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

I'm in a bit of a fix - am HUGELY tempted by David Eggers "You Shall Know Our Velocity" but am not sure it's worth the £13 it costs - has anybody read this book? Can you recommend it?

Cheers
Edd

Dear Edd

I read the last book by David Eggers and I think it was worth about 7 pounds 50. 50p for the little drawing of the stapler, and 7 quid for everything else. This new one by him isn't supposed to be as good, so you might be a bit disappointed to do more than a tenner on it.

You might want to wait until the paperback comes out, because the paperback of AHRWOSG had lots of extra bits in it.

I have consulted with my turf accountant and they offer odds of 33-1 against it being as good as The Corrections. So you might want to read that, if you haven't already.

But I do like Brahms, so what do I know.

Chin chin

BB

I shall perhaps read The Corrections then.

So what do you think I think is wrong with Brahms?

Edd

Hi there Edd -

Sorry for not replying for so long. Just as I hit the 'post' button on that comment my computer did something bad and I thought that my entertaining musings had been lost for ever. Ah well, qualis artifex pereo, and all that.

Ah, now that is quite an interesting question about Brahms. I know something about Brahms but less about you, so there are two ways it could go here. 1) Brahms bores you in the same way that Bruckner bored Stravinsky. It's unlikely that you object to Brahms because he shot cats. If you studied English Literature, your favourite poet would be T S Eliot, but seeing as you don't, you read Umberto Eco books instead. Nothing wrong with that. You might start to worry, though if you pick up copies 'The Limits of Interpretation' or 'Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages', or stalk Bologna's atmospheric via Zamboni, eyes peeled for tweedy fat-man smelling of fags.

Or 2) (And here I must admit to not reading your personal text very carefully at first) you are merely trying to dissuade exclusively people who both like Brahms AND can't play the Brahms piano concerto. But I imagine you believe such snobbery to be beneath you.

I think 1) is probably going to run out the winner.

How did I do?

And just to be fair, here's a question for you. Do you think I play Bach's C major prelude with the pedal down, or not?

nil point my friend I LIKE Brahms, particularily in fact the piano concerto No. 2. What I don't like, and I took a very round about way of saying it, making many quite deliberate sweeping generalisations was that I don't like musical snobbery, and that a lot of musical snobbery grows out of the people that do all that I described on my website. I know this because I used to be one. I don't think you do play Bach's C major prelude with the pedal down, or at least if you do, then you seriously need to re-examine your piano technique.

As to literature - Umbrto Eco, Italo Calvino, J.R.R Tolkein, C.S Lewis, T.S.Elliot, Wallace Stevens, Wilfred Owen, Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Charles Dickens, Terry Pratchett, et al et al et al. All the same to me, like composers. I never compare one with the other subjectively - I don't have a favourite, and I merely dislike the ones that I feel have nothing interesting to say - that is not to say that they are bad, merely that I dislike them. I haven't read much TS Eliot, if that's any help, but that's merely out of chance.

All I can say is (to make yet another deliberate sweeping gesture in order to prove my point) like a typical english student, you pay too much attention to the words and ignore the structure behind them.

It seems we are at cross purposes

Edd