Thursday, August 10, 2006

Sophistry and Youth

Lionel Shriver gave us a laugh in last Friday's Guardian, and I'm still laughing.

She's fed up of looking so young for her age, she says (alongside a pic of herself I'd already seen in a women's mag makeover), and before we all start getting resentful, she says, well, there's a big disadvantage: people think you're less experienced and stupider than you are.

That'll be the people her own age (49), then - or even younger, but looking their age and still old enough to feel contempt for youth.

Hang on a sec, though. Aren't they the people who've all been pensioned off (or rather shrugged off without pensions) in this Blairite world of 'modernisation' and The Next New Thing, and a contempt for the past or its lessons and an outright horror of anyone associated with it, ie anyone over 40?

Well, she's not actually that fed up about it, she admits: she's rather dreading starting to crumble like everyone else, she's vain really, and, look, dead honest about it.

Yeah, right.

3 comments:

Dave said...

Interestingly enough, I have a book out at the moment, and my publisher has never asked for a picture of me. I've been wondering if this is because I'm 51 or because my good looks would overshadow what is a serious work.

Lectrice said...
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Anonymous said...

Pah, Lionel Shriver. She is so unremittingly arrogant and self-obsessed. See my 'digested read' of her recent article in Marie Claire about why she wasn't going to have children, among other random rantings about her at www.thebookbar.com.

I also had someone arrive at my site having googled 'lionel + shriver + arrogant'...