The Elegant Variation: WE CAN ONLY TELL YOU IT'S NOT US

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July 26, 2006

WE CAN ONLY TELL YOU IT'S NOT US

The estate of Ian Fleming has announced a James Bond thriller will be released to commemorate the centenary of his birth (Fleming's not Bond's) and the author is "very well-known and highly respected" ... It's Eyes Only until then ...

The family-owned Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. announced it had struck a contract with a "very well-known and highly respected" author whose identity "will be a closely guarded secret until publication."

"We are delighted to have secured this particular author, whom we have had in mind for some time now," said Corinne Turner, managing director of the company.

(We've only just begun Simon Winder's entertaining The Man Who Saved Britain but Fleming comes in for a drubbing in its early pages as Winder rails against Fleming's upperclass life of privilege. "The sheer, imbecile levels of privilege," he writes, "the thoughtlessness, the parasitism are completely astounding.")

Posted at 12:17 AM in Litlinks | Permalink

Comments

Sounds good.
It would be more exciting if they found a book the Ian Fleming had wriiten himself, hidden away in some old attic of something.
Anyway, Im looking froward to the release.

Posted by: Sam | July 27, 2006 at 03:24 AM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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SECOND LOOK

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

July 26, 2006

WE CAN ONLY TELL YOU IT'S NOT US

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MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
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SECOND LOOK

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

July 26, 2006

WE CAN ONLY TELL YOU IT'S NOT US

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism