Monday, October 1, 2007

It's the end of the world as we know it.

But no, I don't feel fine, thanks for asking. In fact, I'm wishing that Mark Twain would ride in on a big white horse, six guns blazing, and save us all from the horror that is ghosted pulp*.

Just look at this. Jordan's latest 'book' (and I use the term advisedly) has outsold all the Booker shortlist put together.

There is no hope for humanity. Marketing and celebrity has taken over the world.

*I have nothing against ghost writers. It's just another way of prostituting one's pen and we've all been there. And many ghosts write worthy things under their own names. It's more a self-righteous, almost religious rage that the crap they produce is sucked up because of the name on the front. Try putting Jane Smith, nobody, on those bits of shit and see how well they sell!

9 comments:

kiki said...

it says a lot about the state of the human race...

redcap said...

mr hypocrite, stop trying to make me feel elitist! If I could flush the great toilet and get rid of Jordan, I would.

kiki, there's no hope.

Ariel said...

That is scary, if utterly unsurprising. People can't read literature these days; they can barely spell. I know a kid at one of Melbourne's most exclusive private schools whose class needed a lecture on why it was not appropriate to use txt msg language in English essays.

Ariel said...

I'm plowing through a piece-of-shit book told in notes on the refridgerator door between a mother and daughter (for work, NOT pleasure). The interwebs are abuzz with it in the US and it's supposed to be a big bloody hit.

I say it's pretty much publishing your bloody shopping lists, just pretending they're someone else's.

redcap said...

Ariel, god that sounds dismal! I wonder whether it's as awful as the vampire-witch romance-fantasy (set in Sydney and full of potty mouth words) that I just reviewed? That was dismal. No fridge doors, though.

Ariel said...

Oooh, what was it called? Can you tell me or is it a trade secret? Mine was imaginatively titled 'Notes on the Refrigerator Door'.

Rosanna said...

I'd rather read a thousand soap-opera-style Pride and Prejudice sequels than anything by Jordan.

And that says it all.

redcap said...

ariel, The Darkness Within. Appalling.

rosanna, just imagine how bad Jordan's books would be if she actually wrote them herself! Presuming she can write, of course. Oh miaow, me.

killerrabbit said...

Miaow indeed Redcap...but totally justified. Katie Price isn't known for her brains or ability to sing. I can't even imagine what her novel is about; breast enlargements, stripping and dating famous people by any chance?