Entries are invited for this new competition, inspired by Dr M______ P_______ of N__ J_____.
Aim: to create a new book jacket for a classic novel. A classic novel is defined as one whose title is familiar to lettered people. “Lettered people” are those who recognise the titles of classic novels.
Prize(s): the warm glow of achievement & perhaps a bauble or trinket.
Method: combine an inappropriate image with a paronomasiac title. (Thank you Dr Gillard for this succinct wording.)
Format: any standard graphic file type (jpg, gif etc) Maximum width 520px. Attach file to email.
Submit to: competition {at} wordability.com.au
Multiple entries: welcome
Deadline: 28th February 2010
Copyright: yours to keep.
Howard Jacobson, in his Independent column a while back
It is a universal law that people give a bad account of themselves when they speak. They cannot find the words for what they truly feel. At a loss, they say what someone else has said, or what they think they should say, and end up parodying what is in their hearts.
Hence the need for literature.
As with what they speak, so with what they hear. Which is why you will find so many intelligent people prepared to listen to and read material that is beneath them. It is as though aesthetically and linguistically we lag behind our own natures. Thus we see adults who have thought long and felt deeply squandering themselves on Harry Potter.
Hence the need to teach literature.
Ronald Searle's 'Look Back in Anger', 1956
So it’s finally changed, and after only fifty-something years. From an interview with British playwright, Polly Denham (Weekend Australian, January 23-24)
. . . a focus on the middle classes is the defining feature of a trend in British theatre.”That was part of the impetus for writing [That Face]: people in pearls watching plays about people doing skag in outer Leeds. Theatre is meant to be a culture of self-examination.”
Kate McGarrigle, who died in January.
The McGarrigle Sisters had their breakthrough as performers with Kate and Anna McGarrigle. That’s still most people’s favourite album, certainly it’s mine.
Sentimental, adolescent, breathy, hoky, they say. Sure, I say, but who cares. Here’s ‘Gentle Annie’ from The McGarrigle Hour.
The sisters made very few rules for themselves: if they liked a song, they sang it, and if it didn’t happen to be a folksong, too bad. So they sang all sorts of things, musical hall songs, French-Canadian popular songs, even cabaret, and perennials from writers like Stephen Foster: “Gentle Annie” dates from1856. They were raised singing some of this repertory, and they tried to recreate that family-round-the-piano atmosphere in their delivery and arrangements and in whole albums like The McGarrigle Hour. On that CD they’re joined by, amongst others their friends Linda Ronstadt and Emmy-Lou Harris, Kate’s children Martha and Rufus Wainwright and Kate’s ex-husband, Loudon Wainwright. So the songs of their childhood became the songs of their present and the family of origin became the family in the present, broken-but-intact.
Sign on wall of Fort Lee, N.J. Middle School :
If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
Hat tip to Dr Phillips.
Want to donate to Haiti, but worried about your money passing through the hands of (ugh) believers? The Richard Dawkins Foundation will care for your needs. A whole bunch of impeccably atheist organisations has agreed to collect money, then pass it on either to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières) or to International Red Cross.
But why not donate direct to one of those two organisations? In the words of the website
When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans.
You are also helping to promote aggressive bigotry. Assisting hypocritical opportunists. Oh and because neither Doctors without Borders or International Red Cross is a development agency you are making a default choice about effective help – Haiti’s needs will not go away any time soon.
But it’s your money.
