The book world has a tendency to go weak at the knees where men of action, and particularly soldiers, are concerned. If Dr Johnson was right that every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, then imagine the havoc the idea plays with book reviewing types, who spend whole days on the sofa and call it work.
You can indulge yourself with liturgical solemnity, be portentous, use strained similes, mix your metaphors, be pompous and overwrought, use endless pyrotechnics, maunder along in a 'writing school' sort of way, be bombastic without the right to be; your thoughts can be incoherent, after all you are in a war for Christ's sake; so you have a right to be tin eared and inept in your prose. 'I'm fucking shell shocked man.' You book when finished may even be a kind of literary train wreck but what the hell, Jeusus man, I was in a war. Get real. Hey man, who neeeds self-effacement when you are writing about a war 'you' were in.
Your war memoirs may be likened to a pile up on the M25 but you will still get a good review because the reviewer who has been lounging around all day on the sofa ingesting endless cups of tea, feels duty bound here, for the only only danger he has faced is in avoiding the traffic on the way to the supermarket to buy a pint of milk.
To the reviewer your war novel will seem as if it came from the land of 'Brobdingnag'
(a fictional land in Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels occupied by giants).
So when presented with a manly tale of derring do, the reviewer whose weltanschauung (world view) of personal danger was an adolesence remembered to be thick with aunts, must now contain his demure malice for it would be frankly peevish of him to temper his enthusiam and give your war novel a bad review.
So, go on! get started on that 'war' novel.
You can indulge yourself with liturgical solemnity, be portentous, use strained similes, mix your metaphors, be pompous and overwrought, use endless pyrotechnics, maunder along in a 'writing school' sort of way, be bombastic without the right to be; your thoughts can be incoherent, after all you are in a war for Christ's sake; so you have a right to be tin eared and inept in your prose. 'I'm fucking shell shocked man.' You book when finished may even be a kind of literary train wreck but what the hell, Jeusus man, I was in a war. Get real. Hey man, who neeeds self-effacement when you are writing about a war 'you' were in.
Your war memoirs may be likened to a pile up on the M25 but you will still get a good review because the reviewer who has been lounging around all day on the sofa ingesting endless cups of tea, feels duty bound here, for the only only danger he has faced is in avoiding the traffic on the way to the supermarket to buy a pint of milk.
To the reviewer your war novel will seem as if it came from the land of 'Brobdingnag'
(a fictional land in Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels occupied by giants).
So when presented with a manly tale of derring do, the reviewer whose weltanschauung (world view) of personal danger was an adolesence remembered to be thick with aunts, must now contain his demure malice for it would be frankly peevish of him to temper his enthusiam and give your war novel a bad review.
So, go on! get started on that 'war' novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment