New Statesman -- author tries something different -- August 29 deadline
 

No 4289
By J Seery
J K Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, recently published a thriller called “The Cuckoo’s Calling” under the pen name Robert Galbraith. We want you to send in excerpts from an attempt at something different from an author of your choice.
Max 150 words by 29 August comp@newstatesman.co.uk

Looks very promising. For a New Statesman Comp that is.

What about this. An old one of mine given a tweak. It could be any manifesto o course but this IS the Staggers.

The Larkin Conservative Manifesto

Elect us! We are Unsuccess.
Elect us! We will give you less.
The misery of Adam's curse
Will be immeasurably worse.

You would be foolish to suppose
That any measure we propose
To ameliorate your children's lot
Will come to pass, for it will not.

Our country's future is confusion.
All hopes of growth are an illusion.
Take courage! Drain the bitter cup.
We promise taxes will go up.

Elect us! We will bring you grief,
The withered rose, the shrivelled leaf.
The Torch of Freedom burned to ash,
And Britain sold for foreign cash.

Jilly Cooper writes for Doctor Who

The Doctor was holding Arabella tightly against his heaving, masculine chest, and even though they were in mortal danger she couldn’t help but swoon a bit about that!!!
From their super, super hiding place behind the TARDIS' to-die-for designer console (a snip at 9999.99 hyper-credits from Liberty’s of Zaxxar VII, if you must know!!!) they now had the most perfect view of the Daleks searching for them. Arabella thought they looked like absolute poppets with their darling ray guns and those simply blissful little eye stalks, but the Doctor knew better.
‘Make no mistake,’ whispered the handsome Gallifreyan in a way that made her go even more tingly than she was already, ‘these are ruthless alien killing machines.’
‘Not ruthless alien filling machines like you then!!!’ she burst out, making a clever (and rather naughty!!!) little pun.
‘Exterminate!!!’ said the Daleks.

Brian Sewell does the football results

Aldershot, 3. Dartford, 1. A tiresomely predictable result.

Braintree, a dreary little Essex town that no British painter worth his salt ever considered immortalising on canvas, an entirely unsurprising 0. Hereford, 1. Tedious beyond endurance.

Gateshead, a robust if typically northern 2. Grimsby, in keeping with its unusually apposite cognomen, 0.

Hyde, 3. Southport, though it pains me deeply to say it, 2. The referee, although to my mind he is quite unworthy of the title, was entirely wrong in disallowing the eximious goal from Southport striker Hattersley in the last minute of injury time. The man is an incompetent nincompoop, hopelessly in thrall to the panjandrums of the Football Association and their fashionable, politically-correct rules.

Tamworth, 0. Macclesfield, 0. Incredulity is the only reasonable response of the sane man to such an execrable score, even if he is working class.

I think that is very funny (and very true - God, how tedious football is) but I wonder whether it stays within the rules.

Moot point, I reckon. We shall see.

Here's another Larkin. I've got baldy on the brain.

Philip Larkin Introduces His Agony Column

I read the wretched wrecks of dreams and hopes.
I trace the tracks of tears, so wan and ghostly.
I see the letters in their envelopes,
And the addresses, neatly written mostly.
You have to keep your spirits up, you must
Preserve the possibility of better.
Your past and future crumble into dust
And yet you find the strength to write a letter
To me, to me. Because? Because to tell
Your sadness and your suffering amends them?
The wounds you bare here never will be well,
You know, I know, we know that nothing ends them.
Something far back, too far, was bad begun.
No comfort save the lack of comfort. None.

This. Is. SportsCenter. With Alexander Pope.
 

What mighty contests rise from trivial things
Such as the New York Jets' late fumbling.
Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground,
Then the two-minute warning came around.
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor'd,
Forced Sanchez to throw deep, not kneel down, bored.
The dream that hover'd o'er the safety's head
Was lived; he caught the quail ere it fell dead,
And thus in whispers said, or seem'd to say,
The endzone and the win are thataway.
With golden crowns and wreaths of heav'nly flow'rs
The Patriots escaped the meadowed bower.

Weekend Wall Street Wrap-up, by A E Housman
 

Wal-Mart hemorrhages cash,
McDonalds had a major crash,
Exxon passed its dividend,
And Google’s in a downward trend.

The Chairman of the mighty Fed
Was murdered as he slept in bed,
And turmoil in the Middle East
Has made the bear a raging beast.

The latest hedge-fund Ponzi scheme
Surpasses Madoff’s wildest dream.
Foreclosures reached a record high,
Though no one knows exactly why.

Without a paddle, up the creek,
Wall Street had a brutal week.
(Though, looking at the brighter side,
Cuba’s Castro finally died.)

I think these poems all extremely amusing but it is well known the Staggers has a tin ear. Socialism in Britain is a very prosy thing. Though that was not always so.

I find them fine and amusing too... but the rest of your comment, John, I find I simply do not comprehend. Tin ear?... socialism prosy? (Also, why the NS is called the Staggers. That has puzzled me for a while.)
...May I beg elucidation?
You oldsters and your non-text-speak!!
(P.S. I am 51).

You're right, John. Also, the NS tends to specify poetry of that's what's wanted. It's not precluded by the rubric but I'm betting the winner will be prose, hopefully mine.

Graham, the New Statesman is nicknamed 'The Staggers' because at various points in its 100 year history it has staggered from one crisis to the other in terms of its funding, ownership and circulation. John will tell you this is because they're a bunch of Trots, I'm sure.

Thanks Rob!
Does the 'tin ear' indicate a deafness to appeals, or inability to discern fine quality work?

I am hoping someone will rite a Geoffrey Willans version of something different... pretty much anything done in 'Molesworth' style would be hilarious, I'm thinking. From previous threads I know some Spherians have the apt gift of the gab!

I meant that an ability to write rhyming, scanning verse and an ability to appreciate same tends to pass by our left-leaning ruling classes, but that was not always so. You might suppose Bill and Bazza refute this thesis by their very existence but (a) they are oldish and (b) they are not (alas) members of the ruling elite. Or perhaps they are.

The Staggers was always down-the-middle Labour. Very anti-Trot therefore. Their most distinguished editor in my time was Paul Johnson, their most disastrous Richard Crossman.

Don't let John wind you up, folks, but he's correct in saying the NS was always a mainstream Labour rag, not friendly to the ultra-left. Incidentally, way back when the NS used to be the New Statesman & Nation, familiarly known as the Staggers & Naggers. Sounds rather like dated posh schoolboy slang to me. As an oldie I sometimes call breakfast 'brekkers' (not that I was ever a posh schoolboy).

We don't hold it against you, Bazza. I wasn't a posh schoolboy either. Oh the shame.

I attended a state boarding school for the partially sighted in the days when such a joyful anachronism was possible and we used to say 'brekkers'. You don't have to be a toff to say brekkers, but it helps.

It was a sort of Sloaney slang, adding the "ggers" after the first vowel. Often preceded by, for some obscure reason, "Harry".

So, one might have heard in Kensington wine bar:

I noticed Letitia wasn't at Tarquin's party. In fact I haven't seen her around at all for a while.

Oh, Darling, I thought everybody knew - she's Harry Preggers, and not a notion of who's the Daddy.

Ann, I remember things like 'Harry Gooders' and so on from days, I think, before Sloanes made the media in publications like the proto-Private Eye, Parson's Pleasure. but wondered whether it had become slightly parodic by then. Waste paper basket as wagger-pagger-bagger? Probably a joke extension. However, the formula must go back to the 19th century if we owe 'Soccer' (Association football) and 'Rugger' (Rugby football to it. Maybe this esteeemd forum would become 'Harry Ratters'?

There's a Competition here, I'm sure. I wonder why there's no such thing as crickers. Perhaps women's cricket is knickers crickers.

Back to the grind. Prose eh? Let's try a retread of this one. Does the 150 word limit include the title? Do you know, Chris?

Vladimir Nabokov's School Sex-manual

The facts of life, my chickabiddies! The birds, my own sweet birds of youth a-flutter, and the bees, my hot honeybunches, bristling, whistling, rustling, hustling all abuzz! Meaning sex, my hearties, sex and concupiscence, bold tumescence, deliquescence detumescence, ape and essence, adolescence and you, my little eager beavers, gay deceivers, true believers trembling and dissembling on the cusp. Turn to your neighbour, nymph, swain beside you, touch hands, touch hearts, be public with those private parts, for facts are dryasdust when that whereof we speak is essentially aqueous, wet Bobs and knobs, wet Babs and squabs, slipping and a-sliding you put your whole self in, you take your whole self out, how potent this cheap music truly is. Hokey-cokey, okey-dokey, everybody's doing it, spermatazoa, ova, making out and making over, worm seeks egg, wham-bam and thank you, ma'amm! Pull up your pants; next up is math.

I say Whitters (or Johnners) Harry Nabbers is Harry Gooders, if not too Harry Louchers for Lucy. Think Harry Robbers' Jilly Cooper a strong contender too.

Richard Dawkins writes a children’s story


‘Daddy, Daddy!’ cried Sarah excitedly, ‘there’s a unicorn in the garden!’
‘That is self-evidently absurd,’ said Daddy. ‘No biological mechanism exists whereby any member of the family Equidae may generate a horn from its cranium.’
‘But there is one,’ Sarah insisted, a tear welling in her eye. ‘I saw it.’
‘Can you produce any empirical evidence in support of your claim?’
‘No,’ Sarah mumbled.
‘I thought as much. So what do we say about unicorns, fairies and Father Christmas, Sarah?’
‘That they’re sinister fantasies designed to gull the credulous.’
‘I suppose one must make allowances for the fact that you’re only three,’ sighed Daddy, ‘but pull a stunt like that again and I’ll have you adopted.’
Then they both went to have tea and chocolate cake and read On The Origin of Species. Again.

That makes me laugh too.

Thanks John. I thought your Nabokov disgraceful, but I mean that as a compliment.

Why thank you kind sir.

Just to hedge my bets, I'm going to count the author's name and the "something different" he or she is trying as part of the 150 words. But I doubt that's strictly required, especially if you include the information parenthetically after your entry. I imagine the NS will do something with bold-face headlines to characterize the winning entries in some way. Those heads are composed by the editors, not the competitors. Maybe they'll just run your author's name as a headline and let the nature of the book speak for itself.

I think you are right and I have adjusted my entry accordingly. I'm going to give Joyce another run.


Joyce's Oxford University Prospectus

College windows hurrying scholars gin and tonic at the boathouse lengthening shadows down the gardens ancient buildings softly falling golden scholars autumn shadows sunshine punting down the chapels college choral gin and boathouse golden apples calling meadows haunting moonshine lengthening fellows random knowledge hung in gardens summer madhouse glinting bindings fluttering pedals whispering swallows river shallows gin and gardens hunters ardent weeping fellows drifting whispers dreaming murder winter windows shadow music sung in softly building gardens tonic choral lengthening scholars wailing willows solemn chapels winding softly ailing scholars ancient molars river music classic columns dreaming madhouse pattering shadows boathouse tonic golden money stolen kisses crumpled pillows broken bindings tangled naked sunshine children ancient passions drowning river falling cardhouse chanting scholars hunting moonman random staircase choral starshine deftly building singing candles roaring dimly scudding rainclouds hurrying figures goldenchildren weeping mirrors this year next year sometime never

Please Sir, can I do Joyce too, Sir? - can I? - can I?

Joyce writes the verse for a Hallmark Valentine

At this deleteful hour of dungflies dawning
Soulfisher courts cats’ curiosity -
A written on with dried ink scrap of paper
Which vaunts no idle dubiosity.
When Heighho Harry tripped with nozzy Nan
To dormerwindow gossip from the town
I raided the baccbuccus of my mind
And wrote it, wrote it all, wrote it all down,
O undoubtedly yes and very potably so,
With balls and bars and hoops and wriggles there:
When you and I are lufted to ourselves
Thief us the night, my love, steal we the air.
What if this be not love as others know it?
It only looks as like it as damn it.

Dammit. That's much better. Let's hope the Staggers has no taste or knowledge. Tell you what. You can win with Joyce and I will win with Vlad.

I might be able to use my recent Speccie offering. Anthony Burgess writes erotica?

Ann, I am totally fascinated by this magnificent sentence.

Oh, Darling, I thought everybody knew - she's Harry Preggers, and not a notion of who's the Daddy.

It reminds me of some novelist. Who, who, who? An Englishwoman. Who has that kind of dialogue. Might it be Muriel Spark?

Or it might be a man. Oh, what is his name? Henry Green. Party- Going, etc.

Had it been poetry, I'd say Stevie Smith. But she wrote prose too, didn't she.

Oh, who?

(Sorry, amusing fellows, just ignore this post.)

But Orwn, Anthony Burgess DOES (did) write erotica.

You mean things like "A Cockwork Orange"? Or "Inside Mrs Enderby"?