Ago ago ago ago ago! Ago ago ago! I have
been reading Ken Follett’s, massive tome “World Without End” and thoroughly
enjoying it; a real page turner, all 1111 pages of it and, in old-fashioned
boy’s own language, a gripping yarn. I’m a sucker for period romances anyway
and can hardly keep my nose out of it so it would seem a bit peevish to come up
with a sort of minor complaint in the writing. I see in Mister Follett’s
acknowledgments he lists a number of “literary advisers” so how they let it pass
and why his editors didn’t cotton on to it I really don’t understand. Maybe
it’s because to most people it doesn’t add up to a can of beans but for me it
is like an itch that has to be scratched. What am I referring to? I refer to every time he writes in the past
tense it invariably ends in “ago” and when you have read that word umpteen
times it begins to stick out like a sore thumb and irritate accordingly. There
are alternatives to “ago” but never once does he use one; past, before,
previous, previously, since, or the past tense of verbs none of which seem to
be in Mister Follett’s vocabulary or, if they are, he assiduously shuns them in
favour of ago ago ago! Grrr! But hoorah! Finally on almost the penultimate page
he uses the word “earlier.” So there you ago.
The sign of a jolly good read, apart from not being able to take your nose out of the
book, is that you simply can’t wait to get to the end to discover how it all
turns out, hopefully for the best but then, when everything has come to a
satisfactory conclusion, you’re sad that it’s over. It’s like having a truly
fulfilling role in a wonderful play, something that doesn’t happen all that
often, perhaps half a dozen times in a lifetime if you’re lucky, and reaching the
end of each performance wishing you could do it all over again and reluctant to
leave the theatre. Now I look forward to reading the prequel, “Pillar of the
Earth” which I am sure I will enjoy just as much, as long as there aren’t too
many agos.
And whilst on the subject of writing,
Chris’s biography of George Leybourne, although shortlisted, did not win the
Society for Theatre Research Bookprize 2012 but let’s hope even being in the
top six will help to sell it, and sales invoices from
the printers were e-mailed and revealed that for me there had been a few sales
of three or four plays but not a single book. Not one single book! Just how does one start the
ball rolling when one does not have the means of promotion? Does one just wait
for a little miracle, like someone with influence discovering one accidentally,
or what? Any ideas?
www.glynjones.net
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