Wednesday, January 9, 2008

The Critic

My first blog post this year… I feel compelled to post updates, but too much has happened and I can’t even if I tried to. School starts on Monday, and I am not looking forward to the end of my holiday. But other things are going well. I have already completed my first book this year, am almost done with two others, and have read a few pages of a fourth. I’m doubling last year’s resolution, and hope to read at least two books every month. I also have resurrected several of last year’s resolutions, none of which I will attain, so there really is no point in discussing them here. But I do hope I can post on this blog less sporadically than before. We’ll see…

I’m grinning as I write this – my blog now has an outspoken critic. This critic likened my blog to a teen magazine, said it was girly, and I think he might have implied that it was a tad silly and naïve, although I am sure he will deny that he implied anything of the sort. Now, silliness, naiveté, and frilly girliness are all things that I vehemently disapprove of and look down upon like a terrible snob. I’m always telling people that I hate such stuff, my beloved sister can’t persuade me to watch a chick-flick if she begged me for a month, and I like to believe that I am something like a liberated version of Jane Austen’s Anne Elliot with a wonderfully exaggerated intellect. And when the critic offered me this estimation of my blog, I staggered back in shock. I protested that it was nothing of the sort. “Teenage girl-like indeed! Anything but!” I objected. I considered adding an aggressive “Humph!” to bring home the extent of my disapproval of his opinion, but decided against it. Much as I dislike silliness, I think I find churlishness more objectionable. The wise critic smiled, “Who else would have a ‘current sweetheart’ section”, he asked “like a teen girl’s magazine?”

My witty comebacks froze on my lips. I flushed, and then saw. He was right. It was like the conversion on the road to Damascus! The astute critic had brought home in a few simple words something that I had failed to see. And it wasn’t just the “current sweetheart” section - it was also the blog posts, most of which as he rightly pointed out were testaments to the existence of a romantic in me which (he thinks) is beautifully feminine. And you have to admit that when someone puts it like that, it is very complimentary. And I rise to meet all such compliments with grateful alacrity. :-)

2 comments:

ian skidmore said...

Name the bounder and I will dash him to he ground. You are a very perceptive critic with superb taste in the matter of books. I would certainly marry you but my wife would kick up a Hell of a fuss.

ian skidmore said...

A reprint of "Forgive Us...."is coming out in Spring. It contains several new chapters about my career on the Dail Mirror. I hav also written two comic novels; "Island Fling" and " Magnificent Evan"