Here is a sure sign that Dalrymple is making some headway. You don’t get this kind of reaction from the libs at the Guardian if they think they can ignore you. They even drew up a little illustration. Crace’s satire doesn’t have the ring of truth — it veers between “accurate but not disparaging” and “disparaging but not accurate” — but I still enjoyed it. Am I being too sentimental if I give him an A for effort?
The Skeptical Doctor
Dedicated to the work of Theodore Dalrymple
I agree that the Guardian have decided that they can’t ignore Dalrymple. But I’m afraid I thought Crace’s attempt at satire very feeble. Still, what can you expect from lefties.
Wow, what a moronic review – I’ve hardly ever seen anything quite like it. It was like a load of missiles, not a single one of which hit target.
Oh Auto Trader Insert, you do make me laugh!
But on a serious and more analytical note, I think you’re right, Steve. This kind of heavy dose of truth seems to send liberals into a kind of turmoil. They don’t know what to do, so this kind of bizarre article is the response. I guess their world falls down really, and hopefully they feel some guilt for what they have helped to create. Good publicity for TD..
A straw article, for straw readers.
Marxist-Feminism can’t survive with reality kicking its head in; so Guardian readers curl up in a ball, to kiss their own arse, until their brain goes numb.
I thought it was quite witty. Wrong headed (I like TD a lot) but funny – particularly the bit about being unable to write in syntactically tortured sentences. Loosen up guys! I thought it was usually those terrible lefties that suffered from sense of humour failures.
On the Amazon.co.uk page for this book there is a short review by someone called Nick Grant from Wembley, London which is worth quoting in full:
“i have just ordered this but expect it to be grist to the reactionary mill of the Tory ‘broken britain’ refrain.”
This person gives the book a one star rating despite admitting that he hasn’t yet read it.
I suppose at least we should be pleased that he has ordered it.
Gavin’s blog reads more like a Dalrymple caricature than the Guardian piece:
But I’m not staying at home this week, I’m working – in Westbourne Park. I’m therefore exposed to the general public, therefore exposed to vulgarity and therefore having reason to write. I will embellish nothing – there’s no need. As the smell of chewing gum drifts from the person next to me on the bus, allow me to continue.
It had a few clever lines. The syntactically tortured sentances was one, the italicised latin was another. Dalrymple does make use of that ‘suppresio veri, suggestio falsi’ quote a little too readily.
In other news, I have finally gotten my hands on the New Vichy Syndrome, and am happily worming my way through it.
I think the main problem with Crace’s article is this. The issues of Dalrymple’s book are serious and of importance for society. The book is intended to be, and should be, taken seriously. Where Dalrymple’s writing is funny (and in these cases it is much funnier than Crace’s, in my view), it’s in a bittersweet sense. It seems to me that Crace makes light of and crudely misrepresents Dalrymple’s arguments (he also insults his learned and eloquent style in the line you quote). Since I care about what Dalrymple is actually saying it’s hard for me to find that funny.
Hello, David. I’ve been a reader of Gavin’s blog for a number of years now and I know for a fact that he does not attempt any caricature of Dalrymple for he has been writing thus since he began his blog. Shall we really begin to think that all people who write articulately and eloquently are just doing so in jest? If so, my goodness how we’ve degenerated as a society…
Oh come on Iphigenia, where’s your sense of humour? And why haven’t you got any friends on facebook? You’re not Gavin’s alter ego are you?
David, I’m quite surprised your comments are being published here. Do you have a website where I can admire your writing?
David (if that’s even your name): 618, 245 people are “friends” with the cretinous vulgarian Russell Brand (are you one of them?) – surely, someone who reads Dalrymple would know that the amount of friends one has (especially on a new account!) is little to do with the merits of what one says. You are using ad-hominem attacks against me simply because you cannot refute what I have said. You are obviously an Internet troll so, please, go away.
it veers between “accurate but not disparaging” and “disparaging but not accurate”
Perfectly put. …Although I imagine that most of his audience regard the instances of the former as being self-evidently ludicrous, so the piece probably just about works in their minds. It was actually one of his better ones: his travesty of Melanie Phillips’s latest offering (viewable on the same site) couldn’t’ve taken him more than a couple of minutes. I’ve noticed that the Left often appear to like their satire crude, superficial and rather overblown (for some reason I’m reminded of another Dalrymple article, contrasting Rasselas with Candide).
What did surprise me was that he’s been knocking out this sort of thing for over a decade now, which speaks volumes about his editors (the same lot who keep Steve Bell in business). Nice work if you can get it…
…As for a pastiche on Dalrymple, see the first two comments after this article.
Let him so. While writing on this subject can be sufficient. But really nothing new.
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