The Wicked Writing Blog

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Browsing Archive: October, 2011

Why Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare

Posted by John Yeoman on Monday, October 31, 2011, In : Libels & Wickedness 

Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?

Nonsense, or so the new movie Anonymous suggests. The Earl of Oxford wrote the entire canon of the Bard, it contends, while taking time out to be both the son and lover of Queen Elizabeth I. To use a 16th century expression: ‘Flapdoodle’.

That said, the Shakespeare of Stratford probably did not write Shakespeare’s plays.

Why? Let me digress for a moment....

Have you noticed that books today are not written but packaged? You pick up a novel Sapphire at a ...

Continue reading ...
 

Why Booker prize winners write bad books

Posted by John Yeoman on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, In : Libels & Wickedness 
News today (Oct 19, 2011) that Julian Barnes has won the £50,000 Man Booker prize for The Sense of an Ending  must have shocked the prize selection committee. Why? The judges, as opposed to the committee, had vowed - for the first time - to include ‘readability’ in their criteria.

And Barnes is actually readable.

That was a superb snub to the literati who had traditionally recommended unreadable works that would be bought on trust (‘a Booker winner’) then flung, by disappointed reader...
Continue reading ...
 
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John Yeoman

Dr John Yeoman, MA Oxon, MPhil, PhD Creative Writing, FSRS*  is a UK university tutor in the short story. He has 42 years experience as a successful commercial writer, newspaper editor and one-time chairman of a major PR consultancy.

He has published innumerable works of humour, some intended to be humorous.

* Founder, the Society for the Rehabilitation of the Semi-colon