From: hjkhjkhd@hhhh.com   
      
   "Martha Bridegam"  wrote in message   
   news:FrDIh.9131$jx3.5358@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...   
   > ROBBIE wrote:   
   >> "Martha Bridegam"  wrote in message   
   >> news:eEFHh.7798$re4.5808@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net...   
   >>   
   >>> Maybe this is a more interesting idea phrased as a general question:   
   >>> does a book, to be well written, have to stay at a consistent level of   
   >>> realism throughout?   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> Well I think realism can be a bit overrated at times. Not that I'm much   
   >> up for magic realism and all that bollox. When Nigel N read a draft of my   
   >> latest romance he objected to these two passages:   
   >>   
   >> At a party where someone's been shot:   
   >>   
   >> 'They both went downstairs into a mist of smoke and overpowering din of   
   >> music. John noticed the spots of blood from the fashion designer's wound   
   >> in the hallway. A policeman idly rolled a joint as someone shouted a   
   >> statement in his ear.'   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> And this, outside a shop, looking at its logo:   
   >>   
   >>   
   >>   'I don't like it,' said John, 'it looks a bit poncy.'   
   >>   He felt a sharp tap on his back. Turning, he found himself facing a   
   >> mean-looking policeman wearing a fluorescent tabard, holding a long stick   
   >> and on whose waist jangled the paramilitary appurtenances of postmodern   
   >> law enforcement.   
   >>   'What did you say?' he demanded with brute authority.   
   >>   'I said it looked a bit.poncy.'   
   >>   The last word of the sentence was obliterated by the sound of a bottle   
   >> thrown at a passing car smashing on its passenger window. The policeman   
   >> repeated his question. John answered.   
   >>   'You do realise that's a potential hate crime against homosexuals?' the   
   >> policeman said nastily, in the archetypal accent and inflection of a   
   >> London copper.   
   >>  'Come off it,' said John, who was half-drunk. He turned to seek   
   >> Gimmick's support but he'd disappeared into the crowds with Tina.   
   >>   'He didn't mean it like that,' said Amanda.   
   >>   'How do you know what he meant? Are you inside his head?'   
   >>   People drunkenly pushed past them.   
   >>   'No, but I know that he wasn't being hateful towards homosexuals.'   
   >>   'Intcha read any Michel Foucault?' asked the policeman, raising his   
   >> radio to his lips.   
   >>   'A bit,' said John.   
   >>   '2-1,' said the policeman into his radio. 'Got section   
   >> six-three-nine-two-four here. Back up needed.' The policeman looked at   
   >> John again. 'Foucault was a post-structuralist, basically. The   
   >> structuralists believed that the individual is shaped by linguistic,   
   >> sociological and psychological structures over which he has little   
   >> control. In that respect I have sympathy for you. That's my Derrida   
   >> sympathies coming out as well. But the law is the law - even though a   
   >> final and definitive interpretation of it is, by Derrida's standards,   
   >> impossible. However, it isn't my job to interpret the law - that is a   
   >> magistrates' job.'   
   >>   A large shaven-headed man in a football kit swiped the policeman's   
   >> helmet off and danced around with it for a bit.   
   >>   'This guy here is responding to certain pathological deep structures,'   
   >> said the policeman calmly, indicating the man. 'But at the same time, he,   
   >> unlike you, is not indulging or promulgating prejudice or bigotry to   
   >> sexual, racial or gender differences, know what I mean?'   
   >>   'Isn't he making you look foolish though?' asked John.   
   >>   'A righteous thing to do in many ways,' said a second policeman who had   
   >> just got out of a flashing and squawking patrol car; 'a subversion of the   
   >> hegemonic debate and all that.'   
   >>   'Gramsci,' beamed the first policeman by way of explanation. The second   
   >> policeman retrieved the first policeman's helmet. 'Come on,' he said,   
   >> 'leave this - a barman called someone a 'wop' at the Cod's Eye.'   
   >>    'Did he? Right,' said the first policeman. He turned to John and   
   >> raised his finger to the sign: 'remember what we discussed.'   
   >>   The patrol car squealed away. John and Amanda walked on quickly, hoping   
   >> to catch Gimmick and Tina up. The crowds seemed uglier. Someone threw a   
   >> petrol bomb at a tram and it rumbled past with a slather of flames   
   >> discolouring the advertising on its side. Inside, people stared placidly   
   >> through the windows.   
   >>   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> Now the realistic novel forbades both. But I want them to make points in   
   >> an amusing way. 'Reality', as Orwell said about Tropic of Cancer, 'but   
   >> not so much that it turns into Mickey Mouse' *   
   >>   
   >> *paraphrasing from memory.   
   >>   
   >> So I don't think a consistent level of realism is the way to judge good   
   >> writing - that puts Harold Robbins in front of Ronald Firbank and that   
   >> ain't my critical perspective.   
   >>   
   >> ROBBIE   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> ROBBIE   
   >   
   > "Forbids," you mean. It "forbids both." Fowler's Modern English Usage,   
   > 1952 edition, page 186. I'll let you off with a warning this time but in   
   > case of additional violation this incident may be cited as evidence of a   
   > continuing offense.   
      
      
   I think it was Alan Allport -- and my granny and everybody else's -- who was   
   fond of advising: if you can't say anything nice about ______ don't say   
   anything at all. I know it was one of your 'jokes' but...the copy subbing of   
   newsgroup posts is the last refuge of an outraged pedant.   
      
   I've got into this thing about subsituting forbade for forbid. It's mad and   
   I don't even notice it till afterwards.   
      
      
   >   
   > My question isn't whether a level of realism close to reality must be   
   > maintained. That would certainly be dull. It's whether, once having given   
   > the reader to understand that the work is satire, comedy or fantasy, you   
   > can suddenly go realistic without warning -- or suddenly leap into satire   
   > or fantasy in the midst of a realistic novel. It's the lack of warning to   
   > the reader that can be unsettling. Sometimes the reader gets adequate   
   > warning that the story has just lifted off the ground, e.g. by the   
   > play-script typography of Joyce's "Nighttown" chapter (or Orwell's   
   > imitation thereof in *Clergyman's Daughter*). Or sometimes the story stays   
   > at the same level of fantasy all the way through, e.g. in Gulliver's   
   > Travels or for that matter your Mr. Firbank.   
      
      
   Bogart accent: 'He's not particularly *my* Mr Firbank.   
      
      
   > And, OK, sometimes the sudden break from comedy into realism works, as in   
   > "The Meaning of Life"   
      
   I thought P-eye- thonnnn would come into it. You should get into the Bonzo   
   Dog Band - one of the best sixties bands and a direct and rarely   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)