What a day it’s been in blogdom!
First, the immortal Hunter Baker (author of the soon-to-be-released The End of Secularism), plugs West Oversea over at Mere Comments.
Then “Mike” at Threedonia (one of the best blogs in the world for sheer fun) posted about Hunter Baker’s post.
If we can just keep this momentum going, I’ll soon be hobnobbing with Jonah Goldberg and refusing to return Ann Coulter’s calls.
(Just a joke, Ann. Call me anytime.)
The June Smithsonian includes a light piece entitled “Words to Remember,” by Miles Corwin, about Amanda McKittrick Ros, generally considered the worst novelist in history.
If I didn’t recall, from C. S. Lewis’ Collected Letters, that he and the other Inklings used to wile away the evenings reading passages from Ros’s novels, to see how long they could last before breaking up in laughter, I’d be tempted to suspect her whole story was a hoax.
What price prose like this:
“Speak! Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue!”
Sure, it’s bad. But is it really worse than Dan Brown?
I’m working on my new linen Viking tunic. Cut it out last night. Tonight I think I’ll tackle the neck hole, always one of the trickiest parts of a tunic.
There’s nothing intrinsically unmasculine about sewing (he insisted, his face nevertheless revealing his profound shame and ambivalence). A sewing project is essentially an engineering job. There’s lots of measuring and fitting stuff together, with (one hopes) the solid satisfaction of a well-constructed product at the end of the process.
I think the problem is that clothes just don’t matter as much to guys as they do to women.
Reenactors are different, though. We compare our trousseaus like debutantes.
In a manly, virile way, of course.
Wow. I’ve never heard of Ros. I feel as if touched by the hot hand of bewildermentustagnation.
“A sewing project is essentially an engineering job.”
Maybe if you’re sewing a bra, Lars. Nice try, though.
We take our gussets serious in these parts, stranger.
“I’m working on my new linen Viking tunic.”
Uh… right.
Ros is addictive—I’ve only just heard of her, and I can’t stop. This will have to be on my tombstone:
That’s the first time I’ve ever laughed out loud while reading Wikipedia.
“Uh… right.”
That was from Ros, not me. I just personalized it for you.
Aren’t you glad I found this place?
Who are you, again?
That’s THE END OF SECULARISM, Lars!!!
I’ve been meaning to tell you, you need to change the title.
(OK, OK. I’ll fix it.)
Very cool. I look forward to reading that West Oversea is selling well enough to get the sequel published. BTW, it’s still not on Amazon.
In the realms of bad writing, let us not forget William Topaz McGonagall, author of the infamous The Tay Bridge Disaster:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
Now that’s poetrification for you. Or maybe poetrefaction.
Now, McGonagall I knew about. However, from the examples I’ve seen, McGonagall was simply incompetent, a guy who went for the easiest rhyme at a fifth-grade level, and called it poetry.
Ros was actively bad, aiming at an exalted level of eloquence and botching it every time. It seems to have been almost a kind of genius. An evil genius, but genius.
As you work on your new tunic, would you take photos and post them? I would like to see how you do it.
Wow. The line from Ros in comment 4 is amazing. I need to add ” faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness” to my list of phrases on tap.