What are you writing?

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Haha, lovely idea. Just lately though I've been enjoying writing about the everyday horrors of 21st-century life rather than nameless cosmic creepy-crawlies...I need to think of a suitably horrific climax for my story about the dinner party. Suggestions welcome (or finish the story for me if you like, anyone).
 

luka

Well-known member
youre a good critic although i myself distrusting your assured tone sometimes. i dont distrust your instincts. just the assumed authority. what is startling naturalism?
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Oh, hello.

Is this constructive criticism? If so, I thank you.

1) "Startling naturalism" in Donne you would understand clearly by reading, for example, 'The Good-Morrow' or 'The Canonization' -- that is, the abrupt and colloqiual syntax and diction, the explicit and tactile subject matter (love, sex, death), which was startling in the context and against the norms of his time. Later, less so.

2) "are My Lord Ignorant or Sir Voluptuous Beast really 'riotous sobriquets'?" Yes, they are. They are rather boisterous, funny, slightly out-of-order insults aimed at real individuals.

3) "the assumed authority" comes from the First Class degree and MA in literature, the singular cheek is that I apply it to everything else I choose to write about. But as you always say, every act of writing in public is part-performance. You raise the stakes for yourself if you take this tone, which can only be a good thing, either because you will succeed and therefore improve, or because you will publicly fail and deserve to. The trick is to not be afraid. There is nothing worse than timid writing.

4) Read yer Foucault, as someone once said to someone else.
 

luka

Well-known member
but i would think carefully about whether or not its a game you want to play. its fundamentally dishonest. it's bluff no matter who adopts that tone and 5 years study is still just 5 years study. but as i say, you are a good critic and i'd far rather you wrote about jonsons 'riotous sobriquets' than the internal politics of countires youll never visit.
 

luka

Well-known member
and fir the record no ive never read foucault but i have read donne. do you want to be William F. Buckley, Jr?
 

luka

Well-known member
so what i am getting at is, obviously, that style is also political. the ben jonson piece is good prose but its also catholic style. anti-democratic, incense, mystagogery. not that it is not clear. it is. but there is some smoke and mirrors there.
 

luka

Well-known member
i mean im quibbling, i i do think its a good piece of writing. i do approve. the most troubling thing is this
Don’t forget to visit the King’s College London Festival of Food and Ideas, from 7th-22nd March.
what on earth is that? are you getting paid? how strange.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Don't be demented. It fitted in with the subject matter of the poetry, it seemed like a nice event to complement the piece and I mentioned it for the benefit of some of my friends in London who might like to know about it. I would go if I lived there. Not strange, very simple in fact.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
This was a self-evidently light-hearted, non-sinister, life-affirming piece of fluff. No mystical psycho-drama here, pal.
 
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