Gah!
a) Steven Moffatt, whose work I admire, is quoted in the Guardian as saying "Being perfectly honest, have you tried reading Dracula or Frankenstein? You'd be found dead of boredom. Fiction for a dustier age - stories that never had to compete with The X-Factor."
He is now relegated to the annoyingly large section of "People Who Think That Dracula and Frankenstein are much the same, despite one of them being written by a middle-aged jobbing thriller writer in 1897 and one by a teenage genius in 1818". I don't mind people being ignorant, but if they are ignorant I expect them to keep quiet rather than spreading their ill-informed views all over the weekend papers. For the record, Dracula is a rollicking rollercoaster of a novel, full of sizzling gypsies. Frankenstein is a work of genius, but a bloody awful read. OK, that's my opinion, and YMMV on the exact categorisations, but I defy anyone who's read both to put them in the same pigeonhole of "old, dull" (surely no-one who would could possibly get to the end of Frankenstein).
b) ENO is advertising its new production of Satyagraha as being "by Philip Glass: Oscar (TM) Nominated for Notes From a Scandal". Words fail me...
He is now relegated to the annoyingly large section of "People Who Think That Dracula and Frankenstein are much the same, despite one of them being written by a middle-aged jobbing thriller writer in 1897 and one by a teenage genius in 1818". I don't mind people being ignorant, but if they are ignorant I expect them to keep quiet rather than spreading their ill-informed views all over the weekend papers. For the record, Dracula is a rollicking rollercoaster of a novel, full of sizzling gypsies. Frankenstein is a work of genius, but a bloody awful read. OK, that's my opinion, and YMMV on the exact categorisations, but I defy anyone who's read both to put them in the same pigeonhole of "old, dull" (surely no-one who would could possibly get to the end of Frankenstein).
b) ENO is advertising its new production of Satyagraha as being "by Philip Glass: Oscar (TM) Nominated for Notes From a Scandal". Words fail me...