Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 05, 2024

A Very Calvin approach . Love it

Lots of things are like that. I once spent the better part of a month building a prop for a play. The prop was on stage for less than two minutes.

I work it from the other end: I have a short list of authors that resonate with my preferences most excellently. No matter HOW fast they write, they can’t keep up with my reading speed, so I’m force, FORCED I tell you, to either re-read (I do that some) or try new-to-me- authors who are, by Sturgeon’s law, at least 90% crap.

Write the book report?

And then there are books like On The Road that reads like it was written in one sitting. But it still came out great.

Caulfield seems to feel he isn’t getting credit for his efforts to grandstand. Mrs. Olsen just rides with it, as usual.

Caufield a future community organizer/social influencer/politician???

Gotta give credit to Caulfield for his efforts and argument, though I don’t expect that even he thought he’d win. Of course Mrs. Olsen could have informed him that his report had to be 10 pages long so that he could show a bit more respect to the author.

Does she know how much time he spent on that rant?

Nope.

An author who spends years writing a single book generally won’t be successful. Tolkien excepted, of course.

Condensing time…

Just one more example of spending more effort trying to avoid a task than it would take to perform it.

Caulfield’s work probably deserves a more specific reaction.

Carl Hiaasen spends weeks and weeks writing a single book. But it doesn’t matter; he knows what he’s doing and they’re all good.

At his peak (roughly 1599-1606) Shakespeare was writing two or three new plays in a year, including many of his greatest works. Your average college Shakespeare instructor puts more time and effort into reading Shakespeare’s work than Will ever put into writing them.

Could have used that time to write the report, yes.

She doesn’t care.

Another bad assumption. You divide the time that the author (or director, or show runner) spent on the work (rarely “years and years”) and divide that by the number of people who consume that work. But this kid is often not very bright.

I read VERY quickly. My wife is even faster. She read Robert Jordan’s “The Eye of the World”, a 782 page hardcover, start to finish, while we waited in line to get it signed. Robert Jordan nearly strangled her. Three years of his life, read WHILE IN LINE. Clearly he felt it was disrespectful (or horrifically depressing) and sided with Caufield in this.

She knows you too well, Caulfield — she knows you could extemporize that rant without any preparation whatsoever. :-D

Having a one-page book report written about one of my stories would actually be kinda nice, if I knew about it. As it is, I have to content myself with book reviews, many of which are so badly written I can’t tell if it’s critical or complimentary. No matter, I’ll keep writing as long as there’s at least one person who enjoys my little tales.

Bill Bryson (who is a friend of Jef’s) wrote “A Walk In The Woods” (about walking the AT Trail with some humor thrown in) and is the one I’ve gone back to the most; probably considered light reading … but certainly enjoyable.

In the time you could have written two book reports ….

More time than it would take you to just do the dang book report, smart guy !

A lot of really good and best-selling authors crank out 2 or 3 books a year. However, most mortals…