A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress is surely the best title for an autobiography ever. (Thanks Nige).
Timothy Dexter's book sounds magnificent:
He wrote about himself and complained about politicians, clergy and his wife. The book contained 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but absolutely no punctuation, and capital letters were sprinkled about at random. At first he handed his book out for free, but it rapidly became popular and ran into eight editions in total. When people complained that it was hard to read, for the second edition he added an extra page - 13 lines of punctuation marks - asking readers to "peper and solt it as they plese".
....
this strikes me as an excellent and time saving way to write a book i cant See any problem with it it brings a level of interactivity after all reminds me Of those choose your own adventure books that i read as a child choose your own punctuation as it were well why not It could be a useful excercise couldnt it well probably not really no
,',.?(,)!;.?.
perhaps ee cummings was a Dexter acolyte
ReplyDeleteyour last paragraph is pretty similar to the narrative voice of Ned Kelly in The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey.
Just quickly churn out 300 pages on 'The True History of Noseybonk' in that style and you'll have a Booker prize winner on your hands
shurlytheinspurationforthouzandsufmawdurnundergradswhokomplanethatitshuln'tmaterweathertheycanspelazlongeazthermeeningizkleer.
ReplyDeleteGreat news! A Pickle is online, along with a translation not much less nutty than the original, here.
ReplyDeleteI hope I'm not spoiling this for people but having read a bit of Dexter's book isn't that the voice of Suralan I hear intruding?
ReplyDeletePeper, solt and a sprinkling of shugger?
"His next venture was selling coal to Newcastle, which should have been a sure failure. His ships happened to arrive in the time of a coalminer's strike and potential customers were actually desperate."
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely effing brilliant, they don't teach 'em how to do that at Harvard Business Skool.
Overheard a grandfather teaching his granddaughter how to talk "say after me..hiv yi had i nuff" there is a strong case for spelling it like it's spoken.
Is this man for real? One fears not. Perhaps he was the warm-up act for James Joyce.
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed a great book, I read it a few months ago and it was very good.
ReplyDelete