The Sagamore Saga.

Seven-year-0ld Billy’s Uncle Sagamore in Charles Williams’ The Diamond Bikini (Simon & Schuster, London, 1956) is quite a character. As usual, I happened to have this gem of a book lying unread for years in one of my cupboards. What a treat it is. First of all, this (to me) unknown mystery writer has a great knack for story telling. Secondly, he uses Billy, the son of Sam Noonan. an itinerant race course tout, to tell it. This makes the narrative rip-roaringly hilarious because Billy recounts every shenanigan of his uncle with a straight face without understanding the deviousness behind it. Sagamore has a genius for making money without doing an honest day’s work. He sells moonshine, runs the gambling racket and even the whorehouses in the nearby town in the Deep South of the US of A in the early fifties. What’s more, he does it while claiming to be always cooperating with the law and manages to duck out of every confrontation with the Sherif, whom he calls "Shurf", unscathed. When a nightclub singer - and the star witness in a gangland killing - takes refuge on his farm and then goes missing in the wilderness wearing nothing but a diamond-studded g-string, he masterminds a whole carnival around the search for her and literally mints money. The law finally catches up with Sagamore who is incarcerated for a long, long time. In the jail too, he organises all sorts of money-making rackets until the thoroughly disgusted jailor and the State Governor conspire to have him pardoned claiming a mistrial. It’s a laugh riot.

Lie detector. (An inconvenient truth?)

I’ve always been wary – nay, downright suspicious – of the role of the so-called creative workshops much touted in magazines like Writer’s Digest and Fiction Writer and various websites for writers as the ideal way to master the art and craft of creative writing. The saga of the Blacksburg mass murderer has however given me solace by throwing up a hitherto unimagined alternative use for the panacea for wannabe writers. Join the Virginia Tech Creative Workshop this Fall to find out if you’re a killer in the making – even if you have not a chance in Hell of evolving into a potential Pulitzer Prize winner! I’m kidding, of course. Because all this talk of how Cho’s English teacher and course mates sensed that something was not quite right, if not downright wrong, by reading his workshop output is just that: so much talk. The two scripts posted at http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/richard-mcbeef-cover-page/20070417134109990001 and : http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/mr-brownstone-title-page/20070417141309990001 ape the way contemporary American writers write. Explicitly even at the risk of offending the reader. No different from what a Stephen King, a David Mamet or a Quentin Tarantino would do. And then it’s called a stroke of genius. Even granting these know-alls and see-alls knew all and saw all, why did they not insist on doing something about it? Yeah, I know, I know. Cho refused all offers of friendship and help. I guess nobody could have prevented what was meant to happen. The DVD of Destiny had already been burnt.

Out-of-the-box ideas – boxed!

To my delight, I recently located this review filed by me on February 7, 2004 a thttp://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3AOH1V0YEH3WO/ref=cm_pdp_profile_reviews/102-3668932-4279329?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview

'Parlour cards' smacks of after-dinner liquer and Cuban cigars - not my cup of tea (pardon the mixed metaphor!) mainly because I don't move in those haloed Page 3 corridors. I bought After-dinner Freud and After-dinner Shakespeare - sight unseen as it were - mainly because the form of packaging and presentation fascinated me. It was only later at home that I discovered what a treasure I had stumbled upon unwittingly. Dr Joseph Aguayo and his Editors have picked out pertinent and pithy brush strokes from Freud's life to create a quick mental sketch of the last of the deliverers of "the three blows to man's pride". For instance, Card #22 tells us that Mrs Freud thought her husband's ideas were "a form of pornography". Don't waste time reading the review. Get your own set of the parlour cards and enjoy! (No, I'm not on the payroll of Becker & Mayer who helped to shape these brilliant 'packaged books'.)

P.S.: I recall that I bought both the delightful products from Strand Book Stall a few years back at (probably) Rs.100/- (about $2.50) each.

P.S. #2: My earlier review of God of Small Things is however missing at the Amazon website. It’s now members only’, I guess. The surviving reniew was written after I bought Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability a couple of years back.

Rub your eyes. Clap your hands.

Believe it or not, this happened in front of my eyes one night in the eighties. To begin at the beginning, though, back in the fifties, a lapsed chef and cooking stove salesman from the UK started his own agency in the US. He then went on to become a Legend and a best-selling author. His famous book spurred me on into advertising. Many years later, in the late eighties, I saw him making a massive nuisance of himself one night in the elevator of a posh Pune hotel. I was there for a seminar hosted by the ad agency I consulted with. The Legend was there for a similar reason and was trying to needle his Indian colleagues into making mincemeat of the agency I worked for – very, very loudly. I was the only odd man out in that elevator crammed with the Great Man and his team mates totally oblivious of me and my reason for being there. Fortunately for me, I must emphasize. Or, I may not be here to tell you the tale, who knows? But then you couldn’t really begrudge the Genius – and “the world’s best known advertising man” by his own insistence – his carefully cultivated and widely flaunted little eccentricities, could you? An amusing and beguiling capsule biography is here: http://www.gandalf.it/m/ogilvy2.htm.