Botton thinks it's a philosophising novel and tries to 'sell' it to you on those grounds, but it's not what he thinks it is
― cardamon, Sunday, 12 October 2014 21:55 (nine years ago) link
It's a neuroscience novel of course.
― jmm, Sunday, 12 October 2014 21:59 (nine years ago) link
i liked 'war against cliche' and that clive james book has some dope essays idk.
issue seems like someone was trying to cover up 'white male butthurt' w/ 'clever' and failed obv
― deej loaf (D-40), Monday, 13 October 2014 04:14 (nine years ago) link
xp
he was ok about it when I told him that I used his name in a blogpost as a passing example of all that was wrong in british culture because it sounded like bottom.
(i mean I also explained that I thought he was bad for real reasons, it wasn't just 'bottom')
(he got in touch to complain)
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 08:42 (nine years ago) link
Dylan Jones wrote Cameron's biography and paid him for his co-operation
― mahb, Monday, 13 October 2014 08:47 (nine years ago) link
Jones used to sell his review copies to me when I worked in a secondhand bookshop. He was very decent in person - and he got excellent review copies! - although he has obv been involved with some terrible things and people.
Will Self also once sold me a load of his review copies and he was a total arsehole, fwiw.
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Monday, 13 October 2014 08:53 (nine years ago) link
Thank you, ILX, because I thought I knew Britain's worst cockfarmers but then a thread like this goes and introduces you to a host of new cockfarmers you had little to no idea about.
I dunno. I kinda almost prefer the total unreformed unrepentant cockfarmers because at least you know where you stand with them. The ones who dress their cockfarming up in charm and ~being decent in person~, in a weird way those ones worry me more, like evil dressed up in a pleasant face gets much, much further and people are willing to excuse it and fall for it so much more.
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 09:21 (nine years ago) link
James used to be alright imo – good essayist and critic, & I like the memoirs – but a pompous 'marvels of western literary culture' side of him largely took over. Still quite like him as a poetry critic - solid in the formal corner, breadth of reading, good to disagree with.
Conversely I used to hate Bragg, but now I only hear him if I download an In Our Time, so I am more or less ok with that.
I was optimistic when I first saw the cover - I like Perry & I think the liberal/fabian left can be v v hostile to anything that looks like the politics of cultural privilege or identity – it seemed a viable trojan horse. But really.
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 09:22 (nine years ago) link
Ambitious establishment Tory types are always perfectly decent in person, they're basically trained from birth to be so.
Self is the only one on the list I've met (admittedly 13 years ago now) and I found him genial enough, although I suspect that may not always be the case.
― Matt DC, Monday, 13 October 2014 09:25 (nine years ago) link
I just read Dylan Jones' wikipedia and an interview from 5 years ago, and to be honest, he just gives me a serious case of the creeps. "Oh, my friends treated my joining the Conservative party as if I'd admitted liking Phil Collins" - as if it were only such a minor aesthetic quibble!
I admit to being a sucker for the Style world and I would happily read GQ in the takeaway next door for the beautiful suits, basically, and the Style but the odious and deeply conservative politics involved with the whole thing, and you realise that the agenda promoted within is totally deliberate and it's just fucking depressing. That subtle or not even so subtle creep of art school boys to the right as they age.
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 09:30 (nine years ago) link
I'm also thinking about that thing upthread, of someone (forget who) saying one should save one's genuine hate and contempt for the politicians.
But when confronted with a list like this, one realises how much of it is down to the commentariat who present this hateful politics and polish the turds and make it all so ~palatable~ and even stylish.
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 09:34 (nine years ago) link
yeah Jones is a particularly vile offender there – Osborne as politician of the year in the GQ awards for instance.
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 09:43 (nine years ago) link
One good thing at least is Toby Young must be fuming he never got asked to contribute.
― ... and a Martin Parr photo essay (Tom D.), Monday, 13 October 2014 09:47 (nine years ago) link
christ i'd never seen his list of books before. "The Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music" , oh man I have not read this but I strongly suspect he is no David Thomson.
(xp lol)
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 09:47 (nine years ago) link
About 287 results for "new wasteman" (0.52 seconds)
― john wahey (NickB), Monday, 13 October 2014 09:52 (nine years ago) link
Anything entitled "Mr Jones' Rules For The Modern Man" makes me want to smash things, and not in a sexual sense, either, just in a pulverise into tiny bloodsoaked little molecules until there is nothing left sense. :-(
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 09:55 (nine years ago) link
& fwiw Ian Penman on Jones's new Elvis book - a couple of basically contemptuous paras about two-thirds of the way through:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n18/ian-penman/shapeshifter
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 09:55 (nine years ago) link
Just curious - what are people's main beef with Owen Jones?
― Shepard Toney Album (dog latin), Monday, 13 October 2014 10:19 (nine years ago) link
his valjean
― local eire man (darraghmac), Monday, 13 October 2014 10:22 (nine years ago) link
or were people referring to dylan jones?
― Shepard Toney Album (dog latin), Monday, 13 October 2014 10:24 (nine years ago) link
xpto be absolutely clear all of my remarks refer to Dylan Jones – I like Owen Jones.
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 10:24 (nine years ago) link
i have no problem with him other than his youth and success
― john wahey (NickB), Monday, 13 October 2014 10:25 (nine years ago) link
Yeah, Owen Jones' only sins are to be a bit young, a bit hopeful and a bit idealistic. The Jones-baiting of the last few dozen posts is about Dylan Jones.
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 10:26 (nine years ago) link
hmmm 'to be absolutely clear all of my remarks', i'm sounding v pompous there, think the list is infecting me.
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 10:27 (nine years ago) link
ah good. i'm glad that got cleared up.
― Shepard Toney Album (dog latin), Monday, 13 October 2014 10:59 (nine years ago) link
I voted for Alain de Botton but I've just discovered who Dylan Jones is and I'd like to change it.
― Shepard Toney Album (dog latin), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:00 (nine years ago) link
Also Rod Liddle also Richard Dawkins.
― Matt DC, Monday, 13 October 2014 11:01 (nine years ago) link
Kind of curious though what Dawkins would have said.
― Twist of Caliphate (Bob Six), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:03 (nine years ago) link
Liddle was the other most glaring omission.
― ... and a Martin Parr photo essay (Tom D.), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:04 (nine years ago) link
maybe something like Tony Parsons contribution to 'The Manifesto'?
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/10/manifesto-new-man-how-great-white-male-can-stay-relevant
What has the Great White Male ever done for us? Shakespeare and Dickens. Picasso and Matisse. Morrissey and Marr. Jagger and Richards. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, the inventors of the new century. The men who stormed the beaches of Normandy. The warriors who protected us, the fathers who held us. Hemingway and Fitzgerald. John F Kennedy and John Cooper Clarke. Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas.
White men, eh? What a waste of space!
I am not convinced that the Great White Male desperately needs a new male manifesto – the past thousand years have gone quite well for us without one. Here’s to the next thousand years, man!
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 11:06 (nine years ago) link
you've got to be shitting me
― john wahey (NickB), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:09 (nine years ago) link
fuck i should have voted parsons
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 11:10 (nine years ago) link
you weren't shitting at all ;_;
― john wahey (NickB), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:13 (nine years ago) link
Wow.
I mean, I typed out some more ~offensive~ responses like "go die in a fire" and "choke on your own vomit" or "go fuck yourself with a running chainsaw, Tony fucking Parsons" but realised that my rage is pretty impotent and the only real response possible is just "wow".
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:19 (nine years ago) link
can't believe he missed paul weller and bobby moore ;_;
― john wahey (NickB), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:20 (nine years ago) link
Here’s to the next thousand years, man!
― Barry Gordy (Neil S), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:23 (nine years ago) link
The URL. How the Great White Male can stay relevant. Because this is the problem. The Great White Male is losing his relevance. This shit is beyond satire. I can't even get up bile or rage for this.
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:26 (nine years ago) link
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web.
― john wahey (NickB), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:26 (nine years ago) link
The men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and the nazis who bravely tried to fight them back
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 11:27 (nine years ago) link
It's not his fault. He was married to Julie Burchill, you know. And living forever in the shadow of his more famous spouse, he is condemned to live like a woman for the rest of his days. How it must shrink his penis to contemplate it.
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:30 (nine years ago) link
This is the position taken by most of these ghastly exercises - how can the white man adapt, how can we achieve social justice by modifying the white man's behaviour, how can white men become better white men, etc. The idea of taking a step back and letting others set their own agenda, have their own say, barely occurs.
― Wristy Hurlington (ShariVari), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:31 (nine years ago) link
How can the Great White Man keep the stranglehold of attention forever on the Great White Man. How. Let us debate it for the next two thousand years!
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 11:33 (nine years ago) link
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LrdLC5OXyGg/TeKhp0mTcnI/AAAAAAAAAug/J1R5-6i7ENM/s1600/Whiteman.jpg
― intelligent, expressive males within the greater metropolitan (Bananaman Begins), Monday, 13 October 2014 12:05 (nine years ago) link
Most dicks are smaller dicks than Julie Burchill it's true
― grayson m'razz (wins), Monday, 13 October 2014 12:30 (nine years ago) link
The men who stormed the beaches of Normandy. The warriors who protected us, the fathers who held us.
Never change, Tone. War, boxing, real men, East End, dear old dad, heroes, blah-di-blah.
Sadly in the real world he is in no way in Julie B's shadow. He's the one with the inexplicably bestselling novels and the inexplicably popular newspaper column.
― Re-Make/Re-Model, Monday, 13 October 2014 13:13 (nine years ago) link
shit, his new one (a thriller. With heart) seems to be doing ok - he'd been in sales decline since Man and Boy, was hoping he'd just sort of melt away
― woof, Monday, 13 October 2014 13:30 (nine years ago) link
into a small sour puddle of piss
Now Tony Parsons v Julie Burchill would be some kind of awfulness deathmatch like the negative inverse of Daddy v Chips but I don't think I could handle the sucking chestwound of odiousness that would be caused by TWO polls featuring Parsons in SNA.
― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Monday, 13 October 2014 13:40 (nine years ago) link
i missed this two days ago but it is a beautiful thread, apart from the minor save-a-white-man nonsense that only ever shows itself in threads about white men (really, when was the last time you saw someone be all WELL ACTUALLY THEY HAVE SOME GOOD POINTS THEY SEEM LIKE A NICE PERSON! about a woman or non-white person accused of being awful)
objectively someone like aa gill or tony parsons probably is the worst but acknowledging it almost feels like giving in to a relentlessly played and very deliberate shtick that's already got them way too far in life; i feel like dylan jones or stephen fry or alain d'arse still need to be told what unutterably dull cunts they are, gill or parsons would both be like "yup i know" and count their cash.
― lex pretend, Monday, 13 October 2014 14:36 (nine years ago) link
i missed all the twitter ethering but SURELY this must have had an element of satire about it? completely fucking uselessly played by the new statesman
― lex pretend, Monday, 13 October 2014 14:38 (nine years ago) link