posted
Does anyone remember those 'blockbuster' novels Tony Parsons wrote in the 80's. One was about a fading rock star and the other about a fading tennis star (I think). They were so bad that they haven't even been re-issued on the back of his recent success.
Posts: 494 | From: The Hideous Fen Of Huge Bigness | Registered: May 2002
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posted
Gorky Park was made into quite a good film, whose inaccuracies made my CIA mate laugh out loud, thus giving one of the Agency's few left-wing Democrats a moment of pleasure.
Jean M AuelPosts: 19927 | From: the Cryptic Cabal | Registered: May 2002
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My girlfriend wants to be a writer (and is actually very good) and constantly patronises my lack of knowledge of quality literature. Therefore the bizarre misapprehension that she has that Jean M. Auel represents quality literature allows me an occasional subversive chuckle to myself. It also allows me to nominate Robert Llewelleyn, famous for playing Kryten in Red Dwarf, and notorious for writing The Man on Platform Seven, an abomination of a book which is badly written, offensively stereotypes both the middle-classes and the working classes while mouthing platitudes against stereotyping and namedrops tedious Z list celebrities like Craig Charles and Nigel Planer.
Posts: 7411 | From: some place more ... you know. | Registered: May 2002
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In what way is that refugee-baiting, war-mongering, lazy self-justifying populist prick Parsons "brave"?
Posts: 12564 | From: The bus lane | Registered: May 2002
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I tried reading Platinum Logic once. Gave up very quickly. Shortly before I left UK in 1988 I saw Parsons on a late night chat show. He was dressed in a yellow adidas t-shirt, faded drainpipe jeans and trainers - which he rested momentarily on the coffee table in front of him. In short he was playing the oik upstart to the hilt. Ten years later I saw him on TV again. This time he was in a neat navy double breasted blazer with a red poppy in his lapel and he was playing the suave, successful man of letters. Again, to the hilt. Same haircut though.
Posts: 12057 | From: The pape's second home | Registered: May 2002
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'In what way is that refugee-baiting, war-mongering, lazy self-justifying populist prick Parsons "brave"?'
Don't you read the papers E10? Single dads are brave while single mums are just trying to get council houses or screw their husband's via the CSA.
I had the same experience daV. It seems like one minute I was reading his first couple of novels and then he was a 'respected' author. I seem to have missed the intervening years of style gurudom. Must have been asleep.
Sorry - the thread. Robert Llewelleyn: Deserves a chance because he spent all those years making people laugh and no one knew who he was without the make-up.
My choice: Andy McNab (the chap who writes the SAS books)
[ 19-01-2003, 18:36: Message edited by: Keith Shedd ]
Posts: 494 | From: The Hideous Fen Of Huge Bigness | Registered: May 2002
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I'm not refereeing this thread. Clayhanger can do that.
Oh dear, I'm not sure if I can handle the responsibility. Okay, I rule that no one has come up with a good defence for Parsons yet, so we've got him and Andy McNab.
Posts: 3194 | From: a Distance' is a rubbish song | Registered: May 2002
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Tony Parsons kept Julie Burchill out of circulation for a while in one of the great "they deserve each other" relationships. (Alas, how briefly. Poor, poor Charlotte Raven.)
Jeffrey "great storyteller" ArcherPosts: 19927 | From: the Cryptic Cabal | Registered: May 2002
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Exonerated for Scoop. 70 years+ on still rings true for the way Fleet Street treats foreign news.
I was going to nominate Nick Hornby for making me feel physically ill while reading Hi-Fidelity. In retrospect I concede this may only have been due to his skill at rendering characters I once knew/could have become.
Instead I'll offer Lawrence Durrel. It's one thing screwing your own 12 year old daughter, but then working it into the plot of your own five novel opus is going a little far. Having read extracts from his (by then dead - she hanged herself) daughter's diary in Granta a few years back I have been unable even to look at a Durrel novel without feeling ill.
Posts: 12057 | From: The pape's second home | Registered: May 2002
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