Saturday 13th October

 

Angela Mollard re 50 Shades…

Now, Fifty Shades? Well, anyone could have written it, couldn’t they? Boy meets girl, seduces her, wants her as his plaything, but the pesky wench falls in love (I’m winging it here because I’m only 200 pages in).

 

Still, as my too-clever-by-half daughter says whenever anyone remarks that a piece of art is so infantile they could have done it: “Yes, but you didn’t, did you?”

This did amuse me… Angela is quite right; it’s all very well for us to huff and to sniff and to say it is puerile writing but…this trilogy has made megabucks… And yes I am sure you and I could write MUCH better erotica. But…we haven’t!

 

I have just read another, much more serious, article by Angela M. She had been to Delhi to visit her brother, who does good works with street people, and she wrote very well about how very lucky we are in Australia and how we need to appreciate our good fortune:

 

If India left me despairing, then flying home made me ashamed. Here we are in a prosperous, safe, largely egalitarian nation, bitching and bleating and corroding the cornerstone on which our civility is built: namely, kindness. When did our politics become so poisonous, our mood so maudlin, our conversations so caustic?

I am sure everyone reading this is nodding in agreement; what is there to disagree with here?? So I was dumbfounded to read comments from some of her readers attacking Angela most, well, caustically. Nobody actually called her a fucking white missionary **** but…nearly!

And this was also a common theme:

Sorry - solve poverty, homelessness, and illness woes in Australia first, then I’ll give a crap about India.

I suppose this sort of “debate” is one of the reasons I enjoy reading blogs so much – they more often than not make me gasp and stretch my eyes…(In case you are wondering why I often write this peculiar little phrase, and in case you don’t know Hilaire Belloc, here’s a snippet to brighten your day….

 

From his Cautionary Tales:

MATILDA told such Dreadful Lies,

It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;

Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,

Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,

Attempted to Believe Matilda:

The effort very nearly killed her)