[Nigel Mace]

Brian - you at your best. I remember an earlier Shakespeare spoof with pleasure.

[Orwn Acra]

I am sure you remember Snow White, that little strumpet dreaming of a man who could come bump her in the night. Well, the witch, portrayed as old and realistic, in that story goes "Mirror, mirror..." and I'll stop right there, because it seems that's as far as Mr. Borges got before writing this new collection of his, "Labyrinths." Like two mirrors facing each other, Borges reflects endlessly on mirrors. Also, mazes and incunabula. I have only cracked mirrors, and I try to avoid their eye at all times, just as men avoid mine, yet I am not too biased to say I don't give a damn as to where his footnotes lead or which of his cliff hangers I can hang myself from. The cover is a pretty little thing, black and blue, like a trampled violet or a bruised heart, but it's what's inside that counts. Or so everyone has told me, though the Princes in my life have certainly known better...

[Marcus Sevat]

Excellent capture of Shakespeare, Brian. Well done. Try to get it in before the deadline this time.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Marcus Sevat

Excellent capture of Shakespeare, Brian. Well done. Try to get it in before the deadline this time.

Thank you, Marcus.

The only time I've ever missed a deadline was when the idea for the piece came to me after the closing date!

[John Whitworth]

And after Closing Time no doubt.

[Brian Allgar]

John, there is no closing time chez Allgar.

[Graham King]

“Recounting flaws in Verne’s escapist novels grows as tiresome as reading them, if easier. Armchair dilettante, no seaman, here he offers us Nemo- nobody! -a Captain scantily sketched; his crew, ciphers. Their frankly fantastical submarine, Nautilus- ramming warships to wreckage? Any ordinary sea-swell would overturn its salon (ridiculously furnished with priceless artworks and fragile specimen cases) into shambles! Like Nemo’s library (12,000 tomes surely doomed onboard to dampness and decay), book-learning heavily waterlogs Verne’s prose; he didactically catechises us in biological nomenclature, listing, ever listing… Intermittent passages of chase or conflict whet the appetite then disappoint; lacking salt and savour of manly reality, these are shallowly staged set-pieces.
Verne treats encountered sea-creatures as mere animals, lacking that potent heady symbolism which mariners feel marrow-deep!
Eventually, pasteboard protagonists Arronax, Conseil and Land abandon ship, their souls untransfigured by numinous experience- surely the absurdest impossibility of all.”


It felt strange, writing a mock-panning of one of my favourite books and authors!

[Graham King]

(It's only fair to allow JV a reciprocal response to HM!)

“Mr Melville himself manned a whaler; supposedly advantageous (purporting authenticity), actually this renders him regrettably biased and preoccupied. He parrots much hoary lore regarding whales, casting his net undiscerningly wide.
His novel’s bizarrely obsessive focus obstructs methodical cataloguing and weighing of interesting observations alleged by mariners.
Consider the St Elmo’s Fire that seemingly invests Captain Ahab’s upraised harpoon with mystic power. Melville missed his opportunity to discourse educationally upon electricity’s properties; uses; hazards; and experimenters (Franklin, Volta, Ampère…) who afforded humanity its benefits.
He also devotes insufficient space to oceanography; savants whose interest in cetaceans is scientific rather than exploitative commercially; and technical details of the vessel Pequod’s construction.
Raw emotions run rife (vengefulness; authoritarianism; blasphemy) with fatalistic paganism shown practised and vindicated!
Some anatomical allusions are distasteful, even ribald. Numerous deaths occur, futilely.
Philosophical readers would shudder to encounter this feverish, unedifying volume in drawing-room or public library.”

[Peter Goulding]

I realise that this is probably akin to heresy in some people's eyes!

Ogden Nash on Ulysses

I have read some novels that are akin to sailing on a calm sea and others that resemble sailing on much crueler seas,
And into the latter category I would place James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
The whole novel is so rich in language that one couldn’t make it even a bit richer,
Which is why it is regarded as the prime example of Modernist Literature
And Mr. Joyce has undoubtedly been given due deference,
But it is awfully hard work for a man without a diploma in Ancient Greek to wade through all the mythological characters he chooses to reference.
And to be frank, if this novel had a beauty, it would not be in the flowery language that this novel’s beauty lies,
Nor indeed in the myriad of different styles that he chooses to utilise.
And I have been told by certain critics that Leopold Bloom’s peregrinations north and south of the River Liffey
Are a bit iffy,
But sadly I only struggled through the first three chapters about the musings and urinations of Stephen Daedalus
Before I left the rest of the book readerless.

[George Simmers]

Byron on Heaney - a bit of a last-minute effort.

The favourite bard of those who dish out prizes
Is Heaney, Irish and potato-faced,
He's slow and thoughtful, like a man who's wise is,
And never jars you with a lapse of taste,
With phrases quotable, or with surprises.
He shows us farmers' boots, all mud-encased,
Plus intimations of the deep beyond
That come from groping frogspawn in a pond.

Perhaps you ought to read him if you're tickled
By thoughts of ancient corpses gold as honey
That once in some far northern bog got pickled.
That's nice enough – but I would not put money
On Seamus when posterity has sickled
Our crop of poets. Won't they think it funny
That he wrote reams on farmyard and on cow
And rarely thought about describing now?