I just finished reading Scarlett Thomas' Our Tragic Universe. Firstly, I have to say I am incredibly relieved to have finished it. It was, I discovered as I read, designed to be a ''storyless story", kind of like the aim of Seinfeld in that it was supposed to be about nothing in particular, but the cheeky minx added an intellectual layer to it by throwing in talk about metafiction, plot structures, and anything else she could think of to deconstruct the constructed. I found it thoroughly annoying, although I will also say it was occasionally witty and overall well written.
As I am in the process of writing my own novel at the moment, it got me thinking about all types of things from a technical writing perspective.
And then, I got to thinking about all the online news I have been devouring in recent weeks, about archetypes, icons (good and bad) and about how we are conditioned to think about things through typical stories and ways in which they are put to us, especially through the media. All of this has left me feeling a little weary, but thank god for the soundbytes that all these archetypes are reduced to. Away from the realities, the underlying horror of stories that float out of Libya and Syria at the moment, or the just as you would expect kind of coverage of things like the Venice Film Festival or the latest political scandal, sometimes a little bit of personality edges through. Good or bad (or, in the case of Gaddafi, absolutely bonkers and seriously f*&ked up kinda bad).
As I am in the process of writing my own novel at the moment, it got me thinking about all types of things from a technical writing perspective.
And then, I got to thinking about all the online news I have been devouring in recent weeks, about archetypes, icons (good and bad) and about how we are conditioned to think about things through typical stories and ways in which they are put to us, especially through the media. All of this has left me feeling a little weary, but thank god for the soundbytes that all these archetypes are reduced to. Away from the realities, the underlying horror of stories that float out of Libya and Syria at the moment, or the just as you would expect kind of coverage of things like the Venice Film Festival or the latest political scandal, sometimes a little bit of personality edges through. Good or bad (or, in the case of Gaddafi, absolutely bonkers and seriously f*&ked up kinda bad).
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