The Et Cætera Awards
Over at Three Percent, Chad has been pushing Paul Verhaeghen for some time now. I had initially been very excited about reading Omega Minor, which sounded like a Pynchon-esque historical caterwaul, not least because Verhaeghen is by day a professor of psychology working on cognitive aging. In what free time did he manage to produce a more than six hundred page novel, in Flemish, and then translate it himself into English? (The still-green academic asked himself). After reading the excerpt available on the Dalkey Archive website, however, I became far less enthusiastic—this now sounded like just the sort of hyperbolic sex-crazed narcissism that has kept me away from John Updike. I still may read Omega Minor, out of curiosity—but in the meantime, I propose to establish a new award, to be irregularly announced right here:
The Et Cætera Awards For Best Use of The Expression “Et Cætera” Or Any Variant Thereof
Without further ado, I confer the first award on Michael Orthofer, for the first use in his review of Omega Minor.
August 15th, 2008 at 12:58 am
The snatches of prose from that review are the kind of thing that have generally turned me away from literature (albeit that this leaves me in a position of indefensible philistinism), to wit:
her lips slide full over his lingam and the last fruits of her labor slither down her shiny throat. And while the man’s mouth is still screaming in triumph, the gametic hordes yell out in Todesangst, for their worst nightmare has come true
The first sentence makes Michel Houellebecq look like a feminist. The second is mind-boggling given that it was written by someone who ought to have some kind of scientific acuity. Never mind the pathetic fallacy involved, sperm basically either get ejaculated or just die in situ – it’s not like there was some better fate waiting for them (with the exception of maybe one in a billion) either in some benign uterus or home in their cozy epididymis). Anyway, the lesson would seem to be that if you want to create great work, you should quit your day job.
August 15th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
You must have sampled a highly biased cross-section of literature if you think this is typical! As I said, I’m not entirely sure I’m not going to read the novel out of curiosity, despite the misgivings raised by passages like these—too many interesting people have rated it highly, not to mention the fact it’s been published by Dalkey…
August 15th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
hello, i know this is completely off topic, but i did not no of anywhere else to post this
i think you would like this movie:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/main.htm
and i’m interested to what u think of it
August 15th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Dear Pulp,
You thought wrong.
Here is where time is better spent: Brian L. Keeley, “Of Conspiracy Theories”, in The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 94, No. 3, March 1999, 109–126. [PDF]