Word to the unwise

Alas, with tools, and fools, anything can be easy to find.

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

Fair cop

This article may be confusing or unclear to readers.

Rider attached to Wikipedia page on Walter Benjamin's 'The Origin of German Tragic Drama'.

Getting Wood

This is a good liberal country where everyone has rights, including the right to pretend you’re recognising everyone’s rights when you’re not.

- Michael Wood nails the New South Africa in District 9

I always said

The man who writes about himself and his time is the man who writes about all people and all time.

- George Bernard Shaw

Oh, the humanity!

What makes humans human is precisely that they do not know the future.

- Lorrie Moore

Which is why Achilles isn't wholly man (though he isn't quite god enough, either, as it turns out).

Mortal, but not human. The worst of both worlds.

Talked out

I know all too well that the problem of writers talking themselves out is real. But when authors refuse to discuss their current work, isn't it mostly because

a) they don't want to confess that they basically did nothing today, or

b) they were hard at work and yet know - rather angrily - that the general populace - somewhat enviously - does not consider 2000 words of (draft) fiction to constitute a full day at the office?

Sexual Confucian

tell me how a lady can
be gay if she sees no gentleman?

- Confucius, transl. Pound

Ouch.

When some of the more intelligent people... ask little probingly polite questions to try to figure me out, I often lie and tell them I'm a writer. It is almost funny to see how relieved they are to have a way of explaining my lowly work status to themselves.

- Nicholson Baker, Fermata

Vindication!

A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books.

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

Why do today...

I simply exist, I do the minimum I have to do to make a living, because I know that in a sense everything I want to accomplish (and I am a person with ambitions) is infinitely postponable.

- Nicholson Baker, Fermata

Black Swans

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan is a Penguin book, largely orange and white.

Paging Dr Johnson!

Some articles are vandalized a lot. On January 11, 2008, the entire fascinating entry on the aardvark was replaced with “one ugly animal”.

- Nicholson Baker, on the fun to be had indulging in a spot of Wikabuse.

MC Trivia

Q Why are rappers titled MC?

A Because they - or their immediate musical predecessors - did indeed begin life as Masters of Ceremonies, announcers at public dances in the Caribbean.

[With thanks to David Shields, Reality Hunger.]

Real v. Authenti City

What I'm striving for is authenticity. None of it is real.

- WG 'Judas' Sebald

NB

[Photo courtesy DS Hilton at Amnesiac's Rearview.]

Guilty

A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good. What he quotes, he fills with his own voice and humour, and the whole cyclopedia of his table talk is presently believed to be his own.

- Emerson

... as charged.

Bible advocates grinding black people

True.

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Notes: 1) Typos work out at £2000 per letter. 2) But apparently the proofreader is to be forgiven.

Name (and) shame

News just in. The number of idiots online who think they can write but can't is now precisely quantifiable. It's six.

To wit:

Chris (Smythers?)
Sanjay
Rosalyn Ray
Meublen
and Manga Bonbons

All these clowns, you will observe, have pinched blogger address I would have found very useful, and have gone on to post one or fewer contributions to the world of letters, in most cases several years ago.*

My favourite, though - and winner of the Chief Online Oxygen Thief award 2010 - is the 'author' of Illiterata, whose only post, with deathless irony, is the 'Hello World' blogger-autogenerated test page. Nice work, Ian Richmond, you twat.

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* blogger does have a Report Abuse button. Sadly, I suspect hogging unused URLs is not on their list of indictable offences.