Agree! I think there is an awful lot of academic fragility out there. I think anyone who takes their own work seriously should be disappointed by "Excellent. Publish as is". It suggests the reviewer hasn't read the thing properly and has robbed you of an invaluable development opportunity.

Was doing that one with students on Monday! If "The Library of Babel" is Borges predicting the internet, "The Book of Sand" is his anticipation of generative AI...

Ha! A Peckinpah remake of The Quiet Man would've been quite something!

DVD to be included in the welcome pack for every new second-home-owner...

And that despite the best efforts of the producers to frame the whole thing exactly as she'd surely want it...

Yes, agree entirely (including the last saying-the-quiet-bit-out-loud!). Of course, those predisposed to consider her a grossly wronged victim of the woke mob will be insensible to how terribly she comes across. But surely anyone listening without preconceptions will be put off by her manner.

Who speaks (and cries) first matters. And a self-serving muddying of the chronology (around a certain Twitter post complaining about a Goodreads review and the start of the wider criticism) is allowed to pass unchallenged in Ep.1.

She does come across terribly - because she can't do otherwise (PP likewise comes across as a witless wally). But the consensus is, I think, around the framing of the narrative, the order of precedence it establishes. The producers went out of their way to centre "Kate's Story" of victimhood.

Ah, yes - I forgot that it's a not entirely normal part of the world around there. But to be fair, actual proper farming people seem generally to really like him too...

Genuinely interesting! (And curious about the local view - I'm assuming mostly positive...)

Very curious to know in what context!

Thanks Nicholas! (I'm never doing an edited collection ever again - but then people always say that, don't they...)

There's also something icky about the way they voice up written criticisms of KC - the original Goodreads review and various Tweets: the actors (perhaps under specific direction?) voice them in a particularly shouty, strident way rather than in a neutral tone.

It acknowledges it, and PP gets quizzed on his "ISIS & Taliban" tweet (and makes a further arse if himself in the process). And Monisha agreed to be interviewed (from a damned either way place, I think), and gets to speak very convincingly - but only at a certain place in the narrative hierarchy.

I think it's the narrative structure ("Kate's Story"!) and the framing ("cancellation"! Cancellation's bad, right? Same as "woke"...) that allows for that. But it only works if you are monstrously insensible to the initial problem, and to the unfavorable impression KC can't help but give of herself.

Anyway, Here's a piece from Monisha Rajesh (who has a new book out, BTW...) from back during the middle of things: www.theguardian.com/books/2021/a... 5/5

Did any of them think "I wonder if there's another way we could structure this? Does *who speaks first* matter?" But at least they give both KC & PP airtime to simply be themselves - which was all that was needed for this not to be the resounding victory over the "woke" some would like it to be. 4/

Did anyone on the production team pause to consider the narrative consequences of that? Did they think, "Hey! Wasn't a big part of the original debate here about whether a privileged white author was persistently centering herself and aggressively adopting a victim pose in response to criticism?" 3/