blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
You can't get on a motorbike in that fit, nor ride a horse. A white swan, however...
China Mieville -- Questions
- Thread starter Bangpuss
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You can't get on a motorbike in that fit, nor ride a horse. A white swan, however...
Bangpuss
Well-known member
Let me attempt to détente some of the tension surrounding tenses and use of language. Firstly, I think 'surveilled' is the correct verb to describe surveillance. Secondly, the switch of tenses is also correct. The Blackfriars bridge is referred to in the present tense because it still exists after the events being described. Then it switches to past tense because it refers to a specific day in the recent past.
The interview went well, thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately I didn't ask him about leather trousers. He was very lucid and made a lot of sense. In particular, he had some interesting things to say about subcultures and why he got into drum and bass music. From the transcript:
"I found it completely intoxicating and I was really fascinated by it. My first book, King Rat, was obviously very steeped in that, and it wasn’t the only book. There were several books trying to create a drum and bass literature. I wouldn’t say it was a huge movement, but there were several books: Junglist by James T. Kirk and Two Fingers, Deadmeat by Q, and various other books. I think that was a particularly exciting moment. I know there’s a danger of looking back nostalgically at whatever subculture was going on, ‘When I was a lad,’ and saying it’s all been downhill from there. I certainly don’t want to sound like that. But for me, there was something bleakly inhuman in a very exciting and energising way about that music and that scene that I found completely intoxicating.
"Periodically, I’ll listen to some of the old tracks, and I think it’s amazing the extent to which they do hold up. You go back and listen, even to standard floor-fillers like ‘Orignal Nuttah’ or whatever, and the klaxons you’re hearing over the back of that, they sound like noises made by machines, for machines, that we happen to be overhearing, and I found the inhumanness of a lot of that drum and bass very intoxicating."
Over-use of the word 'intoxicating', but I'll forgive him that. No doubt most of us succumb to repetition, hesitation or deviation if we were asked to talk at length about any topic.
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
Just to clarify, wasn't referring to mistakes as such: just poor word choices and jarring grammatical flow.
Such things present obstacles to the reader, and even if one is bent on deploying them for some reason, the first paragraph of an internationally visible newspaper article is hardly the place to do so.
Such things present obstacles to the reader, and even if one is bent on deploying them for some reason, the first paragraph of an internationally visible newspaper article is hardly the place to do so.
Bangpuss
Well-known member
Don't really see how a word can be ugly besides the sounds it makes when pronounced. And whether a word is aesthetically pleasing comes second, in my mind, to its strength as a communication tool. In this case, I think surveilled is the perfect choice. And its ugliness is appropriate for what's being described.
