The hard cover book, aimed by my left wrist with full support from arm and shoulder, hit the shining oak floor, turned turtle, skittered some ten or twelve feet and came to rest against a shined, English hand-cobbled leather shoe. My feat of dexterity was accompanied by an irreverent half-muffled "load of bloody rubbish." The owner of the fine shoe raised a coiffured head from his newspaper, looked over his half-moon glasses and glancing down at the attacker of his footwear read aloud the title of the disgraced book. My sense of propriety does not permit me to name either the author or the title, but Anthony Charles George Lascelles, late of Merton College, Oxford, over the pond way, merely murmured, "Not to your taste then?" and leveled his aristocratic eyes in my direction.
I flipped my hand in the now still air, and rendered my opinion to support my discarding of the offensive novel. "Frankly, and to put it crudely, Anthony, I've read better plots on bathroom walls."
"Tut, tut my young friend, surely a little strong, what?" Lascelles dropped his paper to his knees and prepared to give forth on what I knew might well be a long and learned dissertation. "Know the fellow actually. Met him at the Commons for tea one day. After he'd done his time in the old clink, of course."
I was enough of an Anglophile to know that the Commons was the lower British House of Parliament and the clink, as referred by the Honorable Anthony Lascelles, was London slang for prison named after the old Clink Prison going back to medieval time by the River Thames in the London Borough of Southwark, which had an interesting social history. It was owned by the Bishopric of Winchester, which also had licensing rights for prostitution and ownership of brothels. Somewhat of a conflict with the Bishops religious duties, I suppose, in terms of modern thinking. As an old time but legalized pimp, his ladies were known as the Winchester Geese and from that archaic fact; we learn that johns, who were unfortunate to catch an unwanted ailment and subsequently bore the marks on their bodies, were deemed to have the 'goose bumps'. Before I could get a word in, he'd continued." Rather a nice fellah, bit full of himself, but he has sold a lot of books old boy...millions I would suspect, and made a whole bunch of the green stuff too."
We were, I should tell the reader, in what passed for the staff room for us academics at the Stokes Hall at Boston College, where the Hon. Anthony and I both were on staff. Anthony more than I, as he had full tenure and I did not, and from my current perspective was most unlikely to happen. Caught a trifle short by his parsed response, I quickly brought my prime objection to the game. "I just don't see the plot. It's full of holes, the Scottish prisoner doesn't have a good accent, and frankly, the whole thing is immature...juvenile actually." I looked away from Anthony as the door opened and another staff member entered the room. He nodded to both of us and proceeded to the small table where the coffee urn was sending out a slightly burned aroma. He poured a cup of the black sludge into a mug with the BC logo and trudged over to the farthest corner of the room. Under his arm was a pile of what looked like student papers. I half smiled in sympathy. "Anyway," I continued, "I'm not sure I couldn't write something better or at least the equal of that." I pointed to the offended novel lying quietly.
Anthony leaned over and picked up the object of my disdain, which in the course of its air travel had lost its dust jacket. He replaced the jacket, "There, that's better, and new too I note, or at least almost new."
"Yes, received it from my niece, my sister's daughter. They live in London. It was for my Christmas present last year. Just got around to reading it." It was now March and I'd taken the book to the room for its baptism.
"Mmm, small crunch mark on this upper corner, not so nearly new now. You know, GB," he'd given me the moniker probably as another reminder of his ancient heritage, "not a great idea, actually, (which phonetically came out as 'axsually' in his Oxbridge English) you trying to dismember our poor friend here." Seeing my perplexed look, he loftily continued. "You, with all your education and skills, trying to beat up on this law abiding pile of cut paper which has already had the indignity of being half crushed to death and then squeezed at great pressure between two stiff ends. Somewhat akin to the medieval rack, I'd assume. Poor old Will Caxton would not have liked your treatment of one of his later disciples, which I repeat has done you no harm, cannot answer for itself and is merely a messenger for its lord and sovereign said author."
Put like that I suppose I had been a trifle heavy handed in my critique. After all, as the Hon. Ant stated, it wasn't the poor book's fault. Half guiltily, I glanced around as if hearing the heavy tread of the law about to bring me in on assault and battery of an inanimate object. "Well, perhaps you're right there; but seriously, just how difficult is it to write a book? You're an English Major, and I have noted that you too have trodden the same path to some extent."
A shake of the elegant head, "Not to the same extent, young Gareth, not to the same extent." He pursed his lips and allowed his gaze to settle upwards on the pseudo gothic ceiling. "My little forays into the printed world have been minor I must admit." I'm not sure, but I well may have heard just the faintest of hints of remorse in his well-modulated voice. "I find that the beginning and the end are pretty simple, but it's the muddle I find difficult."