John Baker’s Blog

The opening is astounding. Some three to four pages of small print in which Camus attempts to describe his Oran, the setting of the novel. The following is an extract:
Certainly nothing is commoner nowadays than to see people working from morn till night and then proceeding to fritter away at card tables, in cafes, [...]

Shortlist for the £10,000 James Tait Black Memorial prize.
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Psychiatrists wooed by Drug Companies, reports the New York times:
The more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved.
Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday [...]

This production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass menagerie was well worth the four-hour train journey to London and back.
I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes failed them, or they had failed [...]

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use [...]