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although I couldn’t actually speak teenage Mumblegrunt, I could certainly understand it.
a flagrant misunderstanding of the rules of supply and demand that did no damage to the tinned-fruit producers of the world but condemned her immediate family and friends to pears at every meal for almost three years.
“Ooooh!” said Polly, peering furtively out the window. “What fun. It looks like a market researcher!” “Right,” said my mother in a very military tone. “Let’s see how long we can keep him before he runs out screaming. I’ll pretend to have mild dementia, and you can complain about your sciatica in German. We’ll try to beat our personal Market-Researcher Containment record of two hours and twelve minutes.”
Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment—the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the walls down at the local mad house.
“Hamlet’s dealing with a potentially damaging outbreak of reasonable behavior inside Othello,”
“That’s wonderful news!” breathed Bradshaw, much relieved. “It is?” “Yes—it’s someone else’s problem.
‘You can lose yourself in a book, but you find yourself in Poetry.’
Reading, I had learned, was as creative a process as writing, sometimes more so. When we read of the dying rays of the setting sun or the boom and swish of the incoming tide, we should reserve as much praise for ourselves as for the author. After all, the reader is doing all the work—the writer might have died long ago.
I’d come to realize over the years that anything created by mankind had error, mischief and bureaucratic officialdom hardwired at inception,
But his hits were greater than the sum of his misses, and such is the way with greatness.
I looked cautiously from the corner of my eye at the customer to my left. It was a freelance imaginator buying powdered kabuki—no problem there.
“Landen said he’d videotape Dr. Who for me, and the Daleks are my favorite.” “I’m more into the Sontarans myself,” said Miles. “Humph!” said Joffy. “It’s what I would expect from someone who thinks Jon Pertwee was the best Doctor.”
Well, must be off! People to educate, persuade and unify—hopefully in that order.
Most famous was her torrid affair with Edward Rochester and the stand-up catfight with Jane Eyre. I had thought it couldn’t get any worse until Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be a ninja assassin and Bertha Rochester was abducted by aliens. And all that was just in the first book.
“The four opposing forces in any novel are atmosphere, plot, character and pace. But they don’t have to be in equilibrium. You can have a book without any plot or pace at all, but it has to make up for it in character and a bit of atmosphere—like The Old Man and the Sea. Most thrillers are plot and pace and nothing else, such as Where Eagles Dare.
“Sadly, I have to advise you that Mr. Harry Potter is unable to attend due to copyright restrictions, so we’re going to leave the ‘supplying characters from video games’ issue for another time.” There was a grumbling from the senators, and I noticed one or two put their autograph books back into their bags.
Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath,
Zhark read from his notes. “‘Dear Worthless Peons—I pity you your irrelevance.’ What do you think?”
He passed me my badge. “The suspension was purely for the CofG’s benefit. The disciplinary paperwork was accidentally eaten by snails. Most perplexing.”
“What’s your name?” “Nigel,” said the one who had spoken, a bit sheepishly. “No one likes a smart-ass, Nigel.”
In the Outland the reality TV craze was now fortunately on the wane—Samaritan Kidney Swap had so few viewers that by the second week they became desperate and threatened to shoot a puppy on live TV unless a million people phoned in.
