| Author | Message | ||
     Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
It has a lot to answer for, hasn't it? It's like saying 'Im lying'. i.e. 'Next Day Delivery*' - we know what it means to the point that 'Next Day Delivery' might as well not be said. Imagine buying 'An Unpublished Graham Greene*' only to find it's an old Bunty annual, and that if you followed the asterisk you would have learned as much. Imagine if a husband said 'Darling I promise you...*' then it would be deeply frowned upon. I think they should ban asterisk use on all things, make people tell the truth about their product. (Um... this is a completely un-horrory thread, isn't it?) | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
a load of ******* *******s if you ask me... * | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
it has it's uses | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Martin Amis makes lovely use of the word in his latest book when he describes a descending helicopter as "a furious asterisk". | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Aircraft are always metaphors to Martin f***ing Amis. They're never like machines that fly. They're creatures of the deep or airborne punctuation. They exist only to bear witness to his cleverness. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
 | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.189.145 |
Mai-fucking-ow, Joel. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.36.27 |
(Btw, Joel, I'm sure you said a while ago that you'd never read Amis . . . ) | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
To go a little off tangent, the asterisk is one of the few pieces of text that creates excitement and suspense when used in prose. What WILL we find when we look at the foot of the page or the end of the chapter? It's like a kind of miniscule Christmas of the mind. Could it ever, I wonder, be used as a tool to this end? No rushing off and doing it now, I got here first.  | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
Not asterisks but footnotes - in Tremor of Intent Anthony Burgess has his narrator comment in the footnotes on a diary, only for the footnotes to be invaded by what's happening to the narrator. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.153.144.35 |
D'oh! You've got to be quick, haven't you?  Damn that Anthony Burgess's eyes! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
How do you feel about Obelix? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.184.36.27 |
Or Weetabix? |