Mmm … slim pickings this month. What have I been doing?

A friend recently published a memoir, and when discussing the book in a forum he referred to Prufrock. This had me dig out the original, and be amazed all over again how a former boss had once recited a passage to me across a boardroom table.  

He’d known his audience, alright.  Known I was mad for him. And in entirely characteristic way, wanted to luxuriate in it.  He said:

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind?  Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

(T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

*****

I mentioned my introduction to the world of adult puppetry, courtesy of Mr Ronnie Burkett’s show, Billy Twinkle: Requiem for a Golden Boy.  Hmm, Prufrocks everywhere.  I heard him discussing how he’d got the genesis of the show from the idea we’re always in the middle of something: in the middle of life, in the middle of a romance, in the middle of a trouble, etc.  And that the idea came from the opening line of Dante’s Divine Comedy:

In the midway of this our mortal lives, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray, gone from the path direct.

*****

Am not a fan of Martin Amis, but can’t fault his taste.  Because he adores Nabokov.  How’s this for a blurb, from the back of the Collected Stories?

The variety, force and richness of Nabokov’s perceptions have not even the palest rival in modern fiction.  To read him in full flight is to experience stimulation that is at once intellectual, imaginative and aesthetic, the nearest thing to pure sensual pleasure that prose can offer.

***** 

Only other quote of interest this month is from a blog. I know. Beginning of the end, what?  From The Fluent Self blog, Havi Brooks gives her amusing take on ”marketing”:

For example, my definition of “marketing” (what I call biggification) is this:

The art, science and process of helping your Right People: (a) find you, and (b) feel safe saying yes to the thing you have, know or do that will make their lives better.

That’s it.

It’s helping the people you need to help.  It’s helping them find you.  And it’s helping them feel safe saying yes to the help.

Without this part — the “marketing” part — all you’re doing is hiding in your room wanting to help people.  Your Right People are wandering around looking for you and you’re making it hard for them to receive what you have to give.

*****

Image: from Flickr somewhere