h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I can't remember if anyone *ever* paid me for anything I wrote.

So, I can try to relate to the idea of writing a classic. Most writers of classics probably didn't know that their work deserved to be classic at the time they were writing.

A good article, applicable to many purposes, including works that no one will ever get paid for.

My latest idea is about a teenager who goes back in time to stop a statue being removed so it can be removed back in the future and the twitterverse be restored and fake newwwws avoided. I'll Chuck in something about a nasty bug and thousands ignoring the dangers of congregating in their thousands to tear down a statue that had been removed in the past but then reappeared back in the future to make the plot make sense.

A few up tempo Heavy Leslie songs (if the artist hasn't been run out of several maritime towns by now) Bob's your sister's brother! Smash hit, instant classic!

I doubt you'd get paid for that.

Consider yourself decommissioned for the soundtrack of the movie of the book!

Don't be like that. I'll be glad to make you 'music to time travel and smash statues with', if I can figure out what it sounds like...

Tadpoles and buttercups are a lot easier....

Personally, I'm not a fan of any statues. Most of them are unfortunate-looking, and sooner or later, somebody gets tired of looking at them. I wouldn't pay a nickel or cross the street to remove one, because that sort of thing is better done with a block and tackle and proper safety gear.

I would happily pay to smash up every single lambanana in....where was that city again?

I didn't believe you about the lambananas. I had to look them up. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one.

Don't worry: that pic is going in with the story on the 22nd!

You have to write more Liverpool entries and enlighten us. (Which the pastor spelled 'inlighten' in this morning's sermon presentation. On purpose, he assured us. My brain is melting down.)

But to write a real classic, you need to spend 10 years researching and writing it.

I've been reading Hilary Mantel's 'The Mirror and the Light'and it's obviously a classic. It feels so real - so full of seemingly authentic detail, you can almost see the colour of the king's clothes and smell the blood running from the slaughterhouse. The trouble is, there are so many characters,I sometimes forget who's who.

I know that kind of book!

But we may differ, then, on what constitutes a classic.

That's not to say Hilary Mantel's novel might not be a remarkable work. The concept of 'classic', though, would seem to require longevity in appeal, a general tendency of people to read it again and again, quotability, elegance of construction, etc.

I haven't read it, and am unlikely to get around to doing it, especially as I just checked her work on Open Library ('The Mirror and the Light' not listed) and read this sentence at random:

'The orange of the streetlights is blotted to a fondant cerise; in pastureland, the pylons lift their skirts in a ferrous gavotte.'

I would find it hard to read on after a sentence like that. We have a lot of writers in the southern US who commit sentences like that, and I usually want to throw things at them.

'Back to the Future' is a classic in its genre, requiring minimal research but a whole lot of special effects. 'Treasure Island', which I certainly wouldn't hold up as the greatest novel ever written, is a classic in the boy's-book/pirate-story genre. I'll bet Stevenson did a bit of research, not much, and drew on his experiences listening to sailors tell lies. (Am I the only one in the room who can recite the last sentence of that book without looking it up?)

'Under the Volcano' is a wonderful, deeply funny and insightful novel. In Iceland, it may be elevated to the status of a classic. But I doubt it's going to be remembered that way in most of the world. Icelandic humour involving 13-year-old smoked shark meat is not for everyone.

I haven't looked, but I'll bet it annoyed William Golding that 'Lord of the Flies' became a classic - a novel read, discussed, analysed, memorised, lionised, and assigned in schools. He certainly wrote a lot better books than that.

I gather all the periodicals that matter really liked Hilary Mantel's trilogy. (The New Yorker didn't, but it's got a shorter attention span.) Maybe it will turn out to be a classic of long-form historical period fiction, who knows?

Would you call "The inheritors" better than "Lord of the flies"?

"Rites of passage" won the Booker Prize.

I am glad he didn't write a series of more than twenty books to rival "Dance to the music of time."

I would call 'The Inheritors' better, yes. Also 'Pincher Martin', which is my favourite. He wrote a short story called 'The Hot Gates' that I like, also 'The Spire'.

Did you know that Golding could do psychometry? He was into midden archaeology, and if he touched an object that had lain in the earth a long time, he got stories from it.

That is heartwarming.

And if he touched an object from the midden, he had to go wash his hands?

True enough. Midden archaeology, though, turns up a lot of interesting things. It's like dumpster-diving through the past.

Do dumpsters use a diving board?