Monday, April the 26th, 2004
back to: title, date or indexes
I ranted recently about the never-ending slew of books entitled Flapdoodle's Pin-Cushion and variations thereof (see Rant, 5th April). During the unfortunate technical trauma that closed down Hooting Yard for a couple of weeks, a friend reminded me that I had got myself into a similar tizz some years ago. My bugbear then was that the Booker Prize shortlist always seemed to be limited to novels with pompous, portentous titles like The Redundancy of Courage—was that by Timothy Mo? (I could check, but I really, really can't be bothered.) Titles, in any case, which announced: “This is a serious work. It may be ill-written, tedious, and simple-minded, but it addresses big themes. This is literature.” My plan at the time—never fulfilled, alas, but you know how it is—was to write a thumping great tome entitled The Consistency of Porridge. I may still do so.