Algis Budrys wrote this in 1983:
Budrys brings this up in the context of how our reading of a book is affected by whatever reviews and publicity materials we’ve seen–an interesting point which I became more aware of after going to the bookstore in France and picking out books without having a sense of what they’d be like (see entry under Crédit Illimité in this post. In any case, the main thing is that I just like Budrys’s story and how he tells it. He was a true blogger, which I mean in the best sense of the word.
Richard Harris told this story to Johnny Carson: https://youtu.be/AI8qoJpz4Z0?si=RM8iyjtVdqmDzs75
I was curious about the original essay, and after some preliminary research, I’m not sure that it exists. Googling “The King, Sir, is Much Better” leads to this blog post itself, and not much else. On the one hand, finding an article, with no author name and an uncertain date of circa 1953, is going to be hard. On the other hand, you would think a prominent publication like The Saturday Review would be digitized. Well, it went out of business in the 80s, so maybe not. And then again, if Budrys misremembered, maybe there is a real article out there entitled “The King is Healthy” or something like that. I realize that he was writing in a breezy style and didn’t want to be burdened with full bibliographic details, but I wish he had included a bit more information!
This is an unsolved problem: How does one optimally find the number of good books that one will like? The question as framed is broad and one needs to specify what is good and likeable. For some time, I have followed a method which I recently found was best described by Elias Canetti, from The Agony of Flies:
Reading seeks to propagate itself in me by reading; I never follow any outside recommendations, or if I do, then only after a very long time. I want to discover what I read. Whoever suggests a book to me knocks it out of my hands; whoever praises it spoils it for me for years. I only trust the minds I truly revere. They can recommend anything to me, and to awaken my curiosity all they have to do is to mention something in a given book. But whatever others recommend with their facile tongues is as if truly cursed. Thus it was hard for me to get to know the great books, for the greatest works long ago have entered the idolatry of the commonplace. People have the names of those books-as well as their heroes-on the tips of their tongues, and since they are so intent on stuffing themselves, they pronounce these names with their mouths full, thereby spoiling my own appetite for what would be so important for me to know.
Khilav:
That reminds me . . . the other day someone wrote me: “tell me where the good fiction can be found. I’ve been looking for it for a while.”
Here was my reply:
You don’t need me to tell you where to find good fiction. There’s so much! Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Patricia Highsmith, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Colson Whitehead, . . . I could give thousands of names here. It’s as if you asked, where to find good art or where to find good music. You find something you like, then read other things by that author, or other things recommended by people who like authors you like, or you come across a book in the store or library and read a couple pages and you find it interesting . . . I’m not saying it’s easy–it’s a step-by-step process.
Canetti is spot on. I always find good books by searching for the favorite writers of the writers I liked. This can be a winding route. I avoided Joyce, until I read an interview with Deborah Eisenberg, where she was praising The Dead. And indeed, Dubliners is a masterpiece, despite being known as a masterpiece. I got to Christopher Alexander through Emma Cline and I discovered Derek Mahon through Mick Herron. It doesn’t work so well for music, since your favorite musician may listen to stuff that is way too obscure. And I found equally important the inverse strategy: avoid books recommended by people/authors you dislike, unless something clicks in other ways (for this reason I never got around to reading Franzen or Knausgard)
This reminds me a lot of Chekhov’s gun. if you introduce an element into the play that draws the attention of the audience, it is good writing to make sure that you pay off this use of attention with the gun being used or important later. In this case, you get the play back on track but the lunatic is now a showcased element of the play that needs to be paid off
I like sometimes picking books without knowing anything about them. The University of Oregon library has an excellent “Popular Reading Display” (photo) that I sometimes browse at. (“Popular” may be a stretch, since I rarely see anyone else at it. It’s no TIkTok…) Some of my blind choices have turned out to be awful, but some are excellent. Last year, Warlight by Michael Ondaatje was a great find (though in fairness I had heard of the author) and the Icelandic novel Kalmann by Joachim B. Schmidt was quite good. Of course, maybe I shouldn’t write this recommendation…
As a follow-up I asked ChatGPT who was the author of the article. ChatGPTs answer:
“The author of the article “The King, Sir, is Much Better!” in The Saturday Review is typically attributed to William Makepeace Thackeray. Thackeray was a prominent English novelist, essayist, and satirist, best known for works such as Vanity Fair. His contributions to The Saturday Review often involved sharp wit and social commentary, and this article is no exception, reflecting his characteristic style.”
Hmm. My second post made it, the first did not. This from ChatGPT:
“The article titled “The King, Sir, is Much Better!” was published in The Saturday Review on November 19, 1859. This piece is a satirical commentary on the political climate of the time, particularly focusing on the British monarchy and its influence on society. The title itself is a play on words, suggesting a mock reverence for the king while subtly critiquing the political establishment.
In the mid-19th century, Britain was undergoing significant social and political changes. The Victorian era was marked by industrialization, the expansion of the British Empire, and growing debates over issues like suffrage and class inequality. Publications like The Saturday Review played a crucial role in shaping public opinion by offering commentary on these developments.
While the full text of the article is not readily available online, it is accessible through academic databases such as JSTOR. For those interested in exploring the article further, JSTOR provides access to a wide range of historical publications, including The Saturday Review. Accessing JSTOR may require a subscription or institutional access.”
It also linked to https://www.jstor.org/stable/40681598
““The article titled “The King, Sir, is Much Better!” was published in The Saturday Review on November 19, 1859”
Budrys would have been talking about the American “Saturday Review,” not the British one. The chatbot response would have to be about the British one. Wikipedia has this:
1. Saturday Review (U.S. magazine), a former weekly U.S.-based magazine, originally known as The Saturday Review of Literature, published 1920–1986
2. Saturday Review (London newspaper), a London-based British newspaper published 1855–1938
…which suggests that ChatGPT made up the answer.
That JSTOR link leads to a book chapter published by Gale K. Larson in 1999. So, it sounds like ChatGPT, to put it diplomatically, is full of crap.
I suggest that you stop relying on chatGPT as a source of information. Or at least verify its outputs before passing them on.
Further in terms of ChatGPT just making stuff up, the British “Saturday Review” for November 19, 1859 can be found here:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435028608966&seq=607&format=plaintext
I might have missed it, but I didn’t see anything there which even resembled the supposed article described.
This reminds me of one of my favorite short stories, “Instructions for John Howell” by Julio Cortázar. During the intermission between acts, a member of the audience for a play is coaxed into assuming the role of the title character. He’s pushed onstage with the instruction that he has complete liberty to act in any manner he sees fit. Or does he? There’s a lot of truth in that little story, and not just about the stage.
The description reminds me in turn of another short story by an Argentinian writer, The Spy by César Aira. It begins with an actor in a play who refuses to say his lines at all, and then goes in several directions at once in classic Aira style.
For reasons I’ve never been able to isolate. I have no problems with finding books from book reviews even as all movie and theater reviews ruin things for me. And music reviews have almost effect on me at all, positively or negatively.
almost NO effect…