![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
larryhammer1. Department of It Never Changes -- the opening of P.G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress, published in 1919:
B. In the first three seasons of The Muppet Show, the most successful guests were not those who good-naturedly went along with the muppety chaos around them, however amusing they might find it. Instead, it was those who dived into the scrum and threw the ball right back into their felt faces. John Cleese and Spike Mulligan are prime examples of outdoing the hosts at their own game, but other less anarchic guests like Danny Kaye who actively controlled the pace and disorder of their scenes did just as well. And for that matter Raquel Welch, though she used *cough* rather different tactics.
iii. Is it wrong of me to look at Heike monogatari and Genji monogatari beside each other on a shelf and wonder, even if only briefly, whether the equally fat volumes on either side ought really to be called Clarissa monogatari and Bloom monogatari?
d. Speaking of which books, a poll:
[Poll #1728399]
V. ... don't stop believin' / hold on to the feelin' / streetlights, people / don't stop believin' / hold on
---L.
Inasmuch as the scene of this story is that historic pile, Belpher Castle, in the county of Hampshire, it would be an agreeable task to open it with a leisurely description of the place, followed by some notes on the history of the Earls of Marshmoreton, who have owned it since the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, in these days of rush and hurry, a novelist works at a disadvantage. He must leap into the middle of his tale with as little delay as he would employ in boarding a moving tramcar. He must get off the mark with the smooth swiftness of a jack-rabbit surprised while lunching. Otherwise, people throw him aside and go out to picture palaces.You would think that when people say "You can't afford a leisurely start to your story any more" that they would start dropping the "any more" given they've been saying it for at least almost a century.
B. In the first three seasons of The Muppet Show, the most successful guests were not those who good-naturedly went along with the muppety chaos around them, however amusing they might find it. Instead, it was those who dived into the scrum and threw the ball right back into their felt faces. John Cleese and Spike Mulligan are prime examples of outdoing the hosts at their own game, but other less anarchic guests like Danny Kaye who actively controlled the pace and disorder of their scenes did just as well. And for that matter Raquel Welch, though she used *cough* rather different tactics.
iii. Is it wrong of me to look at Heike monogatari and Genji monogatari beside each other on a shelf and wonder, even if only briefly, whether the equally fat volumes on either side ought really to be called Clarissa monogatari and Bloom monogatari?
d. Speaking of which books, a poll:
[Poll #1728399]
V. ... don't stop believin' / hold on to the feelin' / streetlights, people / don't stop believin' / hold on
---L.
no subject
Date: 9 April 2011 05:04 pm (UTC)---L.