Books Arnold Bennett Who?
I have an awful knock-knock joke to illustrate my latest project.
-Knock, knock.
-"Who's there?"
-"Arnold Bennett."
-"Arnold Bennett Who?"
-"Exactly."
A common thread, both in my life and my website, is that I enjoy telling other people about stuff that I really like. I don't think I'm alone in this characteristic, I think most people tell their friends about the movies that they like, the bands that they just got into and such.
But I'm eccentric and so when I say I'm into this band or reading this book by this guy, I usually get a response of "What?" or "Who?", which is great, because I love sharing new stuff with people, just as much as I enjoy people turning me onto things that I had never heard of before.
So back to the joke, "Arnold Bennett who?", "Exactly."
I came across Bennett's work while digging through public domain for exercises for my first book. I came across a series of books he'd written on subject of "how to write", and for me "How to Write" books are something of an addiction, a compulsion, a must have collector's item, etc. I've read several "How to Write" books, many bad, some good, some exceptional, some life-changing.
Arnold Bennett's book The Truth About An Author, is Bennett's autobiography at a time in his life just prior to him achieving the great literary legend that we've come to labe him as. The work is something akin to reading the autobiography of The Beatles just prior to the recording of Sgt. Pepper, or Springsteen's Born to Run. At this point in Arnold Bennett's life, he had acheived a significant amount of success, so much so that he thought that he might have reached the top. Little did he know the best things he'd write and be known for, were just around the corner.
Seeing that the book had been out of print for some time, I took it upon myself to update it properly giving it a nice cover and updating the spelling into modern American English. The book is in its final stages of production and I am very excited about making it available ot everyone to enjoy again or for the first time.
Reader Comments (2)
I am assuming that this post is not some kind of a joke. If it is, then please ignore what I write.
Just checking: Your post is about the famous British author Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867 - 1931) - right?
You write about the book "The Truth About an Author":
"Seeing that the book had been out of print for some time, I took it upon myself to update it properly giving it a nice cover and updating the spelling into modern American English. The book is in its final stages of production and I am very excited about making it available to everyone to enjoy again or for the first time."
I was gobsmacked by the profundity of this remarkable statement. You introduce a whole new meaning to the word "properly". Not wishing to be rude, I have to remind you that Arnold Bennett was an Engrish author, you clod. Thus it would be categorically incorrect to call "...updating the spelling into modern American English..." an improvement, nor could it be called a good idea. It would seem to be more correct to call it outright revisionist vandalism of an artefact of English literary history.
Whilst you are about it, why don't you do another "proper" job of things and translate the complete works of William Shakespeare into modern American English as well? He's been out of print for quite some time now, I gather, so people will no doubt be dying to get an updated version of his works in predigested form. Don't forget to give it all "nice covers" too, of course. Bill would probably have lurved that.
Oh yes, well done on the nice cover for Bennet's now Americanised and mangled "autobiography". I'm sure he would approve, same as Bill.
I never expected to encounter such an egregious example of literary Philistinism as you would seem to have provided here, so, thankyou for the novel experience - though I am unsure as to whether I actually enjoyed it. It's going to take more than one cuppa tea for me to get over this experience.
Unfortunately, Shakespeare is not on my list for "Outright Revisionist Vandalism of an Artefact of English Literary History", because other publishers have already beaten me to the punch in that market. Thank you for comment and suggestion.
Take care,
Kris Madden