Fry my balls

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.