Do You Think You're Clever?
I've been spitting mad of late. Not through any great misfortune that has happened, but because of a simple book.
Like many people, my time for reading is always bed time. It always has been ever since I can remember. I am too busy and focused on other things during the day to read, even on holiday, but of a night I can happily while away a sleepless hour devouring a book.
Unfortunately, one of the books I am reading at the moment, has caused me to start having an involuntary form of literary Tourettes. I read a chapter and then at the end of it, intone "cock-dribble" or "arse-guffage" before starting the next a tad angrier than before.
The book that is causing me so much angst is a book called "Do you think you're clever" by someone called John Farndon. Initially, I assumed he was the singer who had a hit with "You're the Voice" and in many ways, had he written the book, it may have been a tad easier to digest. Unfortunately for John Farnham the similarly monikered Farnham got to it first.
What the book is, is a list of the questions posed by Oxbridge interviewers to prospective students. These are questions with a difference and are asked not to gain a satisfactory answer, but to test the prospective students ability to prove their 'intelligence' (spit) by thinking on their feet and giving an insightful, plausible and occasionally entertaining answer.
For example, one of the questions asked is "Do you think you are clever?" and the nervous undergraduate must then answer this without sounding like a. A cretin or b. A bighead.
Farndon's book is a collection of such questions and many of them, I believed when I read the blurb, would be highly amusing to be discussed. So I foolishly bought the book. A whole £2 it cost me.
But instead of an interesting discursive on some of the questions, what Farndon does is try to give the "definitive" answer to each of the questions. Although he claims in his introduction that this is not his aim, the answers he gives are dripping with such scholarly leanings, that they are about as funny as a ruptured spleen.
The whole book is an exercise in self-congratulation. A masturbatory wander through Farndon's undoubtedly 'massive' intellect. Of course, Farndon has been able to research ALL the questions he answers, write and edit them to perfection and present them lovingly all subbed, edited, polished and hand-finished to the reader. There's nothing inherently to dislike in the answers, the book is even written in a way that tries to be 'chummy' to the reader, but unfortunately it just infuriates me even more.
In essence the book, to me at least, is Farndon saying "Look, thicko undergraduates, if you had any real intelligence... THESE are the answers you should give, just like I have done here for ALL the questions... Now bow down before me and worship me for try as you might, you will never achieve anything in your life as magnificent as this creation..."
Each answer is littered with quotations from classic works and authors, philosophers, the great and the good from history and all their collective wisdom abound. Farndon could even find a philosopher to comment on whether brown dog poo was more inherently evil than white, and he'd be able to quote him fulsomely and then throw in what Shakespeare, Gandhi, Winston Churchill and Deng Xiaoping thought on this matter too, before balancing his argument quite brilliantly with a counterpoint straight from Nietzsche and then finishing it with a flourish by quoting Oscar Wilde's take on it and how that links in to the real answer, which is of course, his.
It is a literary wank and it is literary wank for precisely that reason.
Even with the best will in the world, I don't know many 18 year olds quite happy to quote from all the great range of classics with instant recall on any topic you'd care to give them. Most 18 year olds heading off to University's primary concern is "How much is this going to cost", "How much can I drink before the hospital becomes a necessity?" and "Which of my new friends has the largest breasts/package?" Sartre, Descartes, Rousseau and Mondrian's thoughts on French soft furnishings, don't come high up the order.
So anyway, to counterbalance this, I am going to answer every single one of Farndon's questions in my next blog post. In my own way. It is entirely self-indulgent, pointless, not a little conceited and entirely futile.
But I'm not that clever, so I'm going to do it anyway.
And if anyone wants it, don't waste £2 in HMV. Send me your address and you can have it. I'll even pay the postage. As Shakespeare once said "Postage, thou be'est my true friend, for you taketh away thy shite that permeate my eyes and infuse me with the greatest of be-hollerings..."
Like many people, my time for reading is always bed time. It always has been ever since I can remember. I am too busy and focused on other things during the day to read, even on holiday, but of a night I can happily while away a sleepless hour devouring a book.
Unfortunately, one of the books I am reading at the moment, has caused me to start having an involuntary form of literary Tourettes. I read a chapter and then at the end of it, intone "cock-dribble" or "arse-guffage" before starting the next a tad angrier than before.
The book that is causing me so much angst is a book called "Do you think you're clever" by someone called John Farndon. Initially, I assumed he was the singer who had a hit with "You're the Voice" and in many ways, had he written the book, it may have been a tad easier to digest. Unfortunately for John Farnham the similarly monikered Farnham got to it first.
What the book is, is a list of the questions posed by Oxbridge interviewers to prospective students. These are questions with a difference and are asked not to gain a satisfactory answer, but to test the prospective students ability to prove their 'intelligence' (spit) by thinking on their feet and giving an insightful, plausible and occasionally entertaining answer.
For example, one of the questions asked is "Do you think you are clever?" and the nervous undergraduate must then answer this without sounding like a. A cretin or b. A bighead.
Farndon's book is a collection of such questions and many of them, I believed when I read the blurb, would be highly amusing to be discussed. So I foolishly bought the book. A whole £2 it cost me.
But instead of an interesting discursive on some of the questions, what Farndon does is try to give the "definitive" answer to each of the questions. Although he claims in his introduction that this is not his aim, the answers he gives are dripping with such scholarly leanings, that they are about as funny as a ruptured spleen.
The whole book is an exercise in self-congratulation. A masturbatory wander through Farndon's undoubtedly 'massive' intellect. Of course, Farndon has been able to research ALL the questions he answers, write and edit them to perfection and present them lovingly all subbed, edited, polished and hand-finished to the reader. There's nothing inherently to dislike in the answers, the book is even written in a way that tries to be 'chummy' to the reader, but unfortunately it just infuriates me even more.
In essence the book, to me at least, is Farndon saying "Look, thicko undergraduates, if you had any real intelligence... THESE are the answers you should give, just like I have done here for ALL the questions... Now bow down before me and worship me for try as you might, you will never achieve anything in your life as magnificent as this creation..."
Each answer is littered with quotations from classic works and authors, philosophers, the great and the good from history and all their collective wisdom abound. Farndon could even find a philosopher to comment on whether brown dog poo was more inherently evil than white, and he'd be able to quote him fulsomely and then throw in what Shakespeare, Gandhi, Winston Churchill and Deng Xiaoping thought on this matter too, before balancing his argument quite brilliantly with a counterpoint straight from Nietzsche and then finishing it with a flourish by quoting Oscar Wilde's take on it and how that links in to the real answer, which is of course, his.
It is a literary wank and it is literary wank for precisely that reason.
Even with the best will in the world, I don't know many 18 year olds quite happy to quote from all the great range of classics with instant recall on any topic you'd care to give them. Most 18 year olds heading off to University's primary concern is "How much is this going to cost", "How much can I drink before the hospital becomes a necessity?" and "Which of my new friends has the largest breasts/package?" Sartre, Descartes, Rousseau and Mondrian's thoughts on French soft furnishings, don't come high up the order.
So anyway, to counterbalance this, I am going to answer every single one of Farndon's questions in my next blog post. In my own way. It is entirely self-indulgent, pointless, not a little conceited and entirely futile.
But I'm not that clever, so I'm going to do it anyway.
And if anyone wants it, don't waste £2 in HMV. Send me your address and you can have it. I'll even pay the postage. As Shakespeare once said "Postage, thou be'est my true friend, for you taketh away thy shite that permeate my eyes and infuse me with the greatest of be-hollerings..."
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