Posts by Emma Hart
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Like Shakespeare, it's counterproductive to ram his work down the throats of bored schoolchildren.
Heavens, yes. The bes VicLit comes across as dry these days, and even style aside, Oliver Twist is too LONG to serve as required reading in high school. Hard Times is half the length and a better book. IMO.
The 'mawkishness' of Dickens was high style in the Victorian period. It pays to remember that he was writing for periodicals, not writing novels. There aren't many famous novelists who had to worry about keeping their circulation up.
As a matter of personal taste, I vastly prefer Gaskell and Trollope myself. (Austen goes aside, because she's NOT a Victorian novelist.) But then, I loathe Wuthering Heights...
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He called out the Economist for writing Cornish Pasty not Pastry (Pastys are something different in the USA).
Yes, if in your head you're pronouncing 'pasties' with an ay sound, the mind seriously boggles.
But. Dear gods, basic research.
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It’s like, f###### chill the f### out
Quite.
On my own not-chilling-out note, I got the closest to psychotic over a commentary during the Dressage this afternoon. Thanks very much, but if I wanted out-loud counting over those pictures, I could do it my *&@!# Quax-ing self.
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I do find the idea of an online shit-fight about Dickens quite amusing. And also quite nice.
I knew that post-grad work on Condition of England novels was going to pay off sometime.
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This is a simple concept. If people are given benefits they are not taught that work is necessary. In order to defend the welfare state one must use the sympathy card, validating the expense for many because of the needs of a few.
Bullshit, Grant, absolute and complete bollocks. In order to defend the welfare state, one needs to look at places (in geography and history) that didn't have a welfare provision, see what happened, and compare it with what happens in countries that DO have welfare. That's nothing to do with abstract sympathies and everything to do with solid facts like crime and disease rates.
If people are given benefits they are not taught that work is necessary.
So the reason about 90% of UEB recipients stay on it for less than a year is...?
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where ambiguity isn't particularly hip, for obvious reasons.
Which is a pity. I love a good ambiguing.
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The historical and sociological record suggests that reality actually outdickensed Dickensed, by and large.
Indeed. Dickens freely admitted his books were cleaned up enormously in order to make them suitable reading fodder for the Victorian middle classes. The reality would have made people too sick to read them. I recommend Engels for people who think it was fictionalised the other way, but then some people tend to jump up and down and yap 'commie!'.
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But if you held a Dougal Stevenson theme party, which involved painting portraits of him on every wall, I think you'd be 'Dougalling' up your house, not 'Dougling' it.
Hey, there's an idea. Certainly one I'm not going to be able to remove from my brain for a while.
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then an opposing opinion is just as valid, if not believable.
Grant, that word 'valid'? I don't think it means what you think it means.
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Anything? Anyone? Bueller?
I love you, Danielle.