On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Ramakrishnan Sundaram <[email protected] > wrote:
> 2009/3/9 Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]>: > > > Another guilty pleasure used to be David Eddings, before his tendency to > > write the same series over and over overcame my mastery of the gag > > reflex. (only Plum and Georgette Heyer can consistently get away with > that) > > Plum used to get away with it for me till about ten years or so ago. > Then I came across an identical paragraph in two books and had enough. > > I've just started re-reading him again. The Code of the Woosters, FWIW. > > Ram > > Actually, with Plum, what I call the "Ramayana factor" comes to play...repetition makes for more appeal, not less! In fact I must have read Gussie Fink-Nottle's School-Prizes speech so many times now.... There is, I think, a child in each of us, which likes the same familiar stories...the favourite ones...repeated ad nauseam, only the nausea never occurs. It is this same tendency that turns one's dotage into one's anecdotage! Cf. Calvin's demand for the " Huey/Kablooie (or something similar)" story WITH the sound effects! I find that when I re-read some authors, a different aspect of the writing strikes me every time...sometimes the command of the language, sometimes the construction of the plot (this is particularly so with two authors who admired each other, Agatha Christie and P G Wodehouse)....I have read many of their books several times over. Deepa.
