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The Finest Book In Human History... Cast Out To The Waves

MrSnowman

Abominable Snowman
Joined
Aug 5, 2002
Messages
869
Can anyone avail me of the tale of an Irishman (possibly a monk) who was so astonished by the fact that he'd written a book so perfect, that he threw it into the sea, fearing that after reading it, no-one would ever bother to write a book again because it could never compare?

I think I originally read this in an issue of FT many moons ago, but can't be too sure as I don't have them with me down here. Has it any basis in fact or is it mere legend?
 
I've never heard of it and it sounds fictional, but if it is at all true, what a tosser (literally! Ha!). The book was probably shit.
 
Pff... bibliocide hardly ranks with suicide, as far as absurd PR moves go.

Suddenly, Kurt Cobain is some kind of prophet, while his prophet-margins are shooting through the sod like so many gilded daisies. There's a Smiths song about this. Haha.
 
It's an episode of Black Books, isn't it?
 
Isn't pride a sin? Sounds like this particular monk may have been guilty of committing such a sin...
 
Did it have 400 sizzling chapters with some hot gypsies thrown in? :D

Haven't heard ofit, cool story though. Makes you wonder what the story might have been!

I agree with what Jerry said though. And how did he know it was perfect? Would have been a bit biased himself surely?
 
Well that's just the thing, for I have an inkling that God sent him the story, and he duly wrote it all down, but feared that it was just too damn good!

This is going to bug me now, as there was more to this story, but I'm buggered if I can remember where I read about it.
 
Sounds like the punchline to a shaggy dog story.

Also an echo of the (alleged) destruction of the library at Alexandria by Muslims because all of the books either agreed with the Koran (and so were superfluous) or disagreed with it (and so were heretical). And the Koran is the perfect book, dictated by the Big Guy himself.
 
A book so awesome it cannot ever be bettered? That would rule. It had better have a nice cover though. And tits.

Lots of tits.
 
Hokum said:
A book so awesome it cannot ever be bettered? That would rule. It had better have a nice cover though. And tits.

Lots of tits.

Keen birdwatcher, are we?
 
I recall reading not so long ago about a man who locked himself away for months and months in his parents holiday cottage to write a novel.

The parents were obviously expecting something amazing from what they believed was their very own litery prodigy but when they came to read the story as it was nearing completion it was just nonsense! It was just random words and made up phrases that made no sense at all. It all ended with the (quite obviously disturbed) son burning the manuscript and the cottage in a violent rage and killing his parents.

Not related to the original story but truly bizarre in it's own way.
 
Yes, very reminiscent of The Shining...I have just found the full story here:

link (Link is dead)


edited by Quixote: created hyperlink to stop url page break
 
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It reminds me of those stories that periodically go round about people smoking cannabis and having some brilliant insight or poetic moment. They duly write it down in the early hours. Examination next days reveals some mundane thought like "don't step on the cracks" or "fish smell".
 
Way back in the day, one used to measure the strength of hallucinogenics by the frequency with which one solved the mystery of life, the universe and everything, and then forgot.
But the lingering feeling of, I had it there for minute, but it's gone, is quite powerful.

I read an interesting point of view the other day, stemming from an oral tradition, it posits that there is no hidden secret wisdom, all human wisdom and insight is all in plain sight all around us, but it is so profoundly simple, that we entirely miss it's significance until we are ready to perceive it.
 
An interesting article at LitHub lists 10 famous Bibliocides:
https://lithub.com/10-tales-of-manuscript-burning-and-some-that-survived/
This one was particularly interesting to me:
Lord Byron, Diaries

Byron was famously mad, bad, and dangerous to know—and so, it seems, were his memoirs, which his friends deemed so salacious, so potentially damaging to his reputation and to those of his ex-wife and daughter, that they decided to destroy them in an act sometimes described as “the greatest crime in literary history.” Here it is, as dramatized by Benita Eisler in the New York Times:

On Monday, May 17, 1824, near noon, six men gathered in the high-ceilinged drawing room at 50 Albemarle Street, off Piccadilly, in a house that served as both home and office to the publisher John Murray. For days the group had been quarreling among themselves. Alliances shifted. Messages flew back and forth, and meetings between pairs continued through the morning. Once they were finally assembled, an argument flared between two of their number, John Cam Hobhouse, a rising young parliamentarian from a wealthy Bristol family, and Thomas Moore, a Dublin-born poet and grocer’s son. Angry words threatened to turn into physical violence. Finally, the decision of the host prevailed, and calm was restored. Murray then asked his sixteen-year-old son to join them. Introduced as heir to his father’s business, the boy was invited to witness a momentous event. A servant appeared, carrying two bound manuscript volumes. While the group drew closer to the fire blazing in the grate, two others, Wilmot Horton and Colonel Doyle, took the books and, tearing them apart, fed the pages, covered with handwriting familiar to all those present, to the crackling flames. Within minutes, the memoirs of George Gordon, sixth Lord Byron, were reduced to a mound of ashes.
Of course, this is unbearably tantalizing: what was so terrible that his friends resolved to destroy the evidence? And how would we feel about it today, if we knew? Perhaps we never will, but then again—you know what they say about manuscripts.
 
Wasn't one of Kilverts diaries burnt because it was so shocking?

(Some of the stuff that remained was pretty dire.)
 
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