(no subject)

[oakenguy]

We don't stop talking about politics just because we have no chance of making it to Prime Minister. We are all politicians. We are all artists. In an open society everything the mind and hands can achieve is our birthright. It is up to us to claim it. --Stephen Fry


So I've been reading the library copy of this Stephen Fry book. I didn't even know what it was about when I checked it out; I just saw the author's name, saw it was in the 'how to write' portion of the shelves (low 800s, thank you Dewey Decimal system), and yoink. Didn't even look at it closely until I got home.

Turns out it's The Ode Less Travelled. It's all about how to write, of all things, sonnets. Mr. Fry, it seems, has some very strong feelings about iambic pentameter.

But much to my own surprise, I've been enjoying it. Part of it's just the occasional boggle that a screen actor would write a book like this, loaded with quotes from Nabokov and Auden. It's not a matter of intelligence; there's nothing surprising about learning an actor's bright. But erudite? That's something else entirely.

It also helps that with each exercise he provides examples he's written...or, as he puts it, once again I have had a pitiful go myself to give you an idea of what I mean. How can you not love someone who writes things like:

My Body
Three flobbing chins are bad, but worse, a bent
And foolish nose. Long legs, fat thighs, mad hair.

And here's where things get surprisingly good: just as I reached the second chapter, purpleprimate mentioned in her LJ that she had a galley proof of this book, and would anyone like it? For she is a total rock star. So soon I'll have a copy of my own to mark up, and soon after that I'll be posting some of the worst poetry you've ever seen in your lives. Woot.




P.S. Cryptic note to self: cheap disposable digital camera + hungry squirrels + bag of sunflower seeds. Friday. Do it.

Comments

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...funny, I had always assumed his erudition, and then when I tried to read that thing he wrote which had nothing (that I recall, because I was expecting Wodehouse or similar) but crass and explicit sexual abuse and contact and the biggest zits anywhere and physical abhorrence of self and others, set in the boys' school, I was surprised...I didn't stick with it long enough to get anything iambic out of it...!

[mmymoon.livejournal.com]

I think it's just much more surprising to find erudite people in general.

Intelligence is not as... impressive as people believe they think it is, if that makes sense. Cleverness does count for some social rewards; in my life, I think my ability to think on my feet, particularly during crises, has won me points with people.

But it's not where the OMGURSMART!!! crap has come from. I was homeschooled, and honestly, the reason (my particularly breed of homeschooled children) are so often praised is not really because we're intelligent so much as because we are educated. "Oh goodness, you've read Crime and Punishment? You're one of those little geniuses!" "You can do algebra at YOUR age?" "You know the history of ancient Egypt?" "You speak Japanese AND Russian?" etc.

I've never taken a real IQ test, and have always scored only averagely on the "free online!" ones. Yet I scored near perfectly on the SAT. (My math was a bit off.) The SAT pretty much just measures education -- but that is what is more academically and socially relevant, for the most part. No one really cares all that much if you can make great intuitive leaps of reasoning on a daily basis, or solve complex puzzles, but rather that you have the academic background to discuss Ibsen's plays in their historical and cultural context.

[mmymoon.livejournal.com]

As an example. I loathe Ibsen.

[vozeatscake.livejournal.com]

Hee hee. How fun! I've been meaning to read this but won't find the time until The Boy is 30, probably. Thanks for the brief glimpse. I love Stephen Fry and his fat thighs.

[godswraith.livejournal.com]

Odd, he speaks very highly of you.

:)

[godswraith.livejournal.com]

I really love that quote.

[mmymoon.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what happens with inequal enjoyment of one night stands...

[godswraith.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh, I thought he said Wild Duck....I just assumed it was the play. :)

[lediva.livejournal.com]

What does it say about me that every single time I see the name "Stephen Fry", I get him confused with Stephen Furst, who played Vir on B5?

[katestine.livejournal.com]

That's the thing about British actors.. many of them are VERY well educated. Fry was part of the bunch that got their start in a drama group at Cambridge. others in that posse were Emma Thompson and of course Hugh Laurie. btw, did you know Fry wrote the script for a new movie of The Magic Flute directed by Kenneth Branagh?

[scixual.livejournal.com]

I also have an advance copy of that book. ^_^