tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post112465357893606136..comments2024-03-29T07:15:11.234+00:00Comments on Grumpy Old Bookman: Christopher Booker: The Seven Basic PlotsMichael Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11338398159818400930noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post-53914272644500133262023-12-15T10:10:16.900+00:002023-12-15T10:10:16.900+00:00off white jordan 1
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However, I don't 'buy' the animus/anima thing - especially your dismissal of homosexuality as 'the dark side' and of literature which does not conform to moral certainties and archetypes within your theory: my opposing view is that allowing the varieties and grey areas of life can assist us in widening perception and understanding. Most importantly, of course, your book does not appear to understand the interplay of style and human conflicts... Obviously, sometimes it's not the archetypes or the morals but the way you tell em!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post-1128449814797799572005-10-04T19:16:00.000+01:002005-10-04T19:16:00.000+01:00Mr Booker,your book is absolutely fabulous! It is ...Mr Booker,<BR/><BR/>your book is absolutely fabulous! It is a work of extraordinary research and it oozes substance from every page. I have read Campbell, Frazer et al and your work sits well, head high, with them all. It is a seminal text for those with a profound interest in the power of story telling in this age of communication overload.<BR/><BR/>I have enjoyed every word, most especially because you have brought clarity to many themes that are of interest to me and thoughts I have had on the subject. These themes form part of my work in that I am a mediator and use stories to help people resolve conflicts/disputes.<BR/><BR/>My most favourite insight is your perspective on the Garden of Eden the 'Fall'. It explains why gardens are places where we feel connected and peaceful rather than 'pieceful'. It has helped enormously with a 'Story Garden' project I am involved in Italy.<BR/><BR/>If you are inclined to find out more, please contact me Amanda@amandabucklow.co.uk. I hope you do.<BR/><BR/>Kind regards<BR/>Amanda BucklowAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post-1126125048766997352005-09-07T21:30:00.000+01:002005-09-07T21:30:00.000+01:00Mr. Booker,I was delighted to read your response t...Mr. Booker,<BR/><BR/>I was delighted to read your response to this review and to the comments above regarding it. Your points are excellent. I also found Allen's Grumpy Old remarks unfair. One tip-off being his strange comment, "I have a fundamental problem with non-fiction books which are long..." Hmmm. We used to speculate in college that our professors graded manuscripts by weight, but WE thought the heavier tomes received the higher grades. If my prof followed Mr. Allen's prescription I may finally understand the reason for some of my scores.<BR/><BR/>I must admit, though, that I have not read your book. (I hope I will get around to it, if only to see what so upset Mr. Grumpy.) Obviously, then, my remark in a post above about the definition of "plot" is not based on a direct knowledge of your book but on reading several published summaries. Still I would like to know if I am right or wrong or merely on one side of a meaningless distinction regarding "plot" and ... well, something else. I ask because I do coach writers now and then and have always relied on the definition given in my post above. Now, it seems, I may have been declaring the sky to be green for all these years!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post-1125688826285435012005-09-02T20:20:00.000+01:002005-09-02T20:20:00.000+01:00As the author of the book so extensively slagged o...As the author of the book so extensively slagged off above, may I chip in? I feel quite guilty to have been the cause of such obvious distress, not least to all those contributors above who haven’t read the book but rely on your review’s highly idiosyncratic account of it. Of course anyone is entitled to dislike the book, even to be made angry by it, like all those journalist-reviewers you mention, although interestingly there is no mention of all the people who have written about it with generous enthusiasm, ranging from Fay Weldon and Beryl Bainbridge to Ronald Harwood and Richard Adams. But the first rule of book reviewing is that one must try as honestly as possible to answer the question ‘what is this book trying to do or say?’. Only then is a reviewer qualified to move on to the next two questions ‘is it is worth saying?’ and ‘how well or badly is it said?’. I’m afraid the picture given of what my book sets out to say is so bizarrely wide of the mark that your review doesn’t even get to square one in qualifying qualify to answer the other two questions! The other general rule of debate relevant here, of course, is that the easiest way to win an argument is to caricature one’s opponent’s views in such a way as makes it the easiest thing in the world to dismiss them as ridiculous. I am grateful for the common sense of your last contributor, but otherwise I am afraid these postings give the impression of various grouchy old bores sitting round in a pub, cantankerously banging on about something they know nothing whatever about. It is just remotely possible that some reader of your blog might actually find my book quite interesting.. But they would first have to discover that it bears not the slightest resemblance to the picture painted of it here. Greetings to you all!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post-1125669682450099082005-09-02T15:01:00.000+01:002005-09-02T15:01:00.000+01:00I don't think this is a very good review. I suspec...I don't think this is a very good review. I suspect the author is far too delighted by the mertis of his own penmanship to ever write well. <BR/><BR/>For example, the pay off in the final sentence didn't work. The rhetorical device at the the start of the article looks juvenile. <BR/><BR/>As a rule if a writer asks at the start of his piece "what can one possibly say?" the answer is seldom worth reading.<BR/><BR/>The Jowett comparison was a bit strained and clunky and felt pseudo-intellectual - wheeled out for effect rather than to further illuminate a point. A more apposite comparison would surely be with Dr. Casaubon.<BR/><BR/>How interesting that in one breath the author describes the importance of brevity, and in the next describes Booker's work as "futile, pointless and useless." What inelegant tautology!<BR/><BR/>"There are endless, endless problems with this" the author says of Booker's book. But Booker is not the only one.<BR/><BR/>No wonder Bookman doesn't write on paper.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post-1125603009596610662005-09-01T20:30:00.000+01:002005-09-01T20:30:00.000+01:00Well, the problem is that Christopher Booker doesn...Well, the problem is that Christopher Booker doesn't know what a plot is and it's a shame and a bit of a surprise that an author doesn't have this basic understanding of the language of his craft. I can't understand how he was able to get the book published with this title!<BR/><BR/>He's not talking about "plot," you see, he's talking about mythic structure or archetype or, less eruditely, dramatic situations (as used by Polti) --not plots. <BR/><BR/>"Plot," as any student of literary criticism will be happy to remind you, is defined something like this: "the series of events in cause and effect relations that define the progression of a work of fiction." "Plot" is: "The king dies and then the queen dies of a broken heart." Surely all plots have, at a finer level of abstraction, some structural quality that can be likened to that of many other works, but those basic structures are not "plot."<BR/><BR/>At least, that's what I was taught so very long ago.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post-1124874113582010572005-08-24T10:01:00.000+01:002005-08-24T10:01:00.000+01:00I am feeling negativity here... Perhaps I should r...I am feeling negativity here... Perhaps I should remove this book from my Amazon wish list... Ah well, there are already several hundred "How to be a writer..." books on it anyway...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post-1124871845252838312005-08-24T09:24:00.000+01:002005-08-24T09:24:00.000+01:00Hmm and there I was thinking he meant comedy in t...Hmm and there I was thinking he meant comedy in the shakespearean sense.ie everyone ends up married at the end rather than dead like the tragedies. <BR/><BR/>Oh look he noticed there is a plot form called the quest.<BR/>and presumably takes a hundred pages to define it. most definitons of the quest motif I have read were well under 5 pages. I doubt they took years to write either.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6656468.post-1124844735750833212005-08-24T01:52:00.000+01:002005-08-24T01:52:00.000+01:00Thank you for that excellent review. I particularl...Thank you for that excellent review. I particularly enjoyed your sharp reasoning, as when you pointed out that comedy is an effect, not a plot.<BR/><BR/>I'd heard about this book several months ago and Polti's and Egri's books immediately came to mind. I wondered why anyone would bother to go to such great lengths to essentially repeat the efforts of others before him. Maybe Booker thinks his book will be a big seller among wannabe novelists and screenwriters.<BR/><BR/>I bought a copy of Aristotle's Poetics several years ago. I never could get beyond the first two or three pages.Peter L. Winklerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16005846686173676213noreply@blogger.com