A novel once called Disgrace
The full title read "A novel once called Disgrace and badly written by an untalented politruk whose name history has not recorded, now substantially reviewed, fixed and improved by yours truly and actually worth reading for the first time in its existence", but it ran long.
It's not just that I've not sought the permission of the hack in question to modify his work. It's that I am firmly convinced the original is exactly that -- work -- and that I see no reason either the original or its author should be remembered.
I'm engaging in literary genocide, if you will, a sort of black-on-white holocaust. You should try it sometime, it's fun.
I intend to publish the result feuilleton-style over the course of however long it takes me, but for the reader's convenience I will eventually collect all the chapters in a list here below :
- Disgrace - For a man of his age
- Disgrace - Yet neither he nor she
- Disgrace - What he throws together
- Disgrace - He pauses. Blank incomprehension.
- Disgrace - Does she know what
- Disgrace - Never mind. Note that we
- Disgrace - It is raining.
- Disgrace - You say you have not
- Disgrace - At first they do not
- Disgrace - Don't the dogs get
- Disgrace - Well, you're welcome
- Disgrace - The house is just as
- Disgrace - The sign outside the clinic
- Disgrace - Are they all going to die
- Disgrace - Three men are coming
- Disgrace - Lucy returns
- Disgrace - Before they set off
- Disgrace - Katy is coaxed
- Disgrace - In spite of all that
- Disgrace - Petrus has invited us
- Disgrace - He glances across at Lucy
- Disgrace - The whole day Lucy
- Disgrace - He buys a small television
- Disgrace - The dogs are brought
- Disgrace - Petrus shakes his head
- Disgrace - But he is not satisfied
- Disgrace - His spell with Lucy
- Disgrace - Years ago, when he lived
For the stat collectors, it went from 4`560 lines / 67`049 words / 355`343 characters to 66`991 words / 374`397 characters ; and from nothingness to wholedom.
Three days, with time to spare.
Thursday, 1 October 2020
Since I've noticed that this shining jewel of a literary accomplishment (not in the sense of shining particularly in my own bag, oversupplied as that is ; but in the sense of overwhelming the sum total of anything everyone else's managed to produce in the interval) is about to exceed six digits' readership, but scattered rather than continuous, a chapter here, a chapter there, I've taken the time and went to the trouble of editing all the chapters, to add a little navigational aid at the bottom, permitting perhaps more continuous a perusal.
It was an unpleasant half hour, I admit, but the unpleasantness stands greatly mitigated by the circumstance that not in a thousand years will the "Nobel prize laureate" imbecile who first attempted a novel by this name reach even a fraction of that audience. In other words men have been hanged for less.
Friday, 2 October 2020
A, yeah : also added the occasional footnote, once or twice even rouded out the story in commentary (for not wanting to alter its historically recounted course, but also not wanting to leave the obvious directness, the limpid call of truth unvoiced) ; and besides turned the "baisc" back to basic, snipped a flow-breaking "the" or the hanging "a" here and there, removed spurious line ends in a few places and such touch-ups as four years accumulated.
Not altogether very much, to be honest.