Fame or Infamy ...

[Victoria]

I have to disagree, GM. So far, I'm surprised to find myself quite enjoying the simple charm of the author's love affair with himself and the quiet confidence he displays in his own story-telling abilities, despite being a classic eleven-plus failure when it comes to grammar and punctuation. My daughter found the quality of the writing so offensive to her eyes that she couldn't get past the first paragraph of the introduction.

Love,

Caz
X

Yes, that's the trouble with young people these days ..
maybe it is too much education, and it goes to their head.
My son thinks I am 'a loser' (jokingly of course) just because
I did not go to university.

But being caught up in the so called 'proprieties' of life we may
miss the substance of life itself, and the 'simple charm' of our fellow
human beings.
We are all seemingly different, but in truth no different ...
we just express ourselves in different ways.

[Victoria]

When I said I hadn't read it, I hadn't read it.

I still haven't read it - to the end.

As with his Anne Frank fiasco, I don't suppose Stevie Baby's 'large' pocket watch blunder could have damaged his credibility any further.

Love,

Caz
X

Caz,
it must be my lack of university education, but I still do not
see your point here, it does not come across to this reader
as a fiasco nor a blunder .. just the 'simple charm' of youth and the way
it was perceived at the time.

[Stephen Thomas]

Victoria is Steve for those hadn't noticed.

[Ally]

What I find amusing is Steve's, excuse me Victoria's, argument that people who pay for a book should have no expectation of it being well written and if they do it's somehow arrogant and elitist. Quite amusing.

I suppose if I pick up a guitar and have no musical ability whatsoever and shill people into buying my amateurish and crap efforts, people should have no right to mock my efforts either.

When you combine crap talent with crap content, people rightly should mock you attempting to earn money off of it.

Steve had the option of presenting this pile of sh*t for free and he passed. Therefore, he should not be surprised when people are justifiably slamming him for not even bothering basic proofreading on it.

[Victoria]

What I find amusing is Steve's, excuse me Victoria's, argument that people who pay for a book should have no expectation of it being well written and if they do it's somehow arrogant and elitist. Quite amusing.


When you combine crap talent with crap content, people rightly should mock you

Hello Ally,

I don't believe that I have argued, said or even inferred that people who buy
a book should not have expectations of it being well written, because it is natural
that we do have such expectations.

I think you didn't understand or see the message in my post ..
definately no arrogance or elitism intended in any way.

I also don't believe that "people rightly should mock you" (anyone).
It is totally unnecessary, no matter what the situation.

[m_w_r]

I also don't believe that "people rightly should mock you" (anyone).
It is totally unnecessary, no matter what the situation.

Hi Steve ... um, Victoria,

To turn this on its head: don't you think Steve's insulting the intelligence of his audience with this story? It may or may not be ok, in your eyes, for the readers to critique their author's rather eccentric tale, but sure as hell it isn't right for the author to set out to demean his readers with bunkum. None of it adds up.

Besides all this, I bought a copy of the first edition, and I'm very likely to buy a copy of the second edition, just to find out what Steve considered inflammatory and removed from the text. It wouldn't have anything to do with the little epigram about the poor dog, would it?

Regards,

Mark

[caz]

I'm up to page 69 - of someone else's copy.

I would not have believed anyone could be as naïve as Stevie Baby has turned out to be. His love affair with himself is the only convincing thing I've seen so far, and at least that has taken up almost all the narrative. But then there are at least two instances of the author referring to himself in the third person, as if he forgets when he is writing about himself - or forgets that he is writing about himself. I don't know which it is or what it means but it's a tad worrying. How hard can it be to remember who is telling the story about whom, when it's the author writing about himself?

But the truly, madly, jarringly false notes smack you full in the chops on the few occasions the author manages to stop stroking himself long enough to remember he's supposed to be explaining how the diary and watch came into his life and made it slightly less meaningless to read about.

I laughed out loud and frightened the cat when I got to page 65:

'He had been working on the diary now for almost seven years and had been trying to keep it a secret.'

This was supposedly back in 1975, by which time Stevie Baby reckoned the hoaxer had managed to let at least four households in on his dastardly plot, including the Barretts, which now meant that Mike 'would obviously blab about it to his mates sometime or other', and that some people 'knew too much'.

Fascinating then, that not one of them, including our trusty campaigner for truth and decency, seemed to know the first thing about it before March 1992, the earliest documented date we have for Mike mentioning it to another living soul.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

And another thing...

...it's a great pity, considering Stevie Baby's eccentric powers of memory, that he failed to make any notes at the time he was supposedly plotting the hoaxer's eventual downfall.

For example, he now recalls, far too late to do a bit of good, the crucial moment when the hoaxer asked him how to spell 'rendezvous', and he had the presence of mind to offer a deliberately mangled version, which was somehow designed to reveal the truth behind the hoax if it ever came to light.

He also recalls the crucial moment when he suggested to the hoaxer that poetry would be a good idea for the diary. What a responsibility.

These things he had no memory of ten years ago, yet he could still have used either against his wayward chum if only he had kept simple notes of what he was doing and why, when he was doing it.

What was stopping SB writing and recording a song about it, that would instantly expose his mate's funny little game if he ever tried to sell the diary as the real thing?

Love,

Caz
X

[Victoria]

Hi Steve ... um, Victoria,

To turn this on its head: don't you think Steve's insulting the intelligence of his audience with this story? It may or may not be ok, in your eyes, for the readers to critique their author's rather eccentric tale, but sure as hell it isn't right for the author to set out to demean his readers with bunkum. None of it adds up.

Besides all this, I bought a copy of the first edition, and I'm very likely to buy a copy of the second edition, just to find out what Steve considered inflammatory and removed from the text. It wouldn't have anything to do with the little epigram about the poor dog, would it?

Regards,

Mark

Hi Mark,

of course it is ok in my eyes for readers to critique a book, it is just
the way in which one does it.
There is no need to mock or be deliberately hurtful to another.

Whether any of it adds up in anyones eyes or not ...
I can assure you positively that the author has not 'set out to demean
his readers with bunkum'.
He also has not set out to 'insult the intelligence of his audience'.

The epigram about the dog I don't believe will be removed,
it is a clue/riddle.

regards,
Steve

[Victoria]

Caz,

I'm up to page 181 .. of my own copy.
And awaiting the second edition.

I take all your points .. and if SB were here he might be able to
give some explanations.
I noted also where the author refers to himself in the third person,
I cannot seem to find it here in my quick look, but vaguely recall
being told a reason for it.
So not 'a tad worrying', but not to say there may have been a better way of doing it.

You wrote,

"What was stopping SB writing and recording a song about it,
that would instantly expose his mate's funny little game if he ever tried
to sell the diary as the real thing."

I totally agree with you .. there would be no criticism then, as
that is what he does best.
And the same as when you photograph something in front of a current
newspaper .. it would be some sort of proof.
I am sure he is kicking himself now, for not thinking about it.

love,

SB

[The Grave Maurice]

I've thought about it for a while, and I've decided that this book does, in fact, have a certain naive charm. It's helpful to see the whole story laid out, more or less, sequentially, and Steve is a rather good storyteller. I'd also like to suggest that the services of an experienced editor should never be underestimated. I'm also persuaded by Mark's comment that it might be interesting to buy the second edition just to see what changes were made.

I just hope that, between the publication of the first and second editions, Steve learned how to use apostrophes, both for possessives and plurals, and how to punctuate dialogue.

Oh, and I hope that someone noticed that the text on p. 102 is repeated on p. 103.

[caz]

You wrote,

"What was stopping SB writing and recording a song about it,
that would instantly expose his mate's funny little game if he ever tried
to sell the diary as the real thing."

I totally agree with you .. there would be no criticism then, as
that is what he does best.
And the same as when you photograph something in front of a current
newspaper .. it would be some sort of proof.
I am sure he is kicking himself now, for not thinking about it.

love,

SB

Not really, SB. (Btw, I see you managed to find a foolproof way round your ban. Well done.)

Current newspapers are only current for a day.

But all you had to do was set the words to music and record yourself singing it back in the gary glittery 1970s and you'd have scored a direct hit when anyone tried to flog the offending article in the blurry oasis of the 1990s. Best hit you could ever have written for yourself.

Ah well, maybe you were destined for a life of missed opportunities.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi GM,

I only read chapter 10 last night and the cat sensibly kept well away.

SB is right off the scale now. I don't think I've ever read such a piece of pure unadulterated shite.

It reads like a ten year-old trying desperately to glue together all the bits of rubbish he has come out with on these boards about Feldman going down under in the 1970s and ending up with a recycled account that, like an ill-fitting wig, doesn't look real, isn't real and could only fool an old fool - or possibly a five year-old.

When SB described Feldy as 'tall' on the boards, everyone laughed - again. So in the book Feldy has become a sarcastic 'tall' to get round this small problem. Only trouble is, his voice is described by SB, without a hint of sarcasm, humour or wit, as 'educated'. Well call me an old-fashioned snob, but in the mid-1970s Feldy would have been in his early twenties and one's voice doesn't tend to go from 'educated' to 'Del Boy' by one's fifties, which was when I met the man.

I don't know, maybe Del Boy would have sounded 'educated' to simple Strine ears back in Mott the Hoople times, but nothing about that dialogue between SB and Feldy sounds real, was real, or could possibly have been real.

It's the stuff of very poor primary school creative writing.

I was going to liken it to a Monty Python sketch with all the wit and fun sucked out of it. But that would have left only blank pages.

If only.

Love,

Caz
X

[Livia]

Victoria is Steve for those hadn't noticed.

I spent the better part of yesterday reading the thread "On the trail of the forgers" and wondered why no one suspected this sooner.

[The Grave Maurice]

Caz,

When I was reading the book I would have agreed with much of what you say. But I noticed that while, as a rule, I can't remember anything about a minor JtR book a couple of days after I've read it, many of the details in this one somehow stuck with me. Steve has a sort of rhythm to his writing that is difficult to ignore. Admittedly, the book is more like a first draft that a finished first edition, but I think it shows a reasonable amount of talent. I found it to be much better than books of the same ilk, say, for example, Chris Miles' On the Trail of a Dead Man which, I realize, is pretty much damning with faint praise.