As I picked up The Family Trade, I thought about the good things I have heard about Charles Stross—well, about his writing—no, actually I’ve heard good things about him as well—I think he’s friends, in an on-line sort of way, with John Scalzi of Whatever, who, bye-the-bye, has two interesting recent particularly interesting recent posts, one a coming-out-post for The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies that contains The Canon in list form, grist for the proverbial, and another post on The Cynical Writer with a bemused-indifference response to Lou Anders’s’s post on what he’s been reading, which by the way includes Mr. Stross’ The Iron Sunrise—I don’t know if Mine Host is palsy-walsy with Mr. Stross, but I know Mr. Stross is one of Jed’s fave raves at the moment—and bye-another-bye, isn’t that new format for Lorem Ipsum marvelous—and it turns out that Lorem isn’t a word according to WEBOggle, which is incredibly addicting, and has a bunch of things that are not necessary to the game but which add to the addictingnessosity—the earlier use of the word marvelous, of course, was a reference to Stephen Fry’s comment that the only appropriate thing to say when one goes backstage after a performance is simply the word marvelous over and over again, as anything more specific than that is simply inviting a complete emotional breakdown after the hearer manages to winkle out the negative implied by whatever positive thing you mentioned—it wasn’t Stephen Fry, of course, but Alan Bennett who said that—I wonder if Mr. Bennett and Mr. Fry are friends—at any rate they certainly have mutual friends—I suspect when Mr. Fry goes backstage at one of Mr. Bennett’s plays, he just smiles and says “marvelous, marvelous”—This is, of course the principle behind my refusal to mention any actual merits of any book written by a friend, and write posts concentrating purely on the likelihood that the book will make my friend sufficiently rich and famous that the buckets of money and connections will slop over on Your Humble Blogger—I have, however, had two comments from writers purporting to be authors of books I noted here in this Lorem Ipsum, not including those authors who are Gentle Readers for whom the above applies—not that it’s OK to hurt the feelings of people you don’t know—lashon hara, it seems to me, prevents reviewing a book at all, doesn’t it? Unless you consider the good done by the review as outweighing the injunction—in a sense, a negative review of a book is like warning a person that a prospective business partner is dishonest, which is sometimes permitted, although not always, and is still a chayt, a failure—the rabbinic teaching is that gossip leads to violence—on the other hand, I watch far more carefully what I say about friends than what I say about strangers, as even lashon hara about a stranger is unlikely to end a friendship—not that there are strangers in these internet days—the internet does provide an interesting demonstration of the six degrees of separation idea, where one watches what one says about, for instance, Charles Stross, not because one knows Mr. Stross, but because one knows that one’s friend is a friend of Mr. Stross’s’s friend—not that Mr. Stross is incapable of self-Googling, the way purported A. Lee Martinez may have done—still, listen at doors, and you won’t like what you hear—another piece of materteral wisdom that dovetails with the rule that if one has nothing nice to say one shouldn’t say anything at all—which is much weaker than the halakhic rule which in fact prevents you saying anything nice, either, behind the person’s back—saying something nice about somebody to their face is frowned upon, as well—perhaps that’s why Stephen Fry just says “Marvelous, marvelous”; not that he’s an observant Jew, but from the dictum that gossip leads to violence, even if the gossip isn’t negative—of course, if one can’t talk about people, or their works, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of topics of conversation open, except I suppose the Lord, which may be what the Rabbis were on about anyway—sorry, where was I?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.