Daniel Kalder over at The Guardian book blog, goes to town on the American cable channell, Book TV. He has the good sense to laugh at something which is obviously way beyond redemption:
A weekend ago, however, I decided to check that it was still there, to make certain I hadn’t dreamt the abomination. So I switched it on. A speccy child was talking about the year or so he had spent teaching English to Kurds. He mumbled some banalities and then started to read from the thrilling volume his experiences had led him to write. He was nervous and sniffed a lot, and stumbled over his words. He didn’t have anything to say I hadn’t guessed already. And then I started to experience a strange itch, a dark atavistic impulse. It took a while, but finally I recognised it: I wanted to steal his crisps. And throw his specs on the floor. But I couldn’t, because he was several thousand miles away in Massachusetts.
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Nov 9th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I just watched a short film of Alasdair Gray at http://otherstories.typepad.com/other_stories/2007/11/alasdair-gray-i.html
and thought to myself, Self, it would be great if we could get treats like this all the time, and then I read about something called Book TV and what have the damn Americans gone and done with such a marvellous idea? Bloody typical.
jb says: Thanks a million for the link, Jim. I loved it. What a brilliantly eccentric figure he is.