Boon: H.G. Wells

An odd book, a very odd book- an attack on the literary establishment conducted by sock-puppets, in which Wells tears into his old friend Henry James (a hippopotamus attempting to pick up a pea) and comes close to prophesying the Internet. There's a war on, and what's the point of books? Absurdity jostles whimsy jostles parody,  there are cartoons, there is far-out speculative thinking (attributed to the sock-puppet's sock puppet) and everything is  jammed together and nothing is properly finished in a manner that Wells might have thought of as Shandean and I am tempted to call Pythonesque.  Wells' name appears only as the provider of a teasing introduction: it's a wonder he owned it at all. 

The PCC

Talk about reforming the Press Complaints Commission is beside the point. The things that News International journalists have done aren't simply breaches of journalistic ethics, but crimes- and as such the business of the police.  It's the police- and their political masters- who have failed to do their job. The scandal at the News of the World isn't primarily about journalism, its about the corruption and/or cowardice of our law makers and law enforcers.