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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:31 am
Author Bryce Courtenay exhibits profound confusion during an interview with Sydney radio host Chris Smith.
(Via 2GB’s Jim Ball)
Elvis invaded Afghanistan BEFORE 9/11, but AFTER J.F.K. was defeated by Apollo Creed in Roswell in nineteen ‘dickety’ six.
Posted by richard20_bris on 2006 11 20 at 09:15 AM • permalink
#5 Priceless….. simply priceless.
Posted by Phatso Phil on 2006 11 20 at 09:19 AM • permalink
Maybe he’d been traveling at near-light speed and his perception of time and cause-and-effect have been distorted by the effects of relativity. Or maybe he’s an idiot.
Posted by Shaky Barnes on 2006 11 20 at 09:47 AM • permalink
Agreed he is a tiresome old dickhead and fool, but it’s kind of sad listening to the old bugger. He can still talk smoothly if pursuing a well-trodden path but has maybe two – three max – neurones actually firing in his cognitive areas.
#7 – I think that is a general human trait. Once an opinion is formed, it takes a lot of evidence to change it, even in a fairly open mind. It’s just that the left are particularly annoying in how they show it, with their cultural self-loathing and their destructive ill-will towards their own country and civilisation.
TFK
JFK was assassinated after LBJ took control of the presidency in order to ramp up the US military-industrial complex. I just know it.
Posted by Some0Seppo on 2006 11 20 at 09:58 AM • permalink
eat, sleep and drink ‘fake but accurate’ and this is how you turn out.
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2006 11 20 at 10:22 AM • permalink
- I think I know this guy. I remember an incident way back at a college party, someone filled a beer cup up with piss (and I mean urine). This poor guy (whom I now believe was Bryce Courtenay) took a big slug from the cup and asked, “What the hell IS this? It hot!”
I couldn’t stand it anymore and told him it was piss. Bryce then said, “No it isn’t.” and took another swig.
Why are we so inundated by complete and utter f*ckheads….
This @ss went troppo and shot off his big mouth when the the Libs campaigned to introduce the GST back in ‘98… I seem to recall an interview where he almost had a coronary about the stupidity of introducing GST on books, calling it some sort of “tax on knowledge” or some such crap… Just so happened I suppose that his own novels might have become a tad more expensive, but no self interest in there…
Anyway, usual heap of “sky is going to fall on our head” bullsh!t which never occurred… And yes, if it was just one old geriatric loon spouting off, it may not be so bad, but we are knee deep in the sh!ts of all ages, genders and persuasions… My sense of humour is being seriously strained!!!!!!
It was just before the Battle of Hastings and it was signed by that Alexander the Something guy.
Who was a Jedi Knight! Don’t forget that.
Being a Jedi Knight must really rock during happy hour at a singles bar.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 11 20 at 01:36 PM • permalink
Who is this doddering old mudflap? I loved his recovery – that oh, yes, well, it all had something to do with Osama bin Laden, but Arab governments condemned the attack at the time…
Posted by rick mcginnis on 2006 11 20 at 01:44 PM • permalink
This doddering old fool’s family must be extremely grateful that Australians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Can you imagine, you’re all sitting around the living room, stuffed to the gills with turkey and all the trimmings, trying to watch the football game, and this old fool won’t shut up as he spouts unbelievably incorrect information. The situation would end up bad, very bad, possibly involving the cops, and definiely having people leaving early with a lot of slamming of doors.
Posted by David Crawford on 2006 11 20 at 02:23 PM • permalink
This is the reality based community. And don’t you dare question his right to his own reality!
Posted by nofixedabode on 2006 11 20 at 02:41 PM • permalink
This is the reality based community. And don’t you dare question his right to his own reality!
To abuse the words of another man: “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 11 20 at 04:02 PM • permalink
Conservatives will ultimately win the cultural wars because, although we’re too busy working and all to have fun, at least when we’re stupid we don’t issue press releases.
- #37 mark
Priceless. ‘Global Orgasm For Peace’. The couple promoting this are her, 76 and him 55. What a cack!As The Australian editorialised, “At U2’s Australian concerts, capitalists who could afford the three-figure sum needed to attend were encouraged to solve world poverty by shining the light from their mobile telephone into the sky. This is absurd, hypocritical and humorous all at once.”
Background notes for a Bryce Courtney novel….
…when Bass and Flinders circumnavigated Australia in 1936, they came across a band of starving aboriginal children who looked a lot like an, er, stolen generation laughing and splashing in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef. Little did they know that by in less than a century, these waters would be inundated because of er, um, I know, global warming climate change…….
This doddering old fool’s family must be extremely grateful that Australians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Can you imagine, you’re all sitting around the living room, stuffed to the gills with turkey and all the trimmings, trying to watch the football game, and this old fool won’t shut up as he spouts unbelievably incorrect information. The situation would end up bad, very bad, possibly involving the cops, and definiely having people leaving early with a lot of slamming of doors.
That’s a tradition our my house David. It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without the traditional lout and piss off.
(ok, all the pro-union Democrats over on that couch and the pro-war Republicans over at the table please, ok Uncle Joe, please proceed with the snide remarks)
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 20 at 05:42 PM • permalink
- There’s also some interesting conclusions to be drawn from Courtenay’s appalling ignorance:
1. The man writes historical novels, but is incapable of reading all the way to the end of a date;
2. He went on the air without ever mentioning this dingbat theory to anyone prior to this; or
3. He has run this theory past his circle of friends/suckups and those people are either too stupid to spot the flaw, or too star-struck to point it out.Any of these makes it look like an incredibly small echo chamber.Posted by Paul Wright on 2006 11 20 at 06:50 PM • permalink
More info for Paco: Bryce Courtenay is in fact an ex-advertising man who fancies himself an author (like Peter carey and Salman Rushdie). The books themselves are mostly Mills and Boonish bodice-rippers, and they sell like hotcakes, or at least they did until Harry Potter came along. Trouble with Bryce is that, like a lot of basically uneducated people who are a great success at one thing, he thinks his opinion on any subject is the wisdom of Solomon.
Don’t be so hard on the guy. We all forget things. Why, I’m rather confused as to whether my father’s funeral happened before or after he was dead, and then there is my thirtieth birthday—had I already turned twelve, or was that the following year?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 20 at 07:23 PM • permalink
- Time for Bonmot to fess up.
Courtney was my boss in a different life.
He was a great ad man. Insufferably pompous. Sucked up to the right people. Was very fair to his staff. Shit South African accent grated on everybody.A real mixed bag of a man. Something Bryce won’t ever mention – he and a bloke called Pip Cogger and Sim Rubinsohn (founder of agency now absorbed into McCann’s) did the Labor Party ads during it’s darkest days of Arthur Caldwell. While ol’ Bryce was a good ad man, he couldn’t get Labor over the line in many, many attempts.
Only book of his I liked was April Fool’s Day. Only because it was based on his son’s life, and death, and it was just so sad. All the rest of his books I have read have been crap. I just don’t bother with him, especially since he became an expert and telling everyone, as other celebrities, notably most recently, Bone-head, how the country/world should be run.
Maybe my view of his books has been tainted by his lefty stance?
Courtnay (bio) immigrated from South Africa and I think he’s still got baggage.
About seven years ago Bryce gave a speech at my software companies annual get-together.
His talk was so dumb, so text-book cliched “positive thinking can conquer the world” that I find it impossible to read his books – as soon as I see the cover of one his earnest po-faced visage floods my mind, and primal urges to FLEE override my rational sense …
From another illiterate yank who has never heard of this guy: That was funny! Of course, if I had known something about the scribbler in advance it would’ve been funnier.
Posted by Tommy Shanks on 2006 11 20 at 09:38 PM • permalink
Can you imagine, you’re all sitting around the living room, stuffed to the gills with turkey and all the trimmings, trying to watch the football game, and this old fool won’t shut up as he spouts unbelievably incorrect information. The situation would end up bad, very bad, possibly involving the cops, and definiely having people leaving early with a lot of slamming of doors.
Take out the football, swap the turkey for crayfish (lobster for the seppo’s), and it sounds just like Christmas at my place every year…
Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2006 11 20 at 09:53 PM • permalink
As they say over at Redneck World: Remember– these people vote!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 11 20 at 10:21 PM • permalink
Thanks, kae, for the info. I read some of the reviews, and I believe I’ll give this fellow a miss. Not my cuppa tea, at all. I’ll stick to Tristram Shandy and Tom Jones.
I should say that I have enjoyed some of Nevil Shute’s novels – or rather, the two I’ve read (A Town Called Alice, and The Pied Piper).
Richard, we get fined if we dont vote…
Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2006 11 20 at 10:34 PM • permalink
To make this level of mistake usually involves time travel and a tardis.
Bryce Courtney’s greatest character is of course Louie The Fly.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 11 20 at 10:35 PM • permalink
To make this level of mistake usually involves time travel and a tardis.
And paco and crittenden. I hope you mean time travel + Tardis + paco + crittenden. Because if that’s what you meant, yeah, I can understand your statement. And um, Stoop Davy Dave for that time at Hastings and the unfortunate accident with the English king and the horse. And uh, well, MarkL at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. And uh, yeah, the binoculars mishap on the Titantic. And uh, well, with Gilgamesh and the stolen mead. And uh, well, Mata Hari I suppose. That didn’t end on a good note, no.
But for those times in which I was on a mission unaccompanied, I have a 100% success rating!
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 20 at 11:31 PM • permalink
#15 Paco, he writes turgid drivel.
Many, many moons ago (like about 15-16 years), he was interviewed on the tv about being a successful author, and how young writers could emulate his success.
He very kindly suggested perserverance and the usual stuff about try, try again, and also said that he was more than willing to speak with young authors and offer advice.
So, the naive idiot that I was, I tracked down his number and phoned him up.
I even got through to him, had a bit of a chat, and came away with the most foul taste in my mouth.
He was a condescending, patronising (sorry for the redundancy) git, and I’ve never had any time for his preaching since.
I had tried to read The Power of One, but couldn’t get past the first couple of pages, and after speaking with him personally, I highly recommend that he should be removed from the airwaves.
One thing about his success in getting published that I didn’t think about at the time, was the fact that he was already successful in advertising and thus had all the contacts he needed to get his stuff published.
Did I feel like an idiot or what?
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 11 20 at 11:36 PM • permalink
He made money off his dead son.What a guy.
Posted by Daniel San on 2006 11 20 at 11:58 PM • permalink
He’s been listening to ‘our’ ABC too much.
A year or so ago their doofus ‘gun’ reporter Rafael Epstein gave a report on ‘AM’ that the Bali bombing was a consequence of the Iraq war. A complaint elicited the dismissive reply that it was a live read and ‘mistakes can happen’. It was NOT a live read – it was played back in segments on the program – and it must have had at least the reporter himself and the producer of the show – and probably others – hear it before it went to air. Yet none of them heard the alarm bell that I did when these events read obviously the wrong way around. How could anyone in Australia, and certainly the curent affairs media, not know when Australians were murdered by islamists in Bali?
And of course, even if it WAS a live read, the host of this leading current affairs show didn’t pick it up, nor did anyone else in the ABC.
They hear what they want to hear.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 11 21 at 12:04 AM • permalink
1. 1215
2. King John vs the Barons
3. Runnymede …Wronwright ?!?
Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2006 11 21 at 12:50 AM • permalink
If he’s referring to the Muslim invasion of Afghanistan, he’s right.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 21 at 01:33 AM • permalink
#69 Amen, Shute is a helluva good read, the kind of writer who just doesn’t seem to exist anymore: the guy who can write solidly crafted mainstream fiction based on real world experience, but who still manages to touch on something beyond the everyday. His background in aeronautical engineering gives him something to base his books on, unlike modern literary writers, most of whom – like ALP parliamentarians – have no real life experience to speak of. But if you want to read something really weird, try his “In the Wet”, which defies plausible synopsis.
#74: Which is why he is no longer allowed to take pottery classes at the civic centre.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 11 21 at 02:53 AM • permalink
If you need a further insight into Neville Shute, try and get a copy of The Secret War 1939-45 by Gerald Pawle. It has a forward by Neville Shute (Norway), who was on the staff of the Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development during the Second World War. They pulled together a kaleidoscope of scientists, experimenters and outright weirdos to try things that would help them win the war. If you have ever laughed at the movie of the Panjandrum (a large, rocket propelled drum containing explosives that was meant to run up the beach and explode against the defences), that was due to the cinematographic excellence of the team that was put together under the DMWD. Amongst their successes was the Oerlikon cannon, which helped countless Allied ships protect themselves from enemy planes, the Hedgehog anti-submarine weapon, and the rocket-equipped landing craft that softened up the D-Day landing areas. They also had a large hand in developing the floating harbours and breakwaters used to secure and supply the beachheads.
#70 Ok, it wasn’t a complete 100% success rating. But damn, who could foresee that those barons were so thirsty. Well true, many of them were Scotsmen and Welsh. But still.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 21 at 03:36 AM • permalink
Fully agree with Nilk. Courtenay is not a bad storyteller, but a truly abysmal writer. His crowning turd would have to be Tandia, with its ridiculously drawn characters and the book’s romantic plot development, which appears to have been lifted straight out of a dirty old man’s wet dream.
Regarding the quote, what a patronising old fart. *schooling voice* “Christopher, I’m sure it wasn’t…” What a buffoon. What a lightweight. What a typical artiste.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 11 21 at 05:13 AM • permalink
Hang on – perhaps he thinks he’s living in the Soviet Union? If so, he’s right, “we” invaded Afghanistan before 9/11 – which was perpetuated by those bloody Melanesians.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 11 21 at 05:30 AM • permalink
- Posted by James Waterton on 2006 11 21 at 07:33 AM • permalink
#37, Hmm, December 22nd. That could be difficult, I’ll be in mid-flight over the Pacific.
I guess if I get lucky with the woman sitting next to me 🙂
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 11 21 at 09:08 AM • permalink
Since we’re on about writers, I will do you all a great favor. If you like the historical fiction of C.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian, and George MacDonald Fraser, go beg, borrow or steal A Sailor of Austria, by John Biggins. For some unaccountable reason, his stuff is now out of print, but he wrote a series of novels of which the aforementioned Sailor was the first, featuring Otto Prohashka, officer in the Imperial Austrian Navy’s Submarine Corps during WWI. The stories are extraordinarily well-researched, wonderfully written, dramatic, poignant and often hilarious narratives of the adventuures of a U-Boat commander operating in the Adriatic and Mediterranean. I found two of Biggins’ novels – Sailor and The Emperors’ Colored Coat – on the sales rack of the Richmond Public Library for 50 cents each, and took a flyer on them; a search of various used book sites on the internet indicates that the books now go for over a hundred dollars each. Might be difficult to find, but I would gladly spend that much for the others in the series (The Two-Headed Eagle, and Tomorrow the World). First-rate writing about an obscure service in a war that is too little known by people today.
Paco-because I am a fan of both the “Hornblower” and “Aubrey-Maturin” series, I think I will give your suggestion a try.
BTW-Amazon has one of the books you mentioned “The Two-Headed Eagle” for $40 (though it looks like you will have to pay for the other one-they have it listed for a mere $888).
BTW-I know it is a classic, but anyone who wants to understand the First World War should really read The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. I also highly recommend her The Zimmerman Telegram which shows what a dangerous fool Woodrow Wilson was as President.
#83: It’s amazing, to be sure. I was reading very recently about someone who tracked the author down, and I gather that whoever published his books didn’t do a very good job marketing them. His first two books came out in a paperback reprint by McBooks, but I think they may be out of print, too. So what you have is a very little-known author who wrote books that most likely sold in the $20-$25 range for regular hardback editions when they originally came out, and whose out-of-print books are now selling used, for (in some cases) astronomical prices. Somebody is missing a publishing opportunity here.
Paco, have you checked alibris.com? They are pretty good about old books.
Now, if I could only come up with the $200 for the book I want….
Elizabeth
Imperial KeeperPosted by Elizabeth Imperial Keeper on 2006 11 21 at 01:39 PM • permalink
#85: and I gather that whoever published his books didn’t do a very good job marketing them.
Incidentally, Patrick O’Brian had the same trouble with the first publisher of his books, at least in the U.S. I believe his first publisher was Collins, which brought out the first few books in the Aubrey/Maturin series in 1970. The series was not a financial success and it was probably 15 or 20 years before Norton reissued the novels, to universal acclaim. Interestingly, the original Collins editions go for a small fortune (I saw a first edition of Master and Commander for sale for over $3,000).
Another of Nevil Shute’s books, this one his autobiography, is “Slide Rule”. Wonderful stuff, much of it concerned with his work during the competition between the teams building the R100 (the Capitalist Airship) and R101 (the Socialist Airship) before WW2.
Alternately fascinating and horrifying, and you could see it all happening today.
#62: I don’t think Courtney created Louie the Fly, who has been around since the late fifties, in those days a fairly crudely drawn piece of work.
Courtney’s contribution was the song:
Louie the Fly, I’m Louie the Fly… c. 1963
which, together with improvements in draftsmanship, gave Louie a bit more style and presence.
Posted by Consuela Potez on 2006 11 21 at 04:14 PM • permalink
I also recommend Arturo Perez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste novels and his period mystery The Fencing Master.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 11 21 at 09:32 PM • permalink
What a twit! And the creep gets so much favour and “respect” from our ABC and its kind. How stupid do they think we are?
Posted by Dennis, Doncaster East on 2006 11 22 at 09:12 AM • permalink
The John Biggins Otto Prohaska series was just too damn depressing for me. That, of course, was a vey accurate reading of Central European history during the 20th Century. I read the first two.
One of Nevil Shute’s books is Ruined City about a banker setting a bankrupt shipyard to work again. It is partly based on Norway’s expeience running the Airstream aircraft company, for he cut some legal corners to keep the firm running during the Depression. You can read about it in Slide Rule. My favorite was No Highway about investigating an air crash and doing research on fatigue in metal structures. It was also made into a movie No Highway In The Sky with Jimmy Stewart as the main character.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 11 23 at 01:17 AM • permalink
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Hilarious. Or it would be if there weren’t so many like him.
/still like his books, though.