I like dog-ugly thick-as-pigshit birds myself. I like birds that are so thick their bulldog doesn't know which end of the wasp to chew. And vice versa. You just wait until I get round to reading that Sylvia Plath Diaries book with a segment of orange in my mouth, a plastic bag over my head and my belt round my neck, which inadvertently causes my trousers to fall down. You can get Deep Purple wallpaper! I've taken that advice and given up on the MFs now, but you can't say I didn't try. Can I take back that rude word I used about the Duke? I can? Good, it's the longest Nick Dastoor moment I've ever had. Thank you for that picture of Mr Dandycock, it made my day. PF talked about Lionel Trilling. Is there really someone called Stanley Fish? I like Mansfield Park, but I like Persuasion much better. There's at least one group called The Persuasions, but no group has ever called itself The Mansfield Parks. Yes, I think non-fiction does become historical in a different way to fiction. Look at Edgar Allan Poe. His non-fiction is brilliant and far-reaching, informative and entertaining, yet often in copies of The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe the non-fiction pages have been left uncut, and therefore unread, except by small insects. But then the non-fiction didn't more or less invent the modern thriller, thereby more or less engendering the entire film industry, television and the modern internet. Mind you, I can't get on with his science fiction at all. And everyone knows those "lend us a fiver" letters, which are non-fiction, and supremely dramatic. I think perhaps, generally speaking, considerations of entertainment are put to one side when non-fiction is being allotted its historical value, resulting in a surprisingly high chart placing for Virginia Woolf. Also I suspect that in Jane Austen's day there were plenty of fans going, "oh she's really lost the plot with Persuasion, really overdone the string arrangements, Mansfield Park was bad enough, those sax solos really should have set the alarm bells ringing, she ought to have split up straight after Sense and Sensibility when you could still hear the quill scratches - they ought to just stick out the Northanger Abbey demos." Lucy, I think they have Buckaroo! in Denver. Peter +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+