academic or artistic quality.
As it happens I think LOTR, despite being one of my favourites, has some pretty obvious flaws in structure and style - the man really could have used an editor - that books in the same genre have bettered, but is it still great writing despite those flaws because it is so impactful?
I think it would be pretty easy to find examples of some officially approved 'great' writing that tells a shitty story with shitty characters and disappeared without a trace.
So I'm not sure that the line between great and not great writing is really as identifiable as we might wish.
LOTR is simply a fantastic story. Its crowning achievement is to invent a wholly new plot, which is usually thought to be impossible. Invading Sauron's lair and doing him in would be commonplace; having to invade it with the pacifistic-looking purpose of throwing a ring into a hole changes the dynamic of the whole story.
Crying out for editing, mind. Why does it take 1,000 pages to get to the Council of Elrond, and what is that hippified bore Tom Bombadil for?
The movies, though not perfect, really did make some improvements in that respect. I used to read it about once a year, but it has been quite a while now, and it is more of a slog than it used to be (worth noting that plenty of fantasy stories are far longer than LOTR, but don't necessarily feel it.)
The movies were a disaster, a cgi fairground ride through toy town devoid of any cinematic worth.
thats why the last one only won 11 oscars....
So did Titanic, and that's so bad it's almost unwatchable.
Incidentally, of the films I've always liked the Fellowship of the Ring, and the Return of the King is not without its moments, but The Two Towers, oh my goodness. Complete fiasco.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
She's almost an afterthought though. I struggle to think of more than one or two lines of dialogue spoken by a female character in Fellowship of the Ring and much of the Two Towers involves the actions of a whole species whose women just upped and left a couple of millenia before.
One of the smart moves Peter Jackson made was to replace the vanishingly thin character Glorfindel with Arwen. That worked well in the dash to Rivendell.
Tolkien was very much an old school bachelor though and it does show through.
Dont watch the Tolkein biopic I warn you. Most biopics are dull, but one about a philologist?
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Haha. What.
I believe Jackie Collins and Tom Clancy were also exceedingly popular. Very hard to repeat what they do, too.
Tolkien will be read, revered and remembered for many decades. 99% of writers are forgotten the day they die, or long before, and this is equally true of esteemed literary fiction as it is of best-selling popular fiction.
The first WINNER of the Booker Prize, in 1969, was.... “P. H. Newby”
I can’t remember who said it, some famous novelist I believe, but there is a celebrated adage in publishing: any author is extremely lucky if his book lives longer than the average cat.
I was amazed, some years ago, when Oryx and Crake came out. Here was the first work for a while, from a literary great, an event.
And in the Sunday Times, it duly came in at No.1 on the best seller lists. Having sold a grant total of 3,450 copies. OK this was before The Handmaid's Tale took off on Netflix but even still.
We really don't read as much as we think we do here.
We certainly don’t read as much “literary fiction” - the stuff that, I presume, Gardenwalker is referring to. The genre is dying on its arse in terms of sales. Advances are now a fraction of what they were. Very few writers can make a living from it.
Why?
Shorter attention spans. Smartphones. And competition from TV drama, which is now so good it makes many novels look painfully boring. But also this (whisper it): a lot of literary fiction is shit, and barely readable, because it has no story. No plot. And that’s what people want. A GOOD STORY, which is much harder to do than a good paragraph.
I am not really talking about the distinction between literary and popular fiction.
Literary fiction can also be bad writing: obscure, prolix, academic.
Good writing is good prose.
Tolkien may tell a great yarn but his prose is wooly, repetitive, and cliched. His characterisation is paper-thin. Hence his main audience is pre-pubescent boys.
That he should have a devoted coincidence on PB is no coincidence. We also have a high number of IT professionals, model toy enthusiasts, and moth-botherers.
That's a lot of words to write: I'm a giant snob.
Which is just weird as several people have managed to list valid criticisms of his work without being snobbish.
No particular offence is intended.
Is there anything I’ve written you’d actually disagree with?
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
It is a fantastic book and I loved it. When I was twelve. It's hardly SK Tremayne now is it?
Citing it as great writing is the same as citing Harry Potter as great writing.
Who decides what is good writing? I think everyone accepts that mere popularity doesn't indicate quality of a work, but when a work is so influential as a result of the effectiveness of its story telling I'm not sure what is gained from snobbery about its, IDK, academic or artistic quality.
As it happens I think LOTR, despite being one of my favourites, has some pretty obvious flaws in structure and style - the man really could have used an editor - that books in the same genre have bettered, but is it still great writing despite those flaws because it is so impactful?
I think it would be pretty easy to find examples of some officially approved 'great' writing that tells a shitty story with shitty characters and disappeared without a trace.
So I'm not sure that the line between great and not great writing is really as identifiable as we might wish.
LOTR is simply a fantastic story. Its crowning achievement is to invent a wholly new plot, which is usually thought to be impossible. Invading Sauron's lair and doing him in would be commonplace; having to invade it with the pacifistic-looking purpose of throwing a ring into a hole changes the dynamic of the whole story.
Crying out for editing, mind. Why does it take 1,000 pages to get to the Council of Elrond, and what is that hippified bore Tom Bombadil for?
The same could be said of Moby Dick and Les Miserables.
Both are a fairly short story with The Mother All Digressions Everytime Anything Happens.
As I (coincidentally) said the other day here, Melville takes a whole chapter just to discuss the whale's foreskin. IIRC the only excuse is that they've got to that bit, so to speak, when they are flensing the whale. Whic h I supose counts as 'something happening'.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
There is also the fact that a lot more effort has been put into trying to keep open. In the first lockdown, most coffee shops etc just shut. Now they are open.
And why is that? Because the financial support simply isn't there. Why is Daughter still doing takeaways (and very safely too)? Because the financial support now is very much less, what has been promised still hasn't been paid, furlough is less than it was and the bills still need paying.
Both sons work in food shops. One has been sent home to isolate because a co-worker caught Covid and so he's waiting for a test to see whether he's got it. I pray daily that he doesn't because it puts my husband and other son at risk. But at least his employer is still paying him. Others are not so fortunate. Sunak's meanness with support is undermining what is necessary on the health side.
If the government imposes more restrictions without providing more support then it will simply lead to a greater economic collapse than we're already facing.
I assume your daughter structured her business as a limited company. If she were S/E it may have been different. I do think there is so much unfairness in all this and Sunak will not escape criticism over it. The difference between the money thrown at some S/E people compared to the paltry sums/nothing/loans to those who are ltd (though regard themselves as self employed) is extraordinary.
Talking fiction, I read another tranche of War & Peace yesterday. The Frenchies have had their arses kicked.
I am enjoying it greatly. Good writing (presumably a good translator) and a good story. And I know who is who and what is going on, which isn't always the case.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Sort your reflexive pronouns out.
Don't end a sentence with a preposition.
Now bog off.
The proscription against preposition stranding is a stylistic imprecation from Dryden. There is no grammatical rule in modern English which forbids it. The type of English up with which I will not put, etc.
Is "routinely wears" a split infinitive?
No, and the rule against split infinitives is pants anyway.
I`m not disagreeing about the "pants" thing, but why isn`t it a split infinitive?
Not an infinitive at all. An infinitive is "to love," a split infinitive is "to routinely love."
I like the split infinitive. In fact to me it can look clumsy when avoided. Not always. It depends.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
It is a fantastic book and I loved it. When I was twelve. It's hardly SK Tremayne now is it?
Citing it as great writing is the same as citing Harry Potter as great writing.
Who decides what is good writing? I think everyone accepts that mere popularity doesn't indicate quality of a work, but when a work is so influential as a result of the effectiveness of its story telling I'm not sure what is gained from snobbery about its, IDK, academic or artistic quality.
As it happens I think LOTR, despite being one of my favourites, has some pretty obvious flaws in structure and style - the man really could have used an editor - that books in the same genre have bettered, but is it still great writing despite those flaws because it is so impactful?
I think it would be pretty easy to find examples of some officially approved 'great' writing that tells a shitty story with shitty characters and disappeared without a trace.
So I'm not sure that the line between great and not great writing is really as identifiable as we might wish.
LOTR is simply a fantastic story. Its crowning achievement is to invent a wholly new plot, which is usually thought to be impossible. Invading Sauron's lair and doing him in would be commonplace; having to invade it with the pacifistic-looking purpose of throwing a ring into a hole changes the dynamic of the whole story.
Crying out for editing, mind. Why does it take 1,000 pages to get to the Council of Elrond, and what is that hippified bore Tom Bombadil for?
The movies, though not perfect, really did make some improvements in that respect. I used to read it about once a year, but it has been quite a while now, and it is more of a slog than it used to be (worth noting that plenty of fantasy stories are far longer than LOTR, but don't necessarily feel it.)
The movies were a disaster, a cgi fairground ride through toy town devoid of any cinematic worth.
If there is a point, underlying reason for existence to all the phooey LOTR nonsense, Gandalf rides away from them to visit Tom. Wait, they say, we need help in the Shire. What do you think your experiences in the real world was meant for, he replies. True enough, thanks to rite of passage they return changed, made bigger, not just by the Ent Draughts. They become Masters and mayors.
Jackson cut all that to have them second fiddle to large root vegetables. Removed the works only nod to true value.
I always felt that The Hobbit changed halfway from a children's book to one for adults, or at least almost adults. And that Tolkien went on from there. LOTR I thought started well, then, in the second part went off the wall, but came back ind the third. TBH, I found The Silmarillon unreadable.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Haha. What.
I believe Jackie Collins and Tom Clancy were also exceedingly popular. Very hard to repeat what they do, too.
Tolkien will be read, revered and remembered for many decades. 99% of writers are forgotten the day they die, or long before, and this is equally true of esteemed literary fiction as it is of best-selling popular fiction.
The first WINNER of the Booker Prize, in 1969, was.... “P. H. Newby”
I can’t remember who said it, some famous novelist I believe, but there is a celebrated adage in publishing: any author is extremely lucky if his book lives longer than the average cat.
I was amazed, some years ago, when Oryx and Crake came out. Here was the first work for a while, from a literary great, an event.
And in the Sunday Times, it duly came in at No.1 on the best seller lists. Having sold a grant total of 3,450 copies. OK this was before The Handmaid's Tale took off on Netflix but even still.
We really don't read as much as we think we do here.
We certainly don’t read as much “literary fiction” - the stuff that, I presume, Gardenwalker is referring to. The genre is dying on its arse in terms of sales. Advances are now a fraction of what they were. Very few writers can make a living from it.
Why?
Shorter attention spans. Smartphones. And competition from TV drama, which is now so good it makes many novels look painfully boring. But also this (whisper it): a lot of literary fiction is shit, and barely readable, because it has no story. No plot. And that’s what people want. A GOOD STORY, which is much harder to do than a good paragraph.
I am not really talking about the distinction between literary and popular fiction.
Literary fiction can also be bad writing: obscure, prolix, academic.
Good writing is good prose.
Tolkien may tell a great yarn but his prose is wooly, repetitive, and cliched. His characterisation is paper-thin. Hence his main audience is pre-pubescent boys.
That he should have a devoted coincidence on PB is no coincidence. We also have a high number of IT professionals, model toy enthusiasts, and moth-botherers.
And artisanal flint dildo producers.
Only the one I think, and I suspect he may be something of a dabbler.
Talking fiction, I read another tranche of War & Peace yesterday. The Frenchies have had their arses kicked.
I am enjoying it greatly. Good writing (presumably a good translator) and a good story. And I know who is who and what is going on, which isn't always the case.
But the ending. OMG the ending. The worst ending to a great classic ever?
The PM wants the G1. Britannia Uber Alles. Rule makers that everyone else will obey.
"No he doesn't" whine the parrots. Erm yes. "Rule makers not rule takers" is putting us on a pedestal. EVERY country obeys rules set by others. What kind of wazzock thinks we are somehow different, above these forriners, better than all of them?
Bollocks.
No country obey's rules are forced set by others apart from supplicants. America doesn't obey rules set by France. Canada doesn't obey rules set by Germany. Japan doesn't obey rules set by China.
"Ah but if I want to trade with France I need to meet French rules" you cry - yes of course you do. Because that now is de jure French rules that apply in France. No s**t Sherlock. Doesn't mean the French rules apply to the UK, just that someone who wants to trade needs to meet the relevant rules - if you don't want to meet the relevant rules then don't trade. Your choice.
"Ah but what about NATO" you cry. NATO is a common and fixed set of rules we ourselves set when we choose to be members. The rules can't be changed by a majority vote without us.
The only exception I can think of is the UNSC but we are veto members of that.
Bollocks back at you. This country government to set the rules for how we trade and have other countries obey us. Thats literally what the Johnson and May governments have been saying for years. That most of the people out there voting for Brexit don't have a clue how things work doesn't matter, its been wall to wall jingoism. What should have been funnier was that the politicians doing the deal don't know how things work either.
Which is why the likes of Andrea Leadsome get rolled out in the media to tell the ex head of the WTO that he is wrong about the WTO. Don't like the EU telling us what to do? Vote Brexit! Then we can go WTO and tell other people what to do. Rule sodding Britannia and all that.
Rule Makers, not Rule Takers. That every country is a rule taker isn't the issue. Its that they have whipped the ill-informed into believe it.
You're the one bringing trade into it. I don't recall Johnson ever saying we will have other countries obey us - if they've been saying it for years and it isn't just bollocks you've invented it should be easy to provide a quote for them saying it.
Setting our own rules means setting our own rules domestically. Not internationally.
Trade is an entirely voluntary action and involves meeting the rules of whomever you are trading with - but if you don't want to do that you don't have to. You can cease trading with them and then their rules no longer apply to you.
This country is not a rule taker. If you obey EU rules when you trade with the EU then that is your choice. You can choose to not trade with them too and then you don't need to. Choice is yours, nothing is taken.
Talking fiction, I read another tranche of War & Peace yesterday. The Frenchies have had their arses kicked.
I am enjoying it greatly. Good writing (presumably a good translator) and a good story. And I know who is who and what is going on, which isn't always the case.
*Thinks gloomily of reading Dr Zhivago at A-level*
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Well said. I'm bemused by the entire brevity is the only key to great writing idea.
Since fantasy writing has been brought up, I am a tremendous fan of epic fantasy. Game of Thrones has made this much more popular, but Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is my favourite. I'm guessing Mysticrose would hate it - 14 books (3 finished posthumously by a different author from his notes), mostly about 800 pages each, plus spin off books; brevity is not its strong point.
But what Jordan is good at is creating an epic world, in the mould of Tolkien. Hundreds of characters that come alive, dozens of locations spanning a continent that comes alive. Rose would no doubt say it needs an editor and you could probably chop hundreds of pages from each book without losing any of the key plot - but it would lose the elements that flesh out and invest the reader into what is happening.
I think @MystichardlyJKRowlingrose got themselves in a tizzy because they first started saying a thread should be concise which view certainly has merit.
But then LOTR and The Great Gatsby were chucked in to muddy the waters; using LOTR as an example of great literature in a discussion about how less is more is certainly an interesting approach.
Many literary “snobs” who would scoff at Tolkien, in part for his long-winded waffling, would die in their trench to defend Proust, who is the very definition of waffle.
I’ve read Swann’s Way, and it was very fine, but I’m not sure my life is long enough to do the whole damn Temps Perdu. Perhaps in my 90s.
The whole point of Proust is the waffle.
Anyway the key is to find the right translation. There are some right stinkers out there.
Quite alot of the *point* of LOTR is the waffle. Yes, you can edit the story to a slim volume. But part of the appeal of that kind of writing is the journey through the book itself.
You could easily make Moby Dick into quite a short story. Would you?
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
There is also the fact that a lot more effort has been put into trying to keep open. In the first lockdown, most coffee shops etc just shut. Now they are open.
And why is that? Because the financial support simply isn't there. Why is Daughter still doing takeaways (and very safely too)? Because the financial support now is very much less, what has been promised still hasn't been paid, furlough is less than it was and the bills still need paying.
Both sons work in food shops. One has been sent home to isolate because a co-worker caught Covid and so he's waiting for a test to see whether he's got it. I pray daily that he doesn't because it puts my husband and other son at risk. But at least his employer is still paying him. Others are not so fortunate. Sunak's meanness with support is undermining what is necessary on the health side.
If the government imposes more restrictions without providing more support then it will simply lead to a greater economic collapse than we're already facing.
I assume your daughter structured her business as a limited company. If she were S/E it may have been different. I do think there is so much unfairness in all this and Sunak will not escape criticism over it. The difference between the money thrown at some S/E people compared to the paltry sums/nothing/loans to those who are ltd (though regard themselves as self employed) is extraordinary.
Our tax/corporate structure system needs looking at. The concept of setting up a company to pay low wages and high dividends for owner mangers has nearly run its course, and led to this issue.
And I say that as an accountant, which has been setting these things up for nigh on 20 years.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
Top Gear had a majority female audience ??? !!!
Of all the things I've ever seen on here that make me go, "Oh come on. source please and even then I won't believe it", this one takes the biscuit.
Many literary “snobs” who would scoff at Tolkien, in part for his long-winded waffling, would die in their trench to defend Proust, who is the very definition of waffle.
I’ve read Swann’s Way, and it was very fine, but I’m not sure my life is long enough to do the whole damn Temps Perdu. Perhaps in my 90s.
Proust once got me a job offer. Not many people can say that.
I'd put 'reading' as one of my interests. The interviewer asked me what I'd read recently, and I replied [truthfully!] À la recherche du temps perdu. It turned out that he was a great Proust fan, but I was one up on him because I'd read the book in French, but he had only read Proust in translation.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
Top Gear had a majority female audience ??? !!!
Of all the things I've ever seen on here that make me go, "Oh come on. source please and even then I won't believe it", this one takes the biscuit.
James May's rugged good looks were just irresistible!
It's very simple to do the thought experiment on how Trumpers were and are so fired up over the election. Take everything you know about the election and imagine Trump actually was the declared winner. It literally would have been stolen from Biden.
Now simply reverse Biden/Trump and the MAGA reality delusion makes perfect sense.
We were long warned about the red mirage. In key places they counted the votes cast first, last. Legitimacy was deliberately dressed up to look suspicious.
Try to imagine a film the same wrong way round, like Jaws, a shark going round spewing out live people.
When it reached the crescendo of chanting stop the count in Penn, chanting keep counting in Arizona they were finished. An embarrassment of bad manners and zilch diplomacy.
Who would have thought, you can get away with lack of grace and diplomacy when winning, but not when you are losing?
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don`t see why a piece of writing has to have only one point.
And Nery`s doesn't claim to be a nurse.
Yes it's *his* wife that is the nurse. *He* is a builder.
I do understand why people get confused however – regardless of the fact 25% of nurses are male, our subconscious bias response is that a nurse is female and Nerys uses a female name despite being a bloke!
Talking fiction, I read another tranche of War & Peace yesterday. The Frenchies have had their arses kicked.
I am enjoying it greatly. Good writing (presumably a good translator) and a good story. And I know who is who and what is going on, which isn't always the case.
Again, could use an editor. Thankfully all the "It's not about individuals" historiography bollocks is in standalone chapters which you can just skip. Best novel ever, though.
Talking fiction, I read another tranche of War & Peace yesterday. The Frenchies have had their arses kicked.
I am enjoying it greatly. Good writing (presumably a good translator) and a good story. And I know who is who and what is going on, which isn't always the case.
*Thinks gloomily of reading Dr Zhivago at A-level*
I read Dr Z for fun at about that age. It wasn't as much fun towards the end though.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
I'll bite.
It's unreadable rubbish, mostly read and admired by those with the minds of teenage boys.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
She's almost an afterthought though. I struggle to think of more than one or two lines of dialogue spoken by a female character in Fellowship of the Ring and much of the Two Towers involves the actions of a whole species whose women just upped and left a couple of millenia before.
One of the smart moves Peter Jackson made was to replace the vanishingly thin character Glorfindel with Arwen. That worked well in the dash to Rivendell.
Tolkien was very much an old school bachelor though and it does show through.
Tolkien was married for 55 years and had four children.
OTOH, he could go into Merton and be an old bachelor fellow whenever he wanted, effectively. Don't recall enough about him to judge how far he did that, thouigh.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
Top Gear had a majority female audience ??? !!!
Of all the things I've ever seen on here that make me go, "Oh come on. source please and even then I won't believe it", this one takes the biscuit.
Me too! That I simply cannot believe for a minute.
I doubt Trump is ever going to be POTUS again after Vanilla ISIS failed to take the Winter Palace but I could see him dropping down a division to stay in the game. Maybe Senator or Governor of Florida?
It's straight out of the Berlusconi playbook which is the closest thing we have to EuroTrump (after Johnson).
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
I'll bite.
It's unreadable rubbish, mostly read and admired by those with the minds of teenage boys.
I somehow have the feeling that the minds of PB might not come to a consensus on this one...
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don`t see why a piece of writing has to have only one point.
And Nery`s doesn't claim to be a nurse.
Yes it's *his* wife that is the nurse. *He* is a builder.
I do understand why people get confused however – regardless of the fact 25% of nurses are male, our subconscious bias response is that a nurse is female and Nerys uses a female name despite being a bloke!
How do we know that Nerys is a bloke?
I think he has said so. Although it might be my subconscious bias response: builder = bloke.
(That said, in that case, that's a fair assumption – only 3 in 10,000 builders are female)
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
It is a fantastic book and I loved it. When I was twelve. It's hardly SK Tremayne now is it?
Citing it as great writing is the same as citing Harry Potter as great writing.
I would disagree. It may not be considered as a great piece of literature as many consider it to be overlong and many others - the snobs - do not think that any work of such fantasy can be literature, but it is very well written.
Harry Potter on the other hand is not well written. In fact it is appallingly written. It gets away with this because it is undoubtedly a fantastic story. One of the best which will long be considered a classic children's tale. But the writing - nah.
Tolkein was a scholar and had an intinsic love of language and his writing shows that. What Rowling has over him is women. HP has a lot of characters, starting with Hermione Granger but not limited to her, that female readers can buy into. With the possible exception of Éowyn, who has a very minor part, there are no women in LOTR for girls to relate to, just demi-goddesses like Galadriel up on a very high pedistal. So JKR has a head start with over half the book buying public.
LOTR is great. I like Tolkien's acceptance that its only fault is that it is too short. If true it would be the exception to prove the rule.
It's not perfect writing. At times it's clunky and sometimes absurdly flowery. The poems and songs are a bit naff. But some of his prose is glorious. His descriptions of landscape are superb. And take a look at his brilliant non-descriptive descriptiveness of Gollum. It's worthy of a study in its own right. He wonderfully portrays 'the creature Gollum' as variously like a frog, a spider, a bony creature, a bird etc. etc.
And yes he was a towering philologist.
This suddenly makes me wonder if he had been inspired by the pickled and stuffed specimens in the University Museum at Oxford, or perhaps a childhood visit to some natural history gallery.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
She's almost an afterthought though. I struggle to think of more than one or two lines of dialogue spoken by a female character in Fellowship of the Ring and much of the Two Towers involves the actions of a whole species whose women just upped and left a couple of millenia before.
One of the smart moves Peter Jackson made was to replace the vanishingly thin character Glorfindel with Arwen. That worked well in the dash to Rivendell.
Tolkien was very much an old school bachelor though and it does show through.
Tolkien was married for 55 years and had four children.
OTOH, he could go into Merton and be an old bachelor fellow whenever he wanted, effectively. Don't recall enough about him to judge how far he did that, thouigh.
That's an old college bachelor, not an old school bachelor.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
It is a fantastic book and I loved it. When I was twelve. It's hardly SK Tremayne now is it?
Citing it as great writing is the same as citing Harry Potter as great writing.
Who decides what is good writing? I think everyone accepts that mere popularity doesn't indicate quality of a work, but when a work is so influential as a result of the effectiveness of its story telling I'm not sure what is gained from snobbery about its, IDK, academic or artistic quality.
As it happens I think LOTR, despite being one of my favourites, has some pretty obvious flaws in structure and style - the man really could have used an editor - that books in the same genre have bettered, but is it still great writing despite those flaws because it is so impactful?
I think it would be pretty easy to find examples of some officially approved 'great' writing that tells a shitty story with shitty characters and disappeared without a trace.
So I'm not sure that the line between great and not great writing is really as identifiable as we might wish.
LOTR is simply a fantastic story. Its crowning achievement is to invent a wholly new plot, which is usually thought to be impossible. Invading Sauron's lair and doing him in would be commonplace; having to invade it with the pacifistic-looking purpose of throwing a ring into a hole changes the dynamic of the whole story.
Crying out for editing, mind. Why does it take 1,000 pages to get to the Council of Elrond, and what is that hippified bore Tom Bombadil for?
The movies, though not perfect, really did make some improvements in that respect. I used to read it about once a year, but it has been quite a while now, and it is more of a slog than it used to be (worth noting that plenty of fantasy stories are far longer than LOTR, but don't necessarily feel it.)
The movies were a disaster, a cgi fairground ride through toy town devoid of any cinematic worth.
If there is a point, underlying reason for existence to all the phooey LOTR nonsense, Gandalf rides away from them to visit Tom. Wait, they say, we need help in the Shire. What do you think your experiences in the real world was meant for, he replies. True enough, thanks to rite of passage they return changed, made bigger, not just by the Ent Draughts. They become Masters and mayors.
Jackson cut all that to have them second fiddle to large root vegetables. Removed the works only nod to true value.
I always felt that The Hobbit changed halfway from a children's book to one for adults, or at least almost adults. And that Tolkien went on from there. LOTR I thought started well, then, in the second part went off the wall, but came back ind the third. TBH, I found The Silmarillon unreadable.
The Hobbit is a lot sharper and works well as a single novel. Kids love it and most adults can read it with enjoyment.
LOTR is an epic, the like of which has seldom been attempted and never with the same degree of success. I find the language arch, some passages excruciatingly dull and his female characters are mostly uninteresting, but it's a story of breathtaking imagination.
It deserves its place in the pantheon, albeit in a class of one.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Haha. What.
I believe Jackie Collins and Tom Clancy were also exceedingly popular. Very hard to repeat what they do, too.
Tolkien will be read, revered and remembered for many decades. 99% of writers are forgotten the day they die, or long before, and this is equally true of esteemed literary fiction as it is of best-selling popular fiction.
The first WINNER of the Booker Prize, in 1969, was.... “P. H. Newby”
I can’t remember who said it, some famous novelist I believe, but there is a celebrated adage in publishing: any author is extremely lucky if his book lives longer than the average cat.
I was amazed, some years ago, when Oryx and Crake came out. Here was the first work for a while, from a literary great, an event.
And in the Sunday Times, it duly came in at No.1 on the best seller lists. Having sold a grant total of 3,450 copies. OK this was before The Handmaid's Tale took off on Netflix but even still.
We really don't read as much as we think we do here.
We certainly don’t read as much “literary fiction” - the stuff that, I presume, Gardenwalker is referring to. The genre is dying on its arse in terms of sales. Advances are now a fraction of what they were. Very few writers can make a living from it.
Why?
Shorter attention spans. Smartphones. And competition from TV drama, which is now so good it makes many novels look painfully boring. But also this (whisper it): a lot of literary fiction is shit, and barely readable, because it has no story. No plot. And that’s what people want. A GOOD STORY, which is much harder to do than a good paragraph.
I am not really talking about the distinction between literary and popular fiction.
Literary fiction can also be bad writing: obscure, prolix, academic.
Good writing is good prose.
Tolkien may tell a great yarn but his prose is wooly, repetitive, and cliched. His characterisation is paper-thin. Hence his main audience is pre-pubescent boys.
That he should have a devoted coincidence on PB is no coincidence. We also have a high number of IT professionals, model toy enthusiasts, and moth-botherers.
May Tineola bisselliella leave your garments with gaping holes and may Plodia interpunctella lay waste to your cornflakes.....
Talking fiction, I read another tranche of War & Peace yesterday. The Frenchies have had their arses kicked.
I am enjoying it greatly. Good writing (presumably a good translator) and a good story. And I know who is who and what is going on, which isn't always the case.
But the ending. OMG the ending. The worst ending to a great classic ever?
Its crowning glory. That is how things end - not with grand denouements and happy ever afters, they just end - in fact they don't even end. Life goes on.
If only someone had told the writers that at Game of Thrones.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Well said. I'm bemused by the entire brevity is the only key to great writing idea.
Since fantasy writing has been brought up, I am a tremendous fan of epic fantasy. Game of Thrones has made this much more popular, but Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is my favourite. I'm guessing Mysticrose would hate it - 14 books (3 finished posthumously by a different author from his notes), mostly about 800 pages each, plus spin off books; brevity is not its strong point.
But what Jordan is good at is creating an epic world, in the mould of Tolkien. Hundreds of characters that come alive, dozens of locations spanning a continent that comes alive. Rose would no doubt say it needs an editor and you could probably chop hundreds of pages from each book without losing any of the key plot - but it would lose the elements that flesh out and invest the reader into what is happening.
I think @MystichardlyJKRowlingrose got themselves in a tizzy because they first started saying a thread should be concise which view certainly has merit.
But then LOTR and The Great Gatsby were chucked in to muddy the waters; using LOTR as an example of great literature in a discussion about how less is more is certainly an interesting approach.
Many literary “snobs” who would scoff at Tolkien, in part for his long-winded waffling, would die in their trench to defend Proust, who is the very definition of waffle.
I’ve read Swann’s Way, and it was very fine, but I’m not sure my life is long enough to do the whole damn Temps Perdu. Perhaps in my 90s.
The whole point of Proust is the waffle.
Anyway the key is to find the right translation. There are some right stinkers out there.
Quite alot of the *point* of LOTR is the waffle. Yes, you can edit the story to a slim volume. But part of the appeal of that kind of writing is the journey through the book itself.
You could easily make Moby Dick into quite a short story. Would you?
Dunno. Never been able to start it.
I did once take a leak in the garden at Seamen’s Bethel, New Bedford, Massachusetts though; I was absolutely busting.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
There is also the fact that a lot more effort has been put into trying to keep open. In the first lockdown, most coffee shops etc just shut. Now they are open.
And why is that? Because the financial support simply isn't there. Why is Daughter still doing takeaways (and very safely too)? Because the financial support now is very much less, what has been promised still hasn't been paid, furlough is less than it was and the bills still need paying.
Both sons work in food shops. One has been sent home to isolate because a co-worker caught Covid and so he's waiting for a test to see whether he's got it. I pray daily that he doesn't because it puts my husband and other son at risk. But at least his employer is still paying him. Others are not so fortunate. Sunak's meanness with support is undermining what is necessary on the health side.
If the government imposes more restrictions without providing more support then it will simply lead to a greater economic collapse than we're already facing.
I assume your daughter structured her business as a limited company. If she were S/E it may have been different. I do think there is so much unfairness in all this and Sunak will not escape criticism over it. The difference between the money thrown at some S/E people compared to the paltry sums/nothing/loans to those who are ltd (though regard themselves as self employed) is extraordinary.
Our tax/corporate structure system needs looking at. The concept of setting up a company to pay low wages and high dividends for owner mangers has nearly run its course, and led to this issue.
And I say that as an accountant, which has been setting these things up for nigh on 20 years.
There is a liability issue as well, no? Certainly one of the main reasons I went ltd as opposed to S/E
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don`t see why a piece of writing has to have only one point.
And Nery`s doesn't claim to be a nurse.
Yes it's *his* wife that is the nurse. *He* is a builder.
I do understand why people get confused however – regardless of the fact 25% of nurses are male, our subconscious bias response is that a nurse is female and Nerys uses a female name despite being a bloke!
How do we know that Nerys is a bloke?
I think he has said so. Although it might be my subconscious bias response: builder = bloke.
(That said, in that case, that's a fair assumption – only 3 in 10,000 builders are female)
She (he?) works for a construction company. Accounts manager or something. Not a hairy-arsed bricklayer.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
Top Gear had a majority female audience ??? !!!
Of all the things I've ever seen on here that make me go, "Oh come on. source please and even then I won't believe it", this one takes the biscuit.
Me too! That I simply cannot believe for a minute.
The only time Ms C sat through a Top Gear was when it was put on the screen in an internal Australian flight - the local male pax all laughing like horses.
FPT (and other threads) - I must say I find all this "I was right about Trump all along - here's what I said and here's how right I was; here's what you said, and here's how you wrong *you* were. Hahaha." stuff pretty unedifying.
Gloating is one thing but it's worse than that: it's almost as if they're half-pleased Trump has crossed the Rubicon, because they can now be vindicated.
I don't mind admitting I got Trump wrong. I thought he was a windbag who was full of hot air but would ultimately slip away after losing election after blasting off about how he still thought he was right and would come back one day (or one of his acolytes) once the Dems had failed.
I was wrong about that. I am wrong about things all the time. I don't mind admitting that. I'd also say that so is everyone else. There's no such a thing as a Sage who's a perfect predictor of the future all the time.
So, a little more magnanimity and a little less narcissism from those who got it right would be appreciated please.
Hubris can read its ugly head very quickly.
It's a strength to admit to past mistakes, so kudos to you for that. But I don't really care about that right now.
I'm worried by what Trump, or his supporters, might still do while he is still - somehow - allowed to remain as President.
So if people who previously said he wouldn't be as bad as we feared now say that he's a busted flush (no idea if that includes you) then it might be relevant to bring up the prior miscalculation.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
Top Gear had a majority female audience ??? !!!
Of all the things I've ever seen on here that make me go, "Oh come on. source please and even then I won't believe it", this one takes the biscuit.
All I can add is that my two daughters (17 and 15) absolutely love it. More than I do.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
Top Gear had a majority female audience ??? !!!
Of all the things I've ever seen on here that make me go, "Oh come on. source please and even then I won't believe it", this one takes the biscuit.
Me too! That I simply cannot believe for a minute.
The only time Ms C sat through a Top Gear was when it was put on the screen in an internal Australian flight - the local male pax all laughing like horses.
Mrs Anabobzina absolutely hates it and considers it to be an exposition of maleness at its worst. She won't even be in the room when it's on the telly (ditto The Grand Tour).
It's very simple to do the thought experiment on how Trumpers were and are so fired up over the election. Take everything you know about the election and imagine Trump actually was the declared winner. It literally would have been stolen from Biden.
Now simply reverse Biden/Trump and the MAGA reality delusion makes perfect sense.
Are the new administration acting as if they won a great victory?
Their primary concern seems to be revenge.
There is little talk about the things that might concern ordinary Americans. Jobs. Economy. etc.
Honestly I don;t expect that to change. Its essentially open season on Trumpists.
One for the PB braintrust, who was the Baroness bitching about not getting the second vaccine dose? Can't remember now and can't find the news article that she wrote.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
There is also the fact that a lot more effort has been put into trying to keep open. In the first lockdown, most coffee shops etc just shut. Now they are open.
And why is that? Because the financial support simply isn't there. Why is Daughter still doing takeaways (and very safely too)? Because the financial support now is very much less, what has been promised still hasn't been paid, furlough is less than it was and the bills still need paying.
Both sons work in food shops. One has been sent home to isolate because a co-worker caught Covid and so he's waiting for a test to see whether he's got it. I pray daily that he doesn't because it puts my husband and other son at risk. But at least his employer is still paying him. Others are not so fortunate. Sunak's meanness with support is undermining what is necessary on the health side.
If the government imposes more restrictions without providing more support then it will simply lead to a greater economic collapse than we're already facing.
I assume your daughter structured her business as a limited company. If she were S/E it may have been different. I do think there is so much unfairness in all this and Sunak will not escape criticism over it. The difference between the money thrown at some S/E people compared to the paltry sums/nothing/loans to those who are ltd (though regard themselves as self employed) is extraordinary.
Our tax/corporate structure system needs looking at. The concept of setting up a company to pay low wages and high dividends for owner mangers has nearly run its course, and led to this issue.
And I say that as an accountant, which has been setting these things up for nigh on 20 years.
Well IR35 is going to close a lot of those companies down come April (but also significantly impact the flexibility our IT industry has that doesn't exist elsewhere in Europe).
Also a lot of S/E people haven't done well because it's only people with accounts from 2018/19 who have been able to take full benefit of the schemes.
In other news, support for Catalan independence continues to fall. The change from a hard-line, confrontational, right-wing government in Madrid to one run by the centre left that has focused on dialogue has led to a split in the Catalan separatist movement. There is even an outside chance the separatists may lose control of the Catalan parliament after next month's regional elections. https://twitter.com/RupertCocke/status/1348568129685901312
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don`t see why a piece of writing has to have only one point.
And Nery`s doesn't claim to be a nurse.
Yes it's *his* wife that is the nurse. *He* is a builder.
I do understand why people get confused however – regardless of the fact 25% of nurses are male, our subconscious bias response is that a nurse is female and Nerys uses a female name despite being a bloke!
How do we know that Nerys is a bloke?
I think he has said so. Although it might be my subconscious bias response: builder = bloke.
(That said, in that case, that's a fair assumption – only 3 in 10,000 builders are female)
She (he?) works for a construction company. Accounts manager or something. Not a hairy-arsed bricklayer.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
Top Gear had a majority female audience ??? !!!
Of all the things I've ever seen on here that make me go, "Oh come on. source please and even then I won't believe it", this one takes the biscuit.
Me too! That I simply cannot believe for a minute.
The only time Ms C sat through a Top Gear was when it was put on the screen in an internal Australian flight - the local male pax all laughing like horses.
Mrs Anabobzina absolutely hates it and considers it to be an exposition of maleness at its worst. She won't even be in the room when it's on the telly (ditto The Grand Tour).
One for the PB braintrust, who was the Baroness bitching about not getting the second vaccine dose? Can't remember now and can't find the news article that she wrote.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
There is also the fact that a lot more effort has been put into trying to keep open. In the first lockdown, most coffee shops etc just shut. Now they are open.
And why is that? Because the financial support simply isn't there. Why is Daughter still doing takeaways (and very safely too)? Because the financial support now is very much less, what has been promised still hasn't been paid, furlough is less than it was and the bills still need paying.
Both sons work in food shops. One has been sent home to isolate because a co-worker caught Covid and so he's waiting for a test to see whether he's got it. I pray daily that he doesn't because it puts my husband and other son at risk. But at least his employer is still paying him. Others are not so fortunate. Sunak's meanness with support is undermining what is necessary on the health side.
If the government imposes more restrictions without providing more support then it will simply lead to a greater economic collapse than we're already facing.
I assume your daughter structured her business as a limited company. If she were S/E it may have been different. I do think there is so much unfairness in all this and Sunak will not escape criticism over it. The difference between the money thrown at some S/E people compared to the paltry sums/nothing/loans to those who are ltd (though regard themselves as self employed) is extraordinary.
Our tax/corporate structure system needs looking at. The concept of setting up a company to pay low wages and high dividends for owner mangers has nearly run its course, and led to this issue.
And I say that as an accountant, which has been setting these things up for nigh on 20 years.
There is a liability issue as well, no? Certainly one of the main reasons I went ltd as opposed to S/E
Vaguely. In theory the concept of limited liability is a positive, but in practical day to day, it's the tax saving which is the most more pressing (although it's getting to a point where the savings are more and more marginal).
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Haha. What.
I believe Jackie Collins and Tom Clancy were also exceedingly popular. Very hard to repeat what they do, too.
Tolkien will be read, revered and remembered for many decades. 99% of writers are forgotten the day they die, or long before, and this is equally true of esteemed literary fiction as it is of best-selling popular fiction.
The first WINNER of the Booker Prize, in 1969, was.... “P. H. Newby”
I can’t remember who said it, some famous novelist I believe, but there is a celebrated adage in publishing: any author is extremely lucky if his book lives longer than the average cat.
I was amazed, some years ago, when Oryx and Crake came out. Here was the first work for a while, from a literary great, an event.
And in the Sunday Times, it duly came in at No.1 on the best seller lists. Having sold a grant total of 3,450 copies. OK this was before The Handmaid's Tale took off on Netflix but even still.
We really don't read as much as we think we do here.
We certainly don’t read as much “literary fiction” - the stuff that, I presume, Gardenwalker is referring to. The genre is dying on its arse in terms of sales. Advances are now a fraction of what they were. Very few writers can make a living from it.
Why?
Shorter attention spans. Smartphones. And competition from TV drama, which is now so good it makes many novels look painfully boring. But also this (whisper it): a lot of literary fiction is shit, and barely readable, because it has no story. No plot. And that’s what people want. A GOOD STORY, which is much harder to do than a good paragraph.
I am not really talking about the distinction between literary and popular fiction.
Literary fiction can also be bad writing: obscure, prolix, academic.
Good writing is good prose.
Tolkien may tell a great yarn but his prose is wooly, repetitive, and cliched. His characterisation is paper-thin. Hence his main audience is pre-pubescent boys.
That he should have a devoted coincidence on PB is no coincidence. We also have a high number of IT professionals, model toy enthusiasts, and moth-botherers.
May Tineola bisselliella leave your garments with gaping holes and may Plodia interpunctella lay waste to your cornflakes.....
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don`t see why a piece of writing has to have only one point.
And Nery`s doesn't claim to be a nurse.
Yes it's *his* wife that is the nurse. *He* is a builder.
I do understand why people get confused however – regardless of the fact 25% of nurses are male, our subconscious bias response is that a nurse is female and Nerys uses a female name despite being a bloke!
How do we know that Nerys is a bloke?
I think he has said so. Although it might be my subconscious bias response: builder = bloke.
(That said, in that case, that's a fair assumption – only 3 in 10,000 builders are female)
She (he?) works for a construction company. Accounts manager or something. Not a hairy-arsed bricklayer.
I'm sticking with bloke!
Why don`t you personal message Nerys and ask if he/she has a hairy arse?
Interesting thread from observers on the ground. The utter lack of federal forces or even basic event security cannot be anything other than deliberate. Which points quite firmly at it being an organised coup attempt.
If there really were 'machinations' to have no security at the Capitol, it surely points more to events there being an orchestration against Trump, not by him.
Where does that conclusion come from ?
Well, on the 'conspiracy by Trump' side, what would success actually have looked like? Hostage situation? How does that actually help Trump? We know from what happened that Trump was effectively circumvented on the night, so claims that he could have 'declared martial law' and how this could have led to him staying in power are far-fetched to say the least. The Capitol in itself is not a lever of power, so 'taking it' is not a coup or even a fraction of one.
On the 'conspiracy against Trump' side, success looks like this: produce shocking images on TV, use the situation to get Trump out of the chain of command, use the ensuing outrage to take effective steps against his movement and its position within the Republican party. Simple, effective.
I feel I should just say - Trump has behaved foolishly and dangerously, and one cannot really say that he doesn't 'deserve' this on some level. However, I don't believe for a second that he organised 'a coup'. It takes leaps and contortions that defy logic.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don`t see why a piece of writing has to have only one point.
And Nery`s doesn't claim to be a nurse.
Yes it's *his* wife that is the nurse. *He* is a builder.
I do understand why people get confused however – regardless of the fact 25% of nurses are male, our subconscious bias response is that a nurse is female and Nerys uses a female name despite being a bloke!
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
I'll bite.
It's unreadable rubbish, mostly read and admired by those with the minds of teenage boys.
I haven't read a word of it but this would almost certainly be my opinion if I ever do.
In other news, support for Catalan independence continues to fall. The change from a hard-line, confrontational, right-wing government in Madrid to one run by the centre left that has focused on dialogue has led to a split in the Catalan separatist movement. There is even an outside chance the separatists may lose control of the Catalan parliament after next month's regional elections. https://twitter.com/RupertCocke/status/1348568129685901312
If Scotland goes the same way, it will be no tanks to Hyufd.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
She's almost an afterthought though. I struggle to think of more than one or two lines of dialogue spoken by a female character in Fellowship of the Ring and much of the Two Towers involves the actions of a whole species whose women just upped and left a couple of millenia before.
One of the smart moves Peter Jackson made was to replace the vanishingly thin character Glorfindel with Arwen. That worked well in the dash to Rivendell.
Tolkien was very much an old school bachelor though and it does show through.
Tolkien was married for 55 years and had four children.
OTOH, he could go into Merton and be an old bachelor fellow whenever he wanted, effectively. Don't recall enough about him to judge how far he did that, thouigh.
As a young married don (in short supply back then) he tutored female undergraduates. Not really a bachelor type, just...odd.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don`t see why a piece of writing has to have only one point.
And Nery`s doesn't claim to be a nurse.
Yes it's *his* wife that is the nurse. *He* is a builder.
I do understand why people get confused however – regardless of the fact 25% of nurses are male, our subconscious bias response is that a nurse is female and Nerys uses a female name despite being a bloke!
How do we know that Nerys is a bloke?
I think he has said so. Although it might be my subconscious bias response: builder = bloke.
(That said, in that case, that's a fair assumption – only 3 in 10,000 builders are female)
She (he?) works for a construction company. Accounts manager or something. Not a hairy-arsed bricklayer.
I'm sticking with bloke!
Why don`t you personal message Nerys and ask if he/she has a hairy arse?
He/she/it might be a time-served brickie for all we know.
Judging by Whitty on R4 this am, a tightening of lockdown is incoming. Maybe even this evening at 5pm presser.
The rules in this lockdown are the same as they were in the original lockdown aren't they? Stay home, non-essential shops and workplaces closed, schools closed unless keyworker/vulnerable etc. Yet its clearly much much busier out there here on Teesside and supposedly much much busier in the smoke.
So what has changed? A combination of punter fatigue and government messaging. First time around it was You Must Stay At Home. This time its meh, you need to go to work as we aren't going to pay for you to stay home.
There is also the fact that a lot more effort has been put into trying to keep open. In the first lockdown, most coffee shops etc just shut. Now they are open.
And why is that? Because the financial support simply isn't there. Why is Daughter still doing takeaways (and very safely too)? Because the financial support now is very much less, what has been promised still hasn't been paid, furlough is less than it was and the bills still need paying.
Both sons work in food shops. One has been sent home to isolate because a co-worker caught Covid and so he's waiting for a test to see whether he's got it. I pray daily that he doesn't because it puts my husband and other son at risk. But at least his employer is still paying him. Others are not so fortunate. Sunak's meanness with support is undermining what is necessary on the health side.
If the government imposes more restrictions without providing more support then it will simply lead to a greater economic collapse than we're already facing.
I assume your daughter structured her business as a limited company. If she were S/E it may have been different. I do think there is so much unfairness in all this and Sunak will not escape criticism over it. The difference between the money thrown at some S/E people compared to the paltry sums/nothing/loans to those who are ltd (though regard themselves as self employed) is extraordinary.
Our tax/corporate structure system needs looking at. The concept of setting up a company to pay low wages and high dividends for owner mangers has nearly run its course, and led to this issue.
And I say that as an accountant, which has been setting these things up for nigh on 20 years.
Well IR35 is going to close a lot of those companies down come April (but also significantly impact the flexibility our IT industry has that doesn't exist elsewhere in Europe).
Also a lot of S/E people haven't done well because it's only people with accounts from 2018/19 who have been able to take full benefit of the schemes.
That change got pushed back a year last year, and I expect will happen again, but we will see.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
I don`t see why a piece of writing has to have only one point.
And Nery`s doesn't claim to be a nurse.
Yes it's *his* wife that is the nurse. *He* is a builder.
I do understand why people get confused however – regardless of the fact 25% of nurses are male, our subconscious bias response is that a nurse is female and Nerys uses a female name despite being a bloke!
They’re going to go for the “meet one person outdoors” rule, aren’t they. That is literally my social life, in entirety
I’m in a support bubble so I can see my older daughter and her mother. I knap my flints at home, alone. The only other way I can have a real human interaction is meeting friends outside at a safe distance. Which is basically zero risk
I might just break the rule. If they try to impose it
Perry Anderson makes a claim that Powell is better, and Dance to the Music of Time is certainly more relevant to PB.
When I was a voracious reader I tried À la recherche du temps perdu and it defeated me after 70 pages, though 'tits like hunting horns' stuck with me. Otoh I read (some of the volumes several times) and loved Dance To The Music of Time; wily, old Powell knew his audience and doled it out in chunks.
Long time lurker here. I wanted to make one point on Lockdown compliance similar to Leon's. In my area of North London 50%+ of our peer Group have had covid. It is extraordinarily difficult to instruct such people to continue to follow lockdown rules when they face little risk themselves and pose little risk to others. This issue will only grow.
Among 16-25 year olds, either they have had it, or many of their friends have had it & recovered quickly. Rightly or wrongly, it just doesn't look a big deal to many young people anymore.
So, they not going to listen to Hancock blathering on about "Save Grandpa".
After all, what did Gramps ever do for them? He is a greedy, selfish man who denied the benefits he received to younger people.
And -- if pb.com is any guide -- Gramps is going on a skiing holiday as soon as he is vaccinated (first in the queue as usual).
It is simply not right to expect young people to bear pain & loss of opportunity without any reward. Young people are giving & giving & giving -- and getting nothing back.
Who's economic future is being ruined by our failure to adhere to the rules and stop Covid spreading? I doubt it's Gramps.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
I'll bite.
It's unreadable rubbish, mostly read and admired by those with the minds of teenage boys.
Turgid prolixity can be a bugger.
It works, if it works at all, largely by virtue of its scope. If you haven't read all of it as I assume you haven't, you won't appreciate that.
I read it first at the age of 16 and again in my 40s. I don't detect any particular slant towards the teenage in it, it worked both times.
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
I'll bite.
It's unreadable rubbish, mostly read and admired by those with the minds of teenage boys.
Except a poll a couple of years ago showed it is read by more women than men. And if it is unreadable then how come it is one of the most read books of the twentieth century. Perhaps your dislike and inability to read it reflects more on yourself than on the book.
Talking fiction, I read another tranche of War & Peace yesterday. The Frenchies have had their arses kicked.
I am enjoying it greatly. Good writing (presumably a good translator) and a good story. And I know who is who and what is going on, which isn't always the case.
But the ending. OMG the ending. The worst ending to a great classic ever?
I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks on that one...
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
I'll bite.
It's unreadable rubbish, mostly read and admired by those with the minds of teenage boys.
Turgid prolixity can be a bugger.
It works, if it works at all, largely by virtue of its scope. If you haven't read all of it as I assume you haven't, you won't appreciate that.
I read it first at the age of 16 and again in my 40s. I don't detect any particular slant towards the teenage in it, it worked both times.
I'm fairly sure a financial lawyer knows all about 'turgid prolixity.'
And I know no-one apart from myself who routinely wears a mask outdoors as they do in much of Asia and now elsewhere.
I am convinced this virus spreads outdoors. Undoubtedly less readily than indoors but nevertheless I'm sure it does. Again, as you would expect from an airborne virus which spreads by aerosol as well as droplet.
We are, and there's no other way to put this, f-ing stupid in this country. Nerys claims to be a nurse. What hope is there?
I recall early on an ITU nurse saying that she didn't see how it was possible to 'BE SAFE' when she couldn't 'see' the virus.
I mean, that's the level of f-ing ignorance with which we are dealing.
Still waiting for those superior literary skills to manifest themselves.
Oh are you? Read one of my bestselling books. But it doesn't sound to me like you'd recognise it even if you were hit over the head by Lord of the Rings.
I keep the writing clean and simple on here. Actually I do in my books. Only Mike Smithson of the thread writers knows how to do that. A thread should have one point made succinctly and cleanly.
Less is more. Heck, even The Great Gatsby is only 47,000 words.
Wait, are you citing LOTR as good writing? JFC.
By some measures it is the most popular novel ever written, anywhere on the planet, and also the most loved. It has also been hugely influential on popular AND elite culture. You see its influence everywhere
Why? Because it is an inspired piece of sustained human imagination, probably unexampled, AND it has a superb, mythic, driving narrative
It’s not entirely my cup of tea but I can still recognise it as quite exceptional. Anyone who doesn’t simply reveals their own idiocy. Sorry
Yes, but is it good writing?
What is your definition of good writing if it doesn’t mean superb plotting, great descriptions, absorbing characters and epic feats of glorious imagination? In a style that enchants many millions of people?
I suppose you mean a pretty or elegant sentence?
That is much easier to do than what Tolkien did. You can basically learn to write a sonorous sentence at a creative writing class. Thousands learn it every year: none of them will ever write anything that approaches LOTR
Well said. I'm bemused by the entire brevity is the only key to great writing idea. .
No it's not. But you'd better have a bloody good reason for using 10 words when 1 will do.
I'm lucky to have a great agent, one of the most successful in publishing history. I've learned a lot from him and I read voluminously. I doubt there's anyone on here who has read as many books as I have. That's not bragging just something I've always loved doing. My Oxford don said he'd never come across anyone who had read so much.
The point is that you start to recognise when a writer has got into a mindset where they think verbosity is smart. It's rarely the case. Keep it clean. More is less.
Could not agree more. It's a much harder way to write, though. It's why there are very few Hemingway books that stand the test of time. A Farewell to Arms is a masterpiece, The Sun Also Rises is very strong in places. The rest is painful. I reread For Whom the Bell Tolls a couple of years back. It was abysmal - 300 pages too long, short sentences or not.
Perry Anderson makes a claim that Powell is better, and Dance to the Music of Time is certainly more relevant to PB.
When I was a voracious reader I tried À la recherche du temps perdu and it defeated me after 70 pages, though 'tits like hunting horns' stuck with me. Otoh I read (some of the volumes several times) and loved Dance To The Music of Time; wily, old Powell knew his audience and doled it out in chunks.
If you like Powell see also Simon Raven Alms for Oblivion.
Does it really say 'tits like hunting horns' in Proust?
One for the PB braintrust, who was the Baroness bitching about not getting the second vaccine dose? Can't remember now and can't find the news article that she wrote.
Betty Boothroyd?
Yes it was. She came over very, very poorly irrespective of whether you agree with the policy or not.
It'll be interesting to see if Twitter apply the policy of blocking access to hacked data that they applied to the Hunter Biden hack (the one with the obviously bogus computer repair shop cover story) to the hacked Parler data.
To answer my question, yes, Twitter are blocking the link to the thread on r/ParlerWatch describing the hack.
Mr. Seal, point of order: Eowyn kills the Witch King. That's no small feat.
I quite liked Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, and Thingol and Melian.
Also, buying into gender is not as necessary as many think. The blokiest of blokey bloke shows, Top Gear, had more female than male viewers. And more boys than girls watched Totally Spies (a cartoon with three teenage girl spies).
She's almost an afterthought though. I struggle to think of more than one or two lines of dialogue spoken by a female character in Fellowship of the Ring and much of the Two Towers involves the actions of a whole species whose women just upped and left a couple of millenia before.
" In place of a dark lord you would have a queen. Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn. Treacherous as the Sea. Stronger than the foundations of the Earth. All shall love me and despair. I pass the test. I will diminish and go into the West and remain Galadriel."
Interesting thread from observers on the ground. The utter lack of federal forces or even basic event security cannot be anything other than deliberate. Which points quite firmly at it being an organised coup attempt.
If there really were 'machinations' to have no security at the Capitol, it surely points more to events there being an orchestration against Trump, not by him.
Where does that conclusion come from ?
Well, on the 'conspiracy by Trump' side, what would success actually have looked like? Hostage situation? How does that actually help Trump? We know from what happened that Trump was effectively circumvented on the night, so claims that he could have 'declared martial law' and how this could have led to him staying in power are far-fetched to say the least. The Capitol in itself is not a lever of power, so 'taking it' is not a coup or even a fraction of one.
On the 'conspiracy against Trump' side, success looks like this: produce shocking images on TV, use the situation to get Trump out of the chain of command, use the ensuing outrage to take effective steps against his movement and its position within the Republican party. Simple, effective.
I feel I should just say - Trump has behaved foolishly and dangerously, and one cannot really say that he doesn't 'deserve' this on some level. However, I don't believe for a second that he organised 'a coup'. It takes leaps and contortions that defy logic.
Trump's mind only works with partial thoroughness, though, and just partially on impulsive vengeance. It's perfectly plausible, on his past form, to have organised the day only up to the hope of invasion of the Capitol and chaos, and sufficent anger to ensure that there might be something worse than chaos for some of his enemies, than anything more coherent that and a fully thought-through coup.
Don't forget, also, that chaos is the currency of coups themelves, for two reasons - firstly, any breakdown of order can be used as a pretext for security action that might at first glance look counter-intuitive, as in many coups ; and secondly because in moments of chaos there can be total confusion in chains of command, when you can achieve a huge amount in a few moments that you might not be able to usually.
Perry Anderson makes a claim that Powell is better, and Dance to the Music of Time is certainly more relevant to PB.
When I was a voracious reader I tried À la recherche du temps perdu and it defeated me after 70 pages, though 'tits like hunting horns' stuck with me. Otoh I read (some of the volumes several times) and loved Dance To The Music of Time; wily, old Powell knew his audience and doled it out in chunks.
If you like Powell see also Simon Raven Alms for Oblivion.
Does it really say 'tits like hunting horns' in Proust?
It's so long since I read Powell as a teenager - though I did reread Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy recently. What an arsehole the man was, and a snob - but oh he could write. How does Powell's whatever-ology compare?
Talking fiction, I read another tranche of War & Peace yesterday. The Frenchies have had their arses kicked.
I am enjoying it greatly. Good writing (presumably a good translator) and a good story. And I know who is who and what is going on, which isn't always the case.
Again, could use an editor. Thankfully all the "It's not about individuals" historiography bollocks is in standalone chapters which you can just skip. Best novel ever, though.
See, I'm learning from the history, as my knowledge of the historical events is limited, to put it politely.
Entertainment and education. Like the first time you watch a lesbian porno.
Comments
Both sons work in food shops. One has been sent home to isolate because a co-worker caught Covid and so he's waiting for a test to see whether he's got it. I pray daily that he doesn't because it puts my husband and other son at risk. But at least his employer is still paying him. Others are not so fortunate. Sunak's meanness with support is undermining what is necessary on the health side.
If the government imposes more restrictions without providing more support then it will simply lead to a greater economic collapse than we're already facing.
If there is a point, underlying reason for existence to all the phooey LOTR nonsense, Gandalf rides away from them to visit Tom. Wait, they say, we need help in the Shire.
What do you think your experiences in the real world was meant for, he replies. True enough, thanks to rite of passage they return changed, made bigger, not just by the Ent Draughts. They become Masters and mayors.
Jackson cut all that to have them second fiddle to large root vegetables. Removed the works only nod to true value.
Shows that even political opponents can find fertile common ground.
I’ve read Swann’s Way, and it was very fine, but I’m not sure my life is long enough to do the whole damn Temps Perdu. Perhaps in my 90s.
More like a crunching rugby tackle perhaps.
This may in the end be our route out of this. Public pressure. Maybe with pressure on the NHS easing the balance will gradually change from minimising health consequences to gradually restoring liberties even though there is risk in the system still. We have to live with this at some level.
https://twitter.com/VictimOfMaths/status/1348589135355908097
Assuming a relatively small number of second shots, that puts weekly doses at ~700,000, or a little bit more than doubling.
That would be pretty good, but not enough to hit the government's own targets.
That should be enough to give anyone pause for thought
Anyway the key is to find the right translation.
There are some right stinkers out there.
Which is just weird as several people have managed to list valid criticisms of his work without being snobbish.
Incidentally, of the films I've always liked the Fellowship of the Ring, and the Return of the King is not without its moments, but The Two Towers, oh my goodness. Complete fiasco.
Is there anything I’ve written you’d actually disagree with?
As I (coincidentally) said the other day here, Melville takes a whole chapter just to discuss the whale's foreskin. IIRC the only excuse is that they've got to that bit, so to speak, when they are flensing the whale. Whic h I supose counts as 'something happening'.
I am enjoying it greatly. Good writing (presumably a good translator) and a good story. And I know who is who and what is going on, which isn't always the case.
TBH, I found The Silmarillon unreadable.
Setting our own rules means setting our own rules domestically. Not internationally.
Trade is an entirely voluntary action and involves meeting the rules of whomever you are trading with - but if you don't want to do that you don't have to. You can cease trading with them and then their rules no longer apply to you.
This country is not a rule taker. If you obey EU rules when you trade with the EU then that is your choice. You can choose to not trade with them too and then you don't need to. Choice is yours, nothing is taken.
You could easily make Moby Dick into quite a short story. Would you?
And I say that as an accountant, which has been setting these things up for nigh on 20 years.
Of all the things I've ever seen on here that make me go, "Oh come on. source please and even then I won't believe it", this one takes the biscuit.
I'd put 'reading' as one of my interests. The interviewer asked me what I'd read recently, and I replied [truthfully!] À la recherche du temps perdu. It turned out that he was a great Proust fan, but I was one up on him because I'd read the book in French, but he had only read Proust in translation.
I didn't take the job, mind.
Try to imagine a film the same wrong way round, like Jaws, a shark going round spewing out live people.
When it reached the crescendo of chanting stop the count in Penn, chanting keep counting in Arizona they were finished. An embarrassment of bad manners and zilch diplomacy.
Who would have thought, you can get away with lack of grace and diplomacy when winning, but not when you are losing?
It's unreadable rubbish, mostly read and admired by those with the minds of teenage boys.
Perry Anderson makes a claim that Powell is better, and Dance to the Music of Time is certainly more relevant to PB.
It's straight out of the Berlusconi playbook which is the closest thing we have to EuroTrump (after Johnson).
(That said, in that case, that's a fair assumption – only 3 in 10,000 builders are female)
LOTR is an epic, the like of which has seldom been attempted and never with the same degree of success. I find the language arch, some passages excruciatingly dull and his female characters are mostly uninteresting, but it's a story of breathtaking imagination.
It deserves its place in the pantheon, albeit in a class of one.
They were closed the very next day, but technically they were reopened. 😉
If only someone had told the writers that at Game of Thrones.
I did once take a leak in the garden at Seamen’s Bethel, New Bedford, Massachusetts though; I was absolutely busting.
So tonight it will be announced support bubbles will be allowed only between single person households, but then abolished on Wednesday.
I'm worried by what Trump, or his supporters, might still do while he is still - somehow - allowed to remain as President.
So if people who previously said he wouldn't be as bad as we feared now say that he's a busted flush (no idea if that includes you) then it might be relevant to bring up the prior miscalculation.
Their primary concern seems to be revenge.
There is little talk about the things that might concern ordinary Americans. Jobs. Economy. etc.
Honestly I don;t expect that to change. Its essentially open season on Trumpists.
Also a lot of S/E people haven't done well because it's only people with accounts from 2018/19 who have been able to take full benefit of the schemes.
https://twitter.com/RupertCocke/status/1348568129685901312
On the 'conspiracy against Trump' side, success looks like this: produce shocking images on TV, use the situation to get Trump out of the chain of command, use the ensuing outrage to take effective steps against his movement and its position within the Republican party. Simple, effective.
I feel I should just say - Trump has behaved foolishly and dangerously, and one cannot really say that he doesn't 'deserve' this on some level. However, I don't believe for a second that he organised 'a coup'. It takes leaps and contortions that defy logic.
Excuse me while I change into my frock.
That looks sub optimum
Not really a bachelor type, just...odd.
I’m in a support bubble so I can see my older daughter and her mother. I knap my flints at home, alone. The only other way I can have a real human interaction is meeting friends outside at a safe distance. Which is basically zero risk
I might just break the rule. If they try to impose it
It works, if it works at all, largely by virtue of its scope. If you haven't read all of it as I assume you haven't, you won't appreciate that.
I read it first at the age of 16 and again in my 40s. I don't detect any particular slant towards the teenage in it, it worked both times.
Does it really say 'tits like hunting horns' in Proust?
Don't forget, also, that chaos is the currency of coups themelves, for two reasons - firstly, any breakdown of order can be used as a pretext for security action that might at first glance look counter-intuitive, as in many coups ; and secondly because in moments of chaos there can be total confusion in chains of command, when you can achieve a huge amount in a few moments that you might not be able to usually.
Entertainment and education. Like the first time you watch a lesbian porno.