Saturday Guardian Bricolage

I first draw your attention to a quote from Neil Gaiman's article on fairy tales, in which the Great Man tries to explain the point of Stardust:

Shortly after it was published, I wound up defending it to a journalist who had loved my previous novel, Neverwhere, particularly its social allegories. He had turned Stardust upside down and shaken it, looking for social allegories, and found absolutely nothing of any good purpose.

"What's it for?" he had asked, which is not a question you expect to be asked when you write fiction for a living.

"It's a fairytale," I told him. "It's like an ice cream. It's to make you feel happy when you finish it."

I don't think that I convinced him, not even a little bit.

Next, I quote from James Fenton quoting Wolfgang Joachim Zuckermann on the subject of the electric harpsicord:

Physically, the design is not very successful; it uses an aluminium channel section in place of wooden case, and three legs without any charm whatever. The Lucite top and music rack gave this instrument an outer-space quality not easily associated with harpsichord design. One could perhaps swallow the design (a bitter pill!) if the instrument had a pleasant sound ... This, unfortunately, is not the case.

Bad though Zuckermann's verdict may be, it's not up there with Beecham's damning comment on the sound of all harpsicords — that the instrument sounded like a pair of skeletons copulating on a tin roof. Most unfair.