The Elegant Variation: THIS YEAR'S HAY

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April 02, 2007

THIS YEAR'S HAY

One of these years, before we shuffle off this mortal coil, we would love to attend Hay-on-Wye. Just not this year.

As the official line-up was announced last night it was revealed that Gordon Brown, Paddy Ashdown, William Hague, Douglas Hurd and John Major will be all speaking.

They will be joined by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and LiveAid founder Bob Geldof.

Posted at 12:05 AM in World Beat | Permalink

Comments

Stephen Mitchelmore was complaining a while back about the Bath(?) festival for similar reasons. Sounds like a festival disease (though I would love to hear Bob anywhere.)

We had our expat international human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson last year - but at least he had written a book.

Posted by: genevieve | April 02, 2007 at 06:32 PM

Oh come on, Dawkins would be interesting to hear. Granted this year all he's going to do is beat up on God -- in fact if God were the (I know, I know: God is *everywhere*) they good have a grudge match, rage in the cage sort of event -- but Dawkins is pretty damn significant in the history of contemporary science writing. In fact, I'd say significant enough almost to attend the festival just because he'll be there.

As for Geldof, "I Don't Like Mondays" remains one of the most gooseflesh-inducing pop songs ever written; so there's that, at least.

Posted by: janitorman | April 04, 2007 at 03:37 AM

I can't type this morning: "were the" is "were there", and "they good" is "they could". Maybe I was just flustered that the author of the "The Selfish Gene" was so summarily dismissed upon this page. (Yeah, that would have been funny if I'd typed it, "The Shellfish Gene" -- I wouldn't have corrected that one in a postscript.)

Posted by: janitorman | April 04, 2007 at 03:41 AM

The Hay Festival in Cartagena was wonderful this year--looking forward to the next one.

Perhaps you should try one closer to the equator?

Posted by: amcorrea | April 04, 2007 at 11:21 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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Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
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*Now in Paperback*

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SECOND LOOK

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
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"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

April 02, 2007

THIS YEAR'S HAY

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

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

April 02, 2007

THIS YEAR'S HAY

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