Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

This:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/05/michel-faber-i-dont-read-fiction-any-more

Sad when it gets to his wife but I don't know how someone who seems to find getting through a book a chore ends up reviewing the stuff.

Of course you can pretty much get a handle on a book while you've read quite a lot of it, but this culture is so crazy around forming an opinion after you've finished something..

"You really don’t read fiction?
I used to review for the Guardian, partly to force myself to read a book from beginning to end: my usual practice from when I was 18 onwards was to just read maybe 15 pages [of a novel] to get a sense of how the author handled nuts-and-boltsy things like pace and description. Eventually I did think it was important, sometimes, to read the whole book, and [reviewing was] handy in that sense. Then when my wife, Eva, died… she was a great reader of fiction. She would read the books I was reviewing and we would talk about them. When that side of my life went, there didn’t seem any point any more."

An author who isn't a reader seems like a contradiction but then The Book of Strange New Things is one of the worst novels I've ever read so perhaps in his case it's not so surprising.

I on the other hand read a lot and can't write a decent sentence.

Yeah never mind actually writing the stuff. There was one twitter thread that was asking something like "do you have to be a reader to write?". I tried to forget it as soon as I saw it.

From what he is saying Faber got some mechanics out of it. That's perhaps a good angle to review something if you've assimilated an idea of correct technique and judged a book using that. Interested in how he landed the job in the first place.

ZW keeps going.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/brexit-opposition-government-decline-politics-division

Isn't this the reverse of what she, and many other anti-Brexit people, said from 2016-2019?

In ZW's particular case I don't think that was from reactionary hatred of JC. But from many other people, who are also now keenly accepting Brexit, it was.

the likes of ZW and these Remainiac pricks got exactly what they wanted and it wasn't stopping brexit, it was thwarting the last chance we had for a centre-left govt for a generation. Because in the final analysis they are a bunch of m/c tory cunts no less. Sorry for the classism .. not all etc.

I mean Corbz/McD probably made enough bad decisions to doom "the project" themselves but the amount of energy these bullshit melts spent chipping away at them for years probably played its own part.

ZW was on radio 4 this morning being consulted as an expert on um i dunno work or life or something?

People being meaner to each other and more judgmental these days.

oh yes, she saw someone looking angry getting out of an uber.

can't believe as the hated United Kingdom reaches its long overdue death and millions more people are thrown into abject poverty while naked bigotry and hatred is openly celebrated across the media that people are being meaner and more judgemental

if people had only been kinder and less judgemental to fascists in the 1930s

apparently the "eat out to help out" scheme also meant that coarse working class people were going to restaurants and talking too loudly.

What was Zoe doing in a Spoons?

Please replace all the ppl we hate with this

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3

An old friend who writes about poker and horse racing said he lost some work at Betfair to AI.

GPT3 is better than most Graun columnists tbfttai

https://twitter.com/TheTrashiesUK/status/1303359484430082055?s=20

ffs!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhZ2aGHWAAAH-Oh?format=jpg&name=medium

Were there *any* Remain organisations in 2016-19 that weren't an astroturfed, anti-socialist con? https://t.co/FhJHOtjuIg

— Juliet. (@zinovievletter) September 8, 2020

some of them were pretty spontaneous and sincere, the liberal middle classes were happy to embarrass themselves without particularly engaging in or being led astray by all this backstage chicanery. it ends up looking like a conspiracy anyway when they have no real interest in noticing or opposing it either

some were even vaguely anti racist before the guardian/cameron crowd totally swamped them

I assume robots would be more consistent.

“This attempt to rewrite history is beneath you.” pic.twitter.com/mpyXy75IDR

— The Trashies (@TheTrashiesUK) September 8, 2020

I suppose a funny thing about ZW, writing all these supposedly insightful and practical articles about what politicians should do, is -- she has never been a politician. She wouldn't really have a clue how to do any of it in reality.

To quote Dr Johnson, I've never been a carpenter but I know a wonky table when I see one

I would distinguish between

a) values - we don't need to be politicians to see the government is evil
b) strategies - I don't feel able to advise politicians on how to defeat the government.

I think we can all do a) but ZW falsely assumes that she can do b) as well.

This terrible tweet worth it for the responses.

The latest genre of sub-tweeting seems to be "Lady! Office is mysterious space! Must work full time in one to understand one! Going into one probably once a week not count! Full mystery only understood by me, super understandy man!" https://t.co/RnwqObkHZa

— (((Zoe Williams))) (@zoesqwilliams) September 8, 2020

if we were going to guess which newspaper might leap to the defence of JK

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/sep/15/rowling-troubled-blood-thriller-robert-galbraith-review

standing shoulder to shoulder with Nick Cohen in the Spectator, always a great place to be

I mean so what if this transphobic writer has written a transphobic book? the tropes in there are all familiar from other transphobic books you've read before! idk what all the fuss is about. I have read this book and therefore I am qualified to tell you all that you haven't read it, so you should be quiet and stop making us feel uncomfortably aware of our transphobia.

The grotesque pretence that You Can't Say This Sort Of Thing In The Guardian Anymore, when for twenty-five years The Guardian has been the house journal of saying This Sort Of Thing. https://t.co/IvqZwQEwQ8

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) September 19, 2020

I knew you’d link this. Easily one of the worst people to work for the Guardian.

at least we still get her Woody Allen apologism and thoughts on Jared Kushner's botox in between the transphobic pieces in the "lefty" graun!

at least it's not the Telegraph eh?

She’s such an arsehole. She and her incredibly rich family are the only living people I can think of who’ve paid to have their own bench in Holland Park.

Lol pvmic

<3

Kind of a relief to see Freeman writing for The Spec tbh - get in your lane dingbat

When I click on that Freeman link the page shows a load of 'similar Tweets' (in effect) below and they are things like Kate Hoey, Brexit Party, John Redwood. That's literally the algorithmic company Freeman's keeping now.

I agree with Nashwan, I'd rather see her in the Spectator than getting credibility from publishing anywhere else.

Christ, her actual article is even worse than I expected - it's a 'diary column' or something.

It states: 'I am an innate people-pleaser'.

Toynbee is back on the 'Labour patriotism' sauce https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/22/starmer-challenge-defeat-tories-patriotism-labour

Slightly more voters trust Labour on Covid than don’t trust them, but the pandemic should be long over by the next election in 2024.

Did anyone else get a horrible sinking feeling reading this coming from Toynbee?

https://i.redd.it/h6mnve5xce651.png

This is hard to read.

https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/oct/04/cupboard-love-my-biggest-romances-always-begin-in-the-kitchen?

i have a plan for resolving that problem

I don’t like to see anyone until I’m on my second cup. My flatmate, one of the great loves of my life, says that nobody has ever hated her the way I hate her in the first half-hour of the day.
I fell in love with her in a kitchen, too: my old kitchen, 4am, fluorescent fridge-light, her eating cold leftovers, me pouring boiling water on to a pair of teabags. We were both sort of despairing in those days, and though we had known each other for a long time it was in that kitchen that I knew for sure that I loved her completely. I have never had a kitchen I didn’t fall in love in; I never want to.

xp https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/oct/04/cupboard-love-my-biggest-romances-always-begin-in-the-kitchen ?

Why did you link it again?

Anyway this is one more funny.

I don't like to criticise other journalists, but from @guardian journalist to mouthpiece for this hard right, hard Brexit, international law-breaking PM is really quite a leap. I honestly can't imagine why she wants to do it.https://t.co/QL6ErUtd7E

— Christina Patterson (@queenchristina_) October 8, 2020

i honestly believe i can imagine this