[PREV - ZENITH_ANGLE] [TOP]
MODERN_FORGERS
May 20, 2006
Jonathan Gash - "The Rich and the Profane" (1998)
One of the series about the character
Lovejoy, an "antique dealer" with a
psychic ability to detect genuine The idea seems to be that Lovejoy
antiques, who never-the-less remains is the real thing, a man with
flat-busted for reasons that are never genuine artistic sensibility with
very well articulated. all the usual struggles with
practicality that often goes with it.
Primarily these books Hypothetically he could cruise
work as vehicles for through a junk auction and pick
the display of British up some great deals, but in
slang and the display practice he can't maintain the
of esoterica necessary poker face.
concerning the
antiques trade. He supposedly has an unparalleled
ability to fake antiques, but it
would seem that he can't make
them fast enough to make much
money at it -- he insists on
using the same techniques that
the ancient masters did --
Anyway:
p.129
Modern forgers get me down. They won't experiment.
Worst of all, fakers today don't bother to learn.
Like trying to write yet another sequel to "Pride
and Prejudice" without having read the original --
though that's been done often enough, God knows.
p.224
'Well everybody nowadays pretends that
T.S. Eliot wrote the _The Waste Land_,
that he didn't knick it from whatsisname --
Madison Cawein, the assistant cashier in
that Cincinnati snooker hall. But he did.'
That's the sort of thing you
read a Lovejoy book for. The other thing might be to
try to puzzle out Lovejoy's
character: is he at all
plausible? Shouldn't he be a
*little* better off than
flat-busted?
Can't he find
any way to
pick-up spare
change?
e.g. doing lectures on
antiques?
Or charge *in advance*
for doing a scan?
And does it make sense
that women keep falling
all over him?
Well yeah, maybe it does a
little... it's isn't just
a harem fantasy, it's a
commentary on the poor
judgement many women show
with men -- Lovejoy is so
obviously useless, and yet
women won't leave him
alone.
This is a book I may very well have
read already (The Jonno Rant stuff (I found this on the
seems a little familiar), not that shelves of a friend's
it matters all that much. place in Bali,
presumably abandoned
As is often the case with by some other traveler.)
the later Lovejoy's (and
maybe some of the earlier),
this book is a very woozy
mess of too many characters
and some very incoherent
poorly motivated action).
SPOILERS
I mean, okay, so Gesso is still alive, he helped
fake his own death. But *what for*? Is this an
attempt at manipulating Lovejoy to do something?
But what? Who would expect Lovejoy to go off on
a revenge kick... well maybe Gesso would -- in
fact, *realistically* Lovejoy would by now have a
dark reputation in his local circles: "Do
anything you want to him, but don't mess with one
of his friends, or you're very likely to run into
a peculiar sudden accident..."
And is there any particular reason that
Florida would want Jacinto murdered?
And couldn't Gash have managed just a little bit
of worm-turning in this plot, rather than have
Lovejoy convieniently rescued twice, once by a
bad guy, and once by one of his many women?
And okay, so the antiques digressions are what drive the
books... they get a little irritating after awhile, when
you're looking for a little plot development.
(Maybe the trouble is simply that Gash doesn't know where
he's going, so resorts to the device of pushing us outside
of Lovejoy's head... maybe Lovejoy Has A Plan, maybe he's
just improvising, but his moves just seem crazy -- like why
call himself Jonno Rant a *second* time? And anyway, *why*
does Jonno forgive him the second time exactly? "You did
me a good turn" So? And that good turn doesn't seem to make
sense... crazy stuff).
--------
[NEXT - A_DOLLS_HOUSE]