News from the Cheltenham literature festival (or Cheltenham Literature Festival, if I was punctuating this article)
“She (Dolly Alderton) said it was Darcy who first came up with ‘negging’, a phrase which has caught on after being coined by the American writer Neil Strauss in his book The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society of Pick-Up Artists.
“Negging is the act of emotional manipulation whereby a person makes a deliberate backhanded compliment, or flirtatious remark, to undermine someone’s confidence and increase the need for approval.
“So a man might come up to Alderton afterwards and say, ‘Oh, you were quite good because normally women aren’t that funny’.”
Mr Darcy’s reputation as romantic hero trashed at Cheltenham literature festival
Defendez M. Darcy. Or don’t he’s so freaking wealthy and good looking, who cares if he’s a jerk?
Also, Brit punctuation on Mr always throws me for a loop, Ms. American hyper-punctuating savage that I am. See the punctuation on Ms.? Take that Guardian newspaper.
“She (Pat Barker) said fiction, or the reading of fiction, was not in good health. It is less #MeToo, she told the Cheltenham literature festival on Sunday. “It is the so what moment.
“‘Even among very enthusiastic modern readers of fiction there is the “so what” movement where you put down a book and you’ve been entertained by the story of contemporary life or mores, or whatever, and you think, “yes but so what”.'”
‘So what’ fiction isn’t creating passionate readers, says Pat Barker
Well, there are only so many properly punctuating American writers to pen things like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or “The Jungle” or “Grapes of Wrath” (alas). Suck it, Brits, until you learn to punctuate like Americans, you’ll just have to whine at someone else. I have semicolons and em dashes to wrangle.
“The literary world is packed with novelists reviewing the books of their colleagues but it is not something Kate Atkinson would do, calling it a ‘callous art’.”
Kate Atkinson calls authors reviewing their peers a ‘callous art’
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE OVER THERE? STOP WHINING! American novelists reviewing each other are (is?) hysterically funny. And the best we can get now that Elaine’s is closed and so no many American author fist fights anymore, alas.
I’m never going to the Cheltenham Literature Festival; it would be too traumatic (for everyone).
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