2010 — 12 December: Sunday
Another ignored early wakeup this morning but1 I'm now whirling like a dervish readying myself for a walk in Wherwell, which demands both breakfast and a packed lunch. Not to a mention an ice-scrape off the windscreen. Time (it's now 09:11) is tick-tocking along to the agreed rendezvous...
In this industrious, post-Industry phase...
... of my life, is there anything nicer than a leisurely seven-mile ramble around uncluttered country footpaths in glorious sunshine, with a picnic break and plenty of good chatter? Well, apart from the cuppa I'm about to dowse my innards with and the hot bath I'm about to sink into? It's 14:06 and the sun is already distressingly low in the sky. I've cleaned the gunk off the windscreens fore and aft in readiness for this evening's meal-and-a-film invitation over to Winchester. Hot splosh here I come.
The only real problem with reading the last hundred pages or so of an engaging book in the bath is that, when you come back to Planet Earth (as it were) not only is the sybaritic second cuppa too cold to drink until it's been zapped but, much worse, so is the water in the bath. Or, at least, rather too tepid. Brrr. Still, I suspect I smell rather better now :-)
I wouldn't dream...
... of making any claim to being a literary critic. I'm not, and see no likelihood of ever being, a published author of fiction. This piece is, however, written (well, that's one word for it) by such an author (though I've not heard of him) and he makes the foolish — if deliberately provocative — claim that genre fiction is never, and can never, be as "good" as literary fiction. Frankly, some of the comments are better written than anything he managed in the article. I liked this one:
Edward Docx might have a point, in that writing a thriller is easier than writing a literary novel in the same way that writing a string quartet is theoretically
easier than writing a symphony. Except that mostly working within the constraints of the form makes for better art in almost everything.
The important thing is that anyone who claims to be a writer and writes copy like Docx's should have their bowels torn out by wild dogs.