stop press! the happiness!
Sorry, I really feel I am blogging too much. I really am just about to go get some lunch. But I made the mistake of just quickly looking at the Guardian homepage, and there I learned that the lovable ruffian, or useless wastrel tosspot, who likes to think of himself as London's next mayor - yes, the strange blond tearaway himself, Boris Johnson - is a poet!
Or not. The book, published on Monday by Harper Collins, is entitled The Perils of the Pushy Parents. Lord.
Stuart Jeffries has done the hard work for us, and reports thus:
" [Ken] Livingstone will have to read the bloody thing in order to get a bead on Johnson's views on the politics of childrearing (of which more later), but you need not. This year, an estimated 170,000 books will be published and, if I suggest that this is only the 169,999th least worth reading, that is only because I am hedging my bets. A worse book might appear this year. It is a possibility.
The book concerns the Albacores, a family whose parents insist son and daughter should not watch telly. The dad, especially, is a crackpot who teaches his toddlers Zeno's paradox when they should be eating dirt and shanking each other with plastic cutlery. When Mr Albacore sees the pair watching TV, he takes action rendered thus by Johnson: "He'd zap the programme off and holler/ 'Go and read some Emile Zola.'"
As you will notice, Johnson has a gift for assonance not heard since Alexander Pope wrote the Rape of the Lock (this will be the quote they use on the paperback edition - just see if it isn't). By which I mean, there are lots of duff rhymes....
In Henry IV, part 1, Hotspur remarks: "I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew!/ Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers." If only Johnson were that kitten...
...the quality of Boris is always strained."
9 comments:
As Rita says; 'Assonance? So that means getting the rhyme wrong then.'
Or something like that.
It does sadden me that someone in the public eye can get any old tosh published when the world is full of undiscovered eloquence.
Puss
I blogged about this too. It's pathetic. But the proof will be in sales. Will the British public leave this on the shelves or will it actually sell? If it sells well, I'd consider emigrating. But where to go?
Puss, I think it saddens Stuart Jeffries, too.
Rob, but it's not being published, really, AS "poetry," is it. The British public will buy it as a stocking filler, a book to keep in the bathroom, and more fools they. And ignorant as they are, they won't realise they should be buying Hillaire Belloc instead.
Hi Ms B
You're right, stocking filler it will be. Are we more worried about it than Katie 'Jordan' Price's 'fiction' outselling all the Booker long-listers combined? I suppose we should be grateful Jordan hasn't had the idea to run for London mayor (yet).
xxx
Pants
[wipes away tears]
I'm not the worst poet out there!
Please do another post quick as I'm tired of checking in here and seeing the Tousled Troubadour top of your page.
Meanwhile, these might help distract attention from the Blond Balladeer:
http://www.stacygreene.com/lipstick.html
Anne
PS yikes, word verification is Akela - is someone monitoring all this?
Well, the Zola crack gave me a good laugh even if I couldn't face reading a whole bookful.
Pants, we can thank God for small mercies!
Dick, ell... maybe not...
Anne, I understand your distress. HGow thoughtless of me! And thanks for the lipsticks - they are strangely, and strangly repellently, fascinating.
Quink, don't try to hide it. You'll be queueing down at Borders on Monday morning, I know it.
This Belloc-lite book of nonsense retails at an outrageous £10 and the illustrations I would not credit to chimps. But Bojo's got a name and that's all orthodox publishers are concerned about. Vote Livingstone. Sack Blair.
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