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MODERN_FORGERS
May 20, 2006
Jonathan Gash - "The Rich and the Profane" (1998)
One of the series about the
character Lovejoy, an "antique
dealer" with a psychic ability The idea seems to be that Lovejoy
to detect genuine antiques, who is the real thing, a man with
never-the-less remains genuine artistic sensibility with
flat-busted for reasons that are all the usual struggles with
never very well articulated. practicality that often goes with it.
Hypothetically he could cruise
Primarily these books through a junk auction and pick
work as vehicles for up some great deals, but in
the display of British practice he can't maintain the
slang and the display necessary poker face.
of esoterica
concerning the He supposedly has an unparalleled
antiques trade. ability to fake antiques, but it
would seem that he can't make
them fast enough to make much
money at it -- he insists on
using the same techniques that
the ancient masters did --
Anyway:
p.129
"Modern forgers get me down. They won't experiment.
Worst of all, fakers today don't bother to learn.
Like trying to write yet another sequel to 'Pride
and Prejudice' without having read the original --
though that's been done often enough, God knows."
p.224
'Well everybody nowadays pretends that
T.S. Eliot wrote the _The Waste Land_,
that he didn't knick it from whatsisname -- (A bit of an exaggeration
Madison Cawein, the assistant cashier in really... but Cawein did
that Cincinnati snooker hall. But he did.' write a poem of the same
title with some striking
similarities...)
That's the sort of thing you
read a Lovejoy book for.
The other thing might be to
try to puzzle out Lovejoy's
character: is he at all
plausible? Shouldn't he be a
*little* better off than
flat-busted?
Can't he find
any way to
pick-up spare
change?
e.g. doing lectures on
antiques?
Or charge *in advance*
for doing a scan?
And does it make sense
that women keep falling
all over him?
Well yeah, maybe it does a little...
it isn't just a harem fantasy, it's a
commentary on the poor judgement many
women show with men -- Lovejoy is so
obviously useless, and yet women won't
leave him alone.
This is a book I may very well have
read already (The Jonno Rant stuff (I found this on the
seems a little familiar), not that shelves of a friend's
it matters all that much. place in Bali,
presumably abandoned
As is often the case with by some other traveler.)
the later Lovejoy's (and
maybe some of the earlier),
this book is a very woozy
mess of too many characters
and some very incoherent
poorly motivated action).
SPOILERS
I mean, okay, so Gesso is still alive,
he helped fake his own death. But
*what for*? Is this an attempt at
manipulating Lovejoy to do something?
But what? Who would expect Lovejoy to
go off on a revenge kick... well maybe
Gesso would -- Really, Lovejoy would by now
have a dark reputation in his
And is there any particular reason that local circles: "Do anything you
Florida would want Jacinto murdered? want to him, but don't mess
with one of his friends, or
And couldn't Gash have managed just you're very likely to run into
a little bit of worm-turning in a peculiar sudden accident..."
this plot, rather than have Lovejoy
convieniently rescued twice, once
by a bad guy, and once by one of
his many women?
And okay, so the antiques digressions are what drive the
books... they get a little irritating after awhile, when
you're looking for a little plot development.
(Maybe the trouble is simply that Gash doesn't know where
he's going, so resorts to the device of pushing us outside
of Lovejoy's head... maybe Lovejoy Has A Plan, maybe he's
just improvising, but his moves just seem crazy -- like why
call himself Jonno Rant a *second* time? And anyway, *why*
does Jonno forgive him the second time exactly? "You did
me a good turn" So? And that good turn doesn't seem to make
sense... crazy stuff).
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