Subservient to no one

Some of my worst experiences as a reader come from reading the work of best-selling authors; a banal subsistance of writers whose qualifying attributes arise from their ability to blandly appeal to a wide variety of consumers. Being mostly into the Avant-Garde, it is not surprising I find acute tedium in the realms of the best-sellers, but I do occasionally subject myself to their creative renderings out of intrigue and perhaps from a kind of self torture. Four chapters in on The Business by Iain Banks I am struck by how trite the characters are, how banal and wooden they are, how they are basically cliches ranging from posh toffs who like cars to Americans who like guns. They are like rejects from a BBC drama characters from a BBC drama; characters one has seen before, not new, original, interesting characters, just recycled archetypes: mediocre characters; the type you'd expect to find in a best-selling novel who are just bland enough (and I am assuming supposedly likea...

The flaw inherent to all TV art competitions is the absence of the Nasty Judge: the Simon Cowell -like figure, suitably deficient in empathy to render every deluded hobbyist entrant to a quivering mound of heaving rejection; to satisfy our own hateful needs, to successfully trash the dream of the deluded, to sour the optimism of those who dare to hold aspirations. Is this not the only thing that could make such lousy television worth watching? It is apparent art is so revered in the minds of TV producers they dare not reduce art criticism to the humiliation of the X-factor format. Channel 4 once attempted an X-factor-style art show which resulted in continual fervent adoration from Tracy Emin for the eventual winner while Matthew Collings exercised his trademark non-committance (lest his ventured opinion offends one of his art world chums, I assume). The BBC's effort demonstrations either their feigned impartiality or their feigned left-wing stance by ensuring only ban...