Quote

[telophase]

A footnote in Lucy Worsley's A Very British Murder: The Story of a National Obsession. This is in the chapter about Dorothy L. Sayers:

* To hear Gaudy Night written off as the. Rigid Julian Symons does in Bloody Murder (1972) is not unusual, but it remains infuriating. When I read the page where he states that 'Gaudy Night is essentially a "woman's novel" full of the most tedious pseudo-serious chat between the characters that goes on for page after page', I threw Mr Symon's book on the floor, and stamped upon it.

(And boo to Apple's autocorrect, which suggested "woman's snivel" when I had typed "woman's novel" CORRECTLY.)

Sent from my Apple ][+

Comments

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Apple's autocorrect was programmed by someone with the the mind of an 10 year old. You'll note that word processing autocorrects don't suggest vagina and anus for anything beginning with a v or an a.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I recently read an edition of Charles Dickens' Bleak House that has some selections from Vladimir Nabakov's lectures on the book, and on the first page of that Nabakov briefly puts down Jane Austen as a girly writer to further burnish the manly and thus more accessible Dickens. (His lectures also covered Mansfield Park.):

We are now ready to tackle Dickens. We are now ready to embrace Dickens. We are now ready to bask in Dickens. In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort to join the ladies in the drawing room. In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

FEEL the testosterone dripping off of Oliver Twist!

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

Aside from my grrr over the sexism, what I took away from the quote was that Dickens is so easy to read you can do it buzzed or drunk.