Books
I say!
I shall return to some final snaps of Oxfordshire soon, but in the meantime I wanted to post the following two things.
Extracted from my current read "...he made his way to Canada to enlist. At the recruiting station he was asked if he was a homosexual, the evidence being that he was wearing a wristwatch. He said he was not. There were no further questions."
My, my - how strange that a wristwatch might be seen in this way. This happened in the First World War.
Now, I hope HotBoy may be reading this, as it is extracted from a review of Irvine Welsh's latest novel:
"Irvine Welsh's sixth novel is so awful that, to paraphrase James Wood, it invents its own category of awfulness...The book is a toyshop of pure MDF cutouts...The characters, situations, storyline, prose - everything is so risible in its inability to convince on even the most rudimentary levels that it appears as if Welsh has telephoned it in on a very bad line...every single premise is such a stunning model of lack of conviction that the book should become a textbook on how not to write fiction...This is a demeaning book that cants the reader's sould downwards, making it feel complicit with the writer's dishonest short-changing of his readership, telling them that this lazy, dishonest, appallingly written rubbish is the real thing while laughing all the way to the bank as a result of our gullibility."
Well - I say! I won't be buying that one.
MM III
I shall return to some final snaps of Oxfordshire soon, but in the meantime I wanted to post the following two things.
Extracted from my current read "...he made his way to Canada to enlist. At the recruiting station he was asked if he was a homosexual, the evidence being that he was wearing a wristwatch. He said he was not. There were no further questions."
My, my - how strange that a wristwatch might be seen in this way. This happened in the First World War.
Now, I hope HotBoy may be reading this, as it is extracted from a review of Irvine Welsh's latest novel:
"Irvine Welsh's sixth novel is so awful that, to paraphrase James Wood, it invents its own category of awfulness...The book is a toyshop of pure MDF cutouts...The characters, situations, storyline, prose - everything is so risible in its inability to convince on even the most rudimentary levels that it appears as if Welsh has telephoned it in on a very bad line...every single premise is such a stunning model of lack of conviction that the book should become a textbook on how not to write fiction...This is a demeaning book that cants the reader's sould downwards, making it feel complicit with the writer's dishonest short-changing of his readership, telling them that this lazy, dishonest, appallingly written rubbish is the real thing while laughing all the way to the bank as a result of our gullibility."
Well - I say! I won't be buying that one.
MM III
posted by zomba at 11:17 AM
6 Comments:
Mingin! I only read one of Irvine Welsh's books (Trainspotting) and it was totally brilliant. No awards or any plaudits at all from the powers that be. Also, he's never received a half decent review from any I read in the Scotsman. Anyway, it might be so bad that it's worth reading! Hotboy
I won't either. Thanks for the tip!
Hotboy doesn't wear a watch!
On the subject of books, some guy calling himself Martin Amis seems to have filched hotboy's writing and published it as Money. It's good.
PS I've read several other of Welsh's books and enjoyed their capturing of the misery of the Edinburgh proletariat. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I say!
Thank you all for your comments. HotBoy - to which of Martin Amis' works do you refer?
According to his excellent website, he wrote in one book: "I wear glasses for a start, have done since I was nine. And my medium-length, arseless waistless figure, corrugated ribcage and bandy legs gang up to dispel any hint of aplomb." This doesn't sound like you.
And from his forthcoming book: "Amis's new book takes the form of a novella and two stories. The novella 'House of Meetings' is a love story, gothic in timbre and triangular in shape. Two brothers and a Jewish girl fall into alignment in the pogrom-poised Moscow of 1946 ..."
Hardly a book about bliss?
MM III
G'day MM. The Amis book called "Money" (1984) has some of hotboy's trademarks, as well as a title that is dear to his heart.
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