White Shoes, Black Socks: Dispatches from the Bleeding Edge

Long has your pal the Rake lived in blissful ignorance of Paper Cuts, the blog. Until someone, ahem, sent me a link. 

Now, I recognize that tilting against corporate blogs is foolish, but I thought holding up the following little gem against the sunlight would be instructive.  (Note, especially, that our man Garner holds up a particularly brainless passage to make his point):

Nick Hornby, in his new "Stuff I've Been Reading" column in The Believer - his is surely the weirdest, most diverting and least pretentious books column in the Western world - gets around to talking about Michael Ondaatje's novel "Coming Through Slaughter" and writes:

"Here is the best definition of a good novel I have come across yet - indeed, I suspect that it might be the only definition of a good novel worth a damn. A good novel is one that sends you scurrying to the computer to look at pictures of prostitutes on the Internet. And as Michael Ondaatje's 'Coming Through Slaughter' is the only novel I have ever read that has made me do this, I can confidently assert that 'Coming Through Slaughter' is, ipso facto, the best novel I have ever read."

Somehow he makes you believe him.

Forget the wit of the staircase; Hornby's discovered the wit of the mirror.

As for Paper Cuts Dwight, he should be told that touting Humble Q. Bloke is the critical equivalent of tucking your shirt into your underwear.

Comments

[Daniel]

Oh god. I did not need to know the things that Hornby does between chapters at night. Not at all.

[REllis]

I guess they don't call him Horn-by for nothin.

I wish I could wash "About A Boy" out of my head and use those neurons for something else, but sadly, no.