It's Always More Complicated

But this time it is the Oxfordian kind, rather than deep Mybuggery about the symbolism of BOARS.

Receiving random spam with the subject line 'Fun', including links, does not inspire me to click those links for fear of finding myself on the wrong end of some ransomware demand, but a little light googling took me to enough places to ascertain that while it might not be a matter of malware, it was not anything I wished to delve very deeply into.

I will not mention the actual name, as the person seems to be like Beetlejuice and appear when named in various discussion fora, but they are in the habit of randomly (???) emailing individuals, on what basis I know not, because neither my website nor my academic blog, nor my twitter-feed, which would be the most obvious ways they would find access to me, would find me fulminating about that allotrope of the phenomenon I include under the general heading of 'ripperology' which is The Oxfordian Hypothesis.

Apparently the methodology involves decoding a hidden message in the Sonnets by reading them backwards - this, I fancy, takes a little longer than summoning up the Devil by playing The White Album backwards, or was it just one track (?Helter-Skelter), I forget.

I was nigh moved to hilarity on peeking at one of the articles, which thought it exceeding telling that Mr WS of Stratford had not mentioned his copyrights and his intellectual property in the works that posterity has alleged to be his in his will, which involved So Much Misapprehension and Anachronism that one does not really even need to remark that, actually, even in this year of grace authors, alas, oft neglect to do this.

I thought this was funny, though I haven't yet made my way through all the parts: Facebook Newsfeed History of the World

While I take Robert McCrum's point about the perniciousness of fiction written to a formula (assuming it to be at all true that the current wisdom is "A new novel should be summarised in a single sentence, and should stop dinner conversation for at least 10 minutes"), surely shome mishtake here: Mass culture has always been banal and high culture its redemption. I would even invert that and say that high art always tends to become inbred and etiolated until infused once more with demotic vigour coming from popular culture.

The degree of risk involved is often not particularly accurately calibrated: Stewart Lee, Does comic 'bravery' go hand in hand with being offensive and stupid?

Interview with Gloria Steinem at 70, including misogynist harassment in pre-internet days (involving billboards), but the interviewer is a bit irritating.

Europe's archived trove of rare Great War documents goes online. Libraries across Europe are collaborating to make 400,000 documents available to the public. I am not sure the British Library would be my own first port of call for this topic (The National Archives? Imperial War Museum?) and I can mention at least one UK archive with significant WWI holdings they don't seem to have spoken to... but still, points for a good effort here and it may well extend.

How Revolutionary Tools Cracked a 1700s Code

[A] team of Swedish and American linguists has applied statistics-based translation techniques to crack one of the most stubborn of codes: the Copiale Cipher, a hand-lettered 105-page manuscript that appears to date from the late 18th century.

This does sound really rather blissikins, do admit (okay, a touch of Mitford-fatigue did set in when one observed the patching together of a volume of Diana's papers, but this is Debo).

And you know, I would really like to know more about the shadowy, mysterious, early-dead figure of brother Tom ('Tuddemy').

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Kathryn Hughes on a clever and generous book about a neglected strand of English modernism. At the very least, to be an aide-memoire to myself, as it looks as though it may well overlap, or at least impinge on the borders of, my Orwell's Anathema project.

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Elderly lady who decrypted at Bletchley reviews book about it.

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Still not funny. I didn't find Tom Sharpe funny in the 70s, either - I think I only read one of his works, but that was quite enough. The reviewer nails it bang to rights:

[N]o one speaks or behaves like a human being; the farce element is unsophisticated; and the efforts to shock are feeble. Reading it is like being buttonholed by a drunk Telegraph leader.

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I thought being well-read was a precondition of being a book reviewer (silly me). Jeremy Dyson cites MR James as a presiding influence on Susan Hill's new novel, but fails to register this

Snow feels a small hand creeping into his own: "It felt cool and its fingers curled themselves trustingly into my palm and rested there, and the small thumb and forefinger tucked my own thumb between them."

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Rachel Cusk finds Eat Pray Love evokes troubling questions, which are, I may add, not of the kind which lead the asker to undertake a similar quest. I am slightly surprised that Cusk adds 'financial' to the emotional costs she does claim the author paid for exiting her marriage, since anyone who could undertake that lengthy trip of exotic parts was not left in penury (I think in previous discussion someone said it was paid for out of her divorce settlement, or was it a massive publisher's advance?)

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Oliver Burkman, To be or not to be taken for granted:

[T]here's something about taking people for granted that's indicative of a good relationship. A boyfriend or girlfriend constantly demonstrating how lucky they feel, and striving to be worthy, smacks of insecurity; the very best friendships are the ones that can be neglected for months in the sure knowledge that the bond can be renewed in moments.

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The first Native American [film] director. Or was he?

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Glam rock bottom: why did it go so sour for Sweet?

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Lyn Gardner on spoilers in reviews:

I once got taken to task by a couple who said their enjoyment of The Winter's Tale had been ruined, because in discussing the redemptive quality of the play I'd revealed that Hermione returns at the end. Presumably there are other theatregoers who are blissfully unaware that Godot never comes, that Blanche is taken away to an asylum, that Nora slams the door on her marriage. Should we hold back in reviews because one day they might decide to buy a ticket?

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Did John Milton write filthy, innuendo-laden rhyme? - scholarship steps in. I'm pretty sure I read those lines myself, many years ago in a book of comic verse of the ages. So the verse, if not the attribution, are well-ish known.