I did two things with the title: removed the punctuation (from Fry, my balls!) and added irrelevant reference to sex (in this case a sexual organ) to make it sound more interesting. Up to you what you find interesting though.
This I thought would be a nice title for something on Stephen Fry, the admirable writer who taught me this rascally subterfuge for starting short prose pieces. Well, I must admit that Fry did not teach me in person. Also, I'm not imputing the stylistic bastardy of my prose to him. Moreover, I am also sure that in person he is not as horny a style rabbit, itching to impregnate everybody else's prose, as it appears from my previous sentence. Just that I like his prose and the liking is almost physical (ah! that must have done it).
Sometimes you rush through the pages of a book as if the last page has the address to the shop selling the perfect cure for your seven-year-old eczema. But, of course, you do it only because of your less curable disease of plot teleology. Prose assissts in the denoument of a plot. Stephen Fry's prose is autotellic. You may open up any page in a book and start reading without at all missing the pleasure. Somewhat like pornography or a manual of sex. Position 73 is as good as position 69 in the Kamasutra and starting there won't be in medias res at all. I know this analysis of his prose is grossly oversimplified. Someday I hope to write on all the perverse pleasures of his prose.
That said, I will not write a review of his books here. I am re-reading Paperweight now, and felt like trying out his title strategy. It goes well with my stated intention of including non sequitur references to sex in my post. Also, I wish my prose gets his prose's nose and eyes, I mean syntax and cadence. I'll be happy see my blog grow up to be a paperweight.
And as his alter ego, Donald Trefusis says, hugely to you all.
Update: I remembered that Fry has a novel called Stars' Tennis Balls (or Revenge in some editions, a clever remake of The Count of Montecristo. Must have been at the back of my mind when I wrote this. Turns out that my balls are not that irrelevant anymore.
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Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet (da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo) (Conf., VIII. vii (17)) Augustine of Hippo
6 comments:
I refuse to comment on the length and breadth of your post -just what's in between. Do you need someone to do a language hygiene review? I'd do it for free and would leave the lapse(s) in comma just the way you intend it.
Misti dear, you stole my "Lapsing into a Comma" and never returned it. In such a scenario, I object to you making puns based on it!
Coming to the blog, I hugely enjoyed this one. I love Stephen Fry and Paperweight is my favorite book. While reading it, I was grabbed by this insane desire to write margin notes (I never do such vile things otherwise). My copy was littered with my ugly scrawl. I forgot about this and lended it to a friend - she claimed she liked the margin notes as much as she liked the book, used it as a USP to lend to someone else, who claimed the same pleasure. Alas, I never got that book back either!
Sorry, I just realized that I used the wrong word for the past tense of "lend". Misti, see what your dastardly theiving has done to me!
My dear Priya,I have been falsely accused of a crime I did not commit. The book is with Mitul; it was never with me.
And while we are on books that were stolen - I was wondering what happened to my copy of the Metaphysicals. Ahem!
My my my...my comment board will soon start to resemble Oscar Wilde plays where elegant ladies exchange scathing repartees.
@ Priya: Thanks, and why don't you scribble some of the margin notes here from memory? I'd love to know what you thought about Piles or, if that's like "ewww", the article u liked the most.
@ Misti: Hey cool, you guys can write a new post called "The World of Lost Books" on the books that are most likely to be stolen.
*lost* and your latent perverse side is showing up real well i asked mum to check "tunkidada's blog" :P:P
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