The market, Salonica

The market, Salonica
The market, Salonica

Tuesday 12 November 2013

For our tutorial next week, bring along tireless:, or Style and Tone in Graham Spaid

I have a science degree in Zoology. I am also taking a degree in English Literature. I am 53 years old. At three o'clock last night I finished my dissertation on the godawful Duchess of Malfi. 

I'm sorry Graham but I didn't like your book and as to why I will relate here. I found the book confusing and at times garbled. This was due to the poor use of quotation marks; they were either missing or placed at the beginning of speech and then not added to the end of the speech or vice versa. Also the sentence structure, syntax and grammar was poor.
When relating a story by Jim you place this all to often in first person rather than second person.
Other notes I made are as follows,

- When you wrote of the fellow falling off the bus you wrote, "like a sheep crook or something had hooked his collar from behind and just jerked him off. (Aside: No Pun intended...)." For there to be a pun there has to be context somewhere in the previous sentence/s, there is none. "jerked him off" is certainly a double entrende but not a pun. Also the "or something" is superfluous.
- You write, "Jim made a gesture like d'Artagnan sweeping of his hat before the King of France." Firstly, how could Jim make this gesture when the bus was 'packed' according to what you wrote earlier in the chapter? Secondly, the gesture would be meaningless in India. Thirdly, the simile is too verbose.
- "A tiny wing of panic lifted up inside me, then was still. (My metaphor). There is no metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common. 
- "pulled down an old shed which, like Tintern Abbey, was a pleasant ruin." Another poor simile. How could one compare a 12thC abbey to a garden shed. They are both ruins but that is as far as any comparison can go.
- You wrote, "I pulled a genuine shiny guffaw out of the box but stopped like finding out a gift is faulty and has been recalled." Another poor simile that doesn't make sense.
- "Every child in the class put up their hand without exception, including those at the table where I had just been sitting." The last part of this sentence is unnecessary. The words "without exception" means all inclusive. So, mentioning that other pupils are included in the action of raising their arms is unnecessary.
- "When I look at Olga, something moves inside me like a continent." So that movement inside you is imperceptible. Continents move so slowly to be imperceptible.
- "I won't get much sleep now", he predicted, rather optimistically." This should be pessimistically as the sentence relates to a negative.
- "the python, which was robustly, and, I hoped idly waving his ends around. 'Robustly' and 'idly' are contradictions in terms. Also, how did you know the sex of the animal? 

There are many, many more but I feel my points have been made. Sorry, to write so pessimistically but I always believe in being honest. I won't write a review on my blog, or Amazon or Goodreads.

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