Thursday 11 November 2010

Cryptic Answers and a rant

Well the answers to last week's cryptic crossword are added as a comment on the previous post (ie the one with the crossword on it)...hope you enjoyed it.  No more puzzles for a little bit but I am planning on making a blog solely for regular puzzles and will give more information shortly.  The year by the way was 1955.

I just started reading a book my girlfriend had picked up from the library (I had finished reading all my books), called The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland.  His books are supposed to be well known, but I've not heard of him before.  I should mention that I am no longer reading the book.  After just 5 pages the main character states his youthful dream of writing a novel with an odd name, the words vaguely inspired by (and I quote) "the title of a novel or movie from England - like Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas".
I was shocked.  How wrong could a person get?  For a start Dylan Thomas wrote a play called Under Milk Wood, not a novel, and the film was released several years after he died, so he didn't write that either (technically).  He is also from Wales.  Not England.  Thusly, I could read the book no longer.
It may sound like a petty reason but I knew I could not enjoy it from that moment in from looking for mistakes in the text.  You may have guessed by now that the author is American.  But shocks me most is not that this line was written, but more that it was left in.  Was there no editing procedure?
Needless to say I will attempt to read no more of his books.  That's all...

5 comments:

  1. Douglas Coupland is Canadian, not American.

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  2. Oh well...no editing procedure here as you can see...but the fact that he's Canadian just makes it worse

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  3. I'm pretty sure this would not be a mistake on the part of Douglas Coupland. It's just the words of the character displaying his ignorance. Keep reading and possibly it will become clearer why he says this.

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  4. I think you should give him another chance.

    Looking forward to your puzzle blog!

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  5. and are you sure that the ignorance of the fact isn't that of the author, but that of the character in the book?

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