A soupcon of linkspam
Am entirely yay about people discovering how very good Stella Gibbons' non-Cold Comfort Farm novels are, even when I think they miss the point about the ending saying that there are other things besides the Romantic Happy Ending and there is some indication that anyway as Margaret becomes less miserable about her lot she becomes livelier and to an extent more attractive. But I really liked this point:
Was it true, I wondered, that funny women writers are generally allowed only one success in their careers? Wouldn't it be interesting to examine this insight in relation to (say) Gibbons, Anita Loos and Betty MacDonald - and then dramatise one (each) of their less well-known books or novels?
Although, hey, wot abaht EM Delafield - beyond The Provincial Lady?
Someone mentioned to me recently that Vintage Classics are bringing back a number of Gibbons' non-CCF works - a glance at their website indicates that Westwood is one of them, also Starlight, plus, perhaps inevitably, Conference at Cold Comfort Farm, and a load of others.
And on women writers deserving of rediscovery, here is one that I didn't realise had to be rediscovered... Elizabeth Mackintosh: woman of mystery who deserves to be rediscovered. Josephine Tey, an 'all but forgotten novelist'? We also feel that Mr McCrum does not, perhaps, draw an entirely clear distinction between 'rediscovering' a writer and 'intrusively trying to uncover what their reclusiveness concealed'.
Oliver Burkeman, Being hyperconscious of how you're presenting yourself is a hindrance, not a help.
It's strange, actually, that this pressure to constrain how we present ourselves should be increasing in the age of the web, which offers unprecedented opportunities to benefit professionally from being the unfocused, multifaceted people we really are. Far more than before, if your passions are gherkin-pickling and freelance legal research, there's at least a chance of making both pay.
Which seems to me to relate quite strongly to the naming question still currently agitated G+ - because at the very least it seems probable that a person might well maintain two separate websites, as Bobsinapickle and LegalresearchRBob, to reflect different activities. Though I suppose people who like pickles might also need legal advice, and vice-versa?
I dunno. I suppose it's nice that people are picking up their lives and living in nice interior-designed spaces in Kabul, and I'm not convinced that this is entirely a case for the Ponceyness Police, but nevertheless there's something a bit uncomfortable about the whole thing, given the context.
Hollywood's classic murders, stalkings and deceptions would never have been possible had today's technology been around. Has this guy never sat through one of those Orange 'Don't Let A Mobile Phone Spoil Your Movie' PSAs before the main feature?
This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1480478.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.