Scrooged (1988)

More Baths Less Talking by Nick Hornby (Believer Books 2012)

In the interests of full disclosure, I should add that I am a literary fattist anyway; I have had a resistance to the more amply proportioned book all my adult life, which is why the thesis I'm most likely to write is entitled "The Shortest Book by Authors Who Usually Go Long." The Crying of Lot 49, Silas Marner, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . . . I've read 'em all. You can infer from that lot what I haven't read. And in any case, long, slow books can have a disastrous, demoralizing effect on your cultural life if you have young children and your reading time is short. You make only tiny inroads into the chunky white wastes every night before falling asleep, and before long you become convinced that it's not really worth reading again until your children are in reform school. My advice, as someone who has been an exhausted parent for seventeen years now, is to stick to the svelte novel—it's not as if this will lower the quality of your consumption, because you've still got a good couple of hundred top, top writers to choose from. Have you read everything by Graham Greene? Or Kurt Vonnegut? Anne Tyler, George Orwell, E. M. Forster, Carol Shields, Jane Austen, Muriel Spark, H. G. Wells, Ian McEwan? I can't think of a book much over four hundred pages by any of them. I wouldn't say that you have to make an exception for Dickens, because we at the Believer don't think that you have to read anybody—we just think you have to read. It's just that short Dickens is atypical Dickens—Hard Times, for example, is long on angry satire, short on jokes—and Dickens, as John Carey said in his brilliant little critical study The Violent Effigy: A Study of Dickens' Imagination, is "essentially a comic writer." If you're going to read him at all, then choose a funny one. Great Expectations is under six hundred pages, and one of the greatest novels ever written, so that's not a bad place to start. 

Fagin The Jew by Will Eisner (2003)

The Riddle (2007)

Boxed In

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (26)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 26th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1127 friends!

Recent blogs:

Modern Technology and Socialism

Religion: dying but not yet dead

Anthropology and politics

This week's top quote:

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.

"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

"If quite convenient, sir."

"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"

The clerk smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work."

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning." Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

A Tale of Two Citadels

What started out as great expectations has now irreversibly fallen on hard times. Andy N over at Socialist Unity blog has the latest sketches on blogz regarding the old curiosity shop that was Respect (Mark I).

Despite public protestations to the contrary, it turns out that meetings did take place in late October behind closed doors between the two opposing factions in these adventures of political twists and turns. Up for discussion was the small matter of arranging as bloodless a separation as possible between the two opposing camps. It all came to nought, as both sides sought to steal a march on the other.

As someone who has nailed his colours to 'Respect Renewal's' mast, Andy probably doesn't see it this way but I think it would take a magician of the skill and deftness of a David Copperfield to explain how two opposing factions - who were each in turn claiming to be the democratising pluralist voice and/or defending the democratic inclusive voice within Respect - could conduct their divorce negotiations behind closed doors and behind the backs of those rank and file members that they were supposed to be representing on each side. I guess it's one for the polemical papers to pick over.

Big question for me, though, is: who's 'Our Mutual Friend' who gets such a prominent mention in this post? S/he is . . ." an independent and respected friend of both sides . . . [who] had offered to mediate in any discussions. It was agreed that this ‘mutual friend’ should be asked to chair the negotiation." [Negotiating what was supposed to be the amicable divorce between Respect (Galloway) and 'Socialist Respect'.]

Little Porrit, maybe? Nah, even when he was active in the Green Party, he was never a member of its eco-socialist wing. Negotiate suggests a legal mindset. Maybe Malcolm Mansfield parked himself at the centre of the dispute. No, can't be him; you can't mix your Dickens with your Austen. There's only so far that this blog will go in its frivolity.

Andy N is insisting that any comments to his post that speculate on the possible identity of OMF will be immediately deleted. With a response like that, watch that thread get derailed quicker than you can say 'What's Tommy Sheridan* up to these days?'

*Of course, it ain't him. Just adding fuel to the fire.