I read something randomly today where someone questioned how leaving blank pages in a book can be considered clever. I’d just like to point out that there’s a long standing tradition in unconventional fiction for doing exactly that. The pages are as much a part of the creation as the words so if you’re leaving pages blank to illustate some point to your story, that’s perfectly valid. I think Laurence Sterne’s 18th Century classic Tristram Shandy had to have been one of the first works to really subvert the page – there are instances of pages being filled with random squiggles (Chapter 40) or entire pages just coloured black (Chapter 38). I don’t think it’s stupid or pointless to do this sort of thing at all. You think the trees are dying needlessly, I think you’re missing the point. That said, not everyone gets the point all the time. I don’t get the point of most abstract art, but I don’t go around saying it’s a waste of canvas.
I’m turning into such a champion of the post-modern cause. University is doing terrible things to me. Let’s hear it for subjectivity.
Now, for the sake of randomness, Wil Anderson’s intro bit from this week’s Good News Week:
Bit of a tip for anyone traveling to New Zealand, on the form where it says ‘reason for visit to New Zealand’, don’t write, as I though would be hilarious to write, ‘to throw my ring into the fires of Mordor’. They’ve heard it before, and they don’t think it’s hilarious apparantly.
He goes on to say how the customs guy asked him if it was his first visit to New Zealand, and he replied yeah but I live at Bondi so Im used to being surrounded by New Zealanders, I’ve just come here to meet one that’s got a job.
Ah Wil Anderson! You loveable fool.
Music: The Simpsons
Mood: Bored
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