Unfortunately the school I attended between the ages of 11 and 18 made St Trinians look like a progressive Steiner academy. It was like WWII hadn't actually happened and we studied in an atmosphere of beeswax, hockey shin pads and, as a special treat, a lunchtime mass every Wednesday.
We had a lake with swans on with it and an outdoor area referred to as "The Quad" for fuck's sake.
This pre-war modernity extended to the curriculum and in my seven years study there I don't think I encountered any book written in the 20th century. I didn't read 'A Kestrel for a Knave' until I was well into my twenties.
The school was obsessed with teaching Thomas Fucking Hardy and Jane Frigging Austen. I can only assume the nuns got a job lot in from a book depository because that's all we ever read - even if those two authors were not listed on a matriculation board curriculum we still would have been force fed the Bonnet & Carriages crap. As for poetry - William Wordsworth was radical.
There we all are - little estate rats in the midst of a Northern city during the mid-eighties witnessing the heart of it being torn out by a vicious recession and a ruthless bunch of Tory bastards and we're reading about stupid females drinking tea and feckless 'heros' getting just a little bit too obsessed with their sheep.
The one book that really got up my nose was the "Trumpet Major" which is forever re-titled in my head as "The Trumpet Fucking Major". From what I remember of the plot it was about some stupid tart in a frock who is desperate to cop off with some bloke in a uniform - he meanwhile is more interested in making fried eggs and eating opium sarnies. His brother, meanwhile, is also trying his luck with the tart-in-the-frock but she's not having any of it, preferring the educationally subnormal trumpet playing squaddie.
I think that's how the plot went. Most of it I have blotted out in a word-orgy of modern short stories.
Some years after escaping from the convent I read that Thomas Hardy had received a poor schooling and was largely self-educated. That will be why he writes like a TWAT then - he could barely string a fucking sentence together.
Jane Austen. Jesus Christ - as relevant to my life as Haile Selassie's grandmother's second cousin's fishmonger (and probably just as fragrant given bathroom facilities at the time). Her novels have a single theme - arranged marriages. How many bloody novels can you write about women being the property of another human being?
It took me many years after leaving to school to catch up with contemporary literature and the very notion of modern writing. In that time I formed the opinion that you should read what you like rather than what you think you should be reading. But do accept that some of the world's most acclaimed authors are, in fact, shite.
My Top 10 List of Authors that are Actually Quite Shite
We had a lake with swans on with it and an outdoor area referred to as "The Quad" for fuck's sake.
This pre-war modernity extended to the curriculum and in my seven years study there I don't think I encountered any book written in the 20th century. I didn't read 'A Kestrel for a Knave' until I was well into my twenties.
The school was obsessed with teaching Thomas Fucking Hardy and Jane Frigging Austen. I can only assume the nuns got a job lot in from a book depository because that's all we ever read - even if those two authors were not listed on a matriculation board curriculum we still would have been force fed the Bonnet & Carriages crap. As for poetry - William Wordsworth was radical.
There we all are - little estate rats in the midst of a Northern city during the mid-eighties witnessing the heart of it being torn out by a vicious recession and a ruthless bunch of Tory bastards and we're reading about stupid females drinking tea and feckless 'heros' getting just a little bit too obsessed with their sheep.
The one book that really got up my nose was the "Trumpet Major" which is forever re-titled in my head as "The Trumpet Fucking Major". From what I remember of the plot it was about some stupid tart in a frock who is desperate to cop off with some bloke in a uniform - he meanwhile is more interested in making fried eggs and eating opium sarnies. His brother, meanwhile, is also trying his luck with the tart-in-the-frock but she's not having any of it, preferring the educationally subnormal trumpet playing squaddie.
I think that's how the plot went. Most of it I have blotted out in a word-orgy of modern short stories.
Some years after escaping from the convent I read that Thomas Hardy had received a poor schooling and was largely self-educated. That will be why he writes like a TWAT then - he could barely string a fucking sentence together.
Jane Austen. Jesus Christ - as relevant to my life as Haile Selassie's grandmother's second cousin's fishmonger (and probably just as fragrant given bathroom facilities at the time). Her novels have a single theme - arranged marriages. How many bloody novels can you write about women being the property of another human being?
It took me many years after leaving to school to catch up with contemporary literature and the very notion of modern writing. In that time I formed the opinion that you should read what you like rather than what you think you should be reading. But do accept that some of the world's most acclaimed authors are, in fact, shite.
My Top 10 List of Authors that are Actually Quite Shite
- Jack Kerouac - that ain't writing folks, it's typing
- Agatha Christie - an old bag who probably smelled of wee
- J.K. Rowling - you will NEVER entrance like C.S. Lewis NEVER
- Graham Greene - what exactly is a 'Catholic' writer eh?
- Charles Dickens - paid by the word and it bloody feels like it
- Norman Mailer - misogynistic git
- V.S. Naipaul - try and finish one of his without falling asl...
- Louis de Bernieres - when Captain Correlli's Fucking Banjo was all the rage I could have quite happily stabbed anyone on the Tube reading it
- Mervyn Peake - could you possibly stick your head any further up your arse?
- Albert Camus - what a tosser and I bet he had no mates
- James Joyce - yeah, I can write random words with no syntax too!
- Martin Amis - utterly, utterly talentless fucking TWAT.
Other acclaimed writers that get right up my nose: Seamus Heaney, Robert Graves, Tolstoy, Anne Bronte (jump on the bandwagon why don't you?), Nick Hornby, Shakespeare, Gunter Grass, Beryl Bainbridge, Tolkein... I could go on.
Too right! I agree with most. Especially Dickens and Amis. God, Amis is crap. I never had to read any of those 'swishing about in frocks having tea' type of books, and never had any interest in doing so. I was trying to think if I've even read any Hardy... and thought of a book that sounds like what you are talking about... and it's Tess of D'stinkingditch.
ReplyDelete"Nothing in common" is the way I felt after 10 seconds of SITC too; just who would create such shallow mud-puddle women and why would anyone care? Beats the fuck outta me.
Amis is also a complete wanker. DO NOT READ HARDY - YOU WILL LOSE THE WILL TO LIVE.
ReplyDeletePhen, good article , interesting that you dont rate Gormenghast , I really loved it.
ReplyDeleteHad the very great misfortune of reading Jude the Obscure , JESUS CHRIST it was torture. Finished it , but it haunts me to this day.
Have to admit I loved L'etranger , but on your side again with Corelli , if you thought the book was bad, see the film with Nicholas Cage.
Actually dont , you may go on a killing spree directly afterwards.
Nicholas Cage - he's another one with a face you can smash in.
ReplyDeleteJude the Obscure - oh you poor, poor bastard.