Yes, it's that time of the month again, hand me some very strong painkillers...

[oursin]

When Observer Woman is inflicted upon us.

And to add to the horror, when I go to the website, they still have last month's content up, which I thought I had missed (one of the upsides to being in Urbana-Champaign).

So I will not be linking to the totally bizarre, incongruous, indeed nauseatingly jolting, juxtaposition of an article about handbags

Comments

[fox_in_sand]

That book is very silly, but if it gives one very intelligent working-class kid from a comp a chance to learn how mildly intelligent posh private school kids bullshit their way into doing English at Oxbridge then I'm all for it! I'm not saying that Oxbridge interviews are that biased anymore-I've been through one and thought it was intelligently put together, but I think that sort of class confidence in discussion can be a real barrier on the arts side of things. Of course, it is thoroughly marketed at the middle classes anyway, and none of us ought to be bullshitting in this manner.

This is only vaguely related to your post, sorry!

[oursin]

What's wrong with the Bluffer's Guides? - a whole lot less pompous about the whole thing, and a whole lot cheaper too!

[forthwritten]

I suppose it's the "how to talk about it" aspect. I don't think there's any shame in checking the bluffer's guide/wikipedia to chase up a reference and decide if it's worth reading - I know the ideal situation would be to chase up and read every single thing referred to in a book but you've got to do some kind of selective reading.

Then again, I'm not sure who it's marketed for - bitter/desperate English undergraduates perhaps, posh middle class chatterers maybe, but I suspect its real value will be for bright sixth-formers who needs a swift introduction to why certain books are considered important, the context in which they were written and how they fit in the literary timeline.

[nessreader]

I've noticed an upsurge of massmarket "how to talk about novels" books since the rise of reading groups. John Sutherland of course but also several others. And if the group has chosen a book that leaves you going: what? what happened here? what is the blessed point of this one? then they're pretty tempting.

I daresay a lot of the one above will go out as gag gifts to make some sort of point about the recipient's reading habits - which would be a depressing waste of dead trees. And even more copies will star in 2008's spring collection at the remainder bookshops.

[tree_and_leaf]

Thanks for the links, the second in particular made me cheer. (Though I must admit that I find Milton easier to read than Wolfe, even in the not-infrequent moments when I want to kick him).

[hafren]

Lousy as Observer Woman was though, it did have a picture of Greg Wise

[hartleyhare]

I find that I've started bracing myself whenever Observer Woman arrives: it drops through the letterbox and my face is already shaping itself into an anticipatory wince. The article about the twins who were separated at birth wasn't bad, but the handbag nonsense cancelled it out.

I did like Rachel Cooke's line about her inner Protestant being at war with her inner sloth. It's one of the few times I've ever identified with an Observer journalist.

[parthenia14]

The handbag article was unbelievable. It's such bollocks, really, basically pretending to women that loads of other women somewhere actually spend money on the stupid things.

Bah. I need a 'hegemony' icon.