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1 week ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Philip Womack
What does it mean to be a ‘pseud’? I hadn’t thought a great deal about it, until a passage from a piece I’d written about semicolons made it into Private Eye’s venerable Pseuds Corner. It appears just after a conversation between two AIs, and above a breathless quote from Meghan Markle (for it is she). Members of the public submit what they consider to be ‘pseudy’, and everyone laughs.
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2 weeks ago | 
philipwomack.substack.com | Philip Womack
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3 weeks ago | 
philipwomack.substack.com | Philip Womack
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3 weeks ago | 
philipwomack.substack.com | Philip Womack
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3 weeks ago | 
philipwomack.substack.com | Philip Womack
In my continuing exploration of what all teenagers should read before they are sixteen, I’ve so far looked at C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien: scholars, and friends, their imaginary worlds are also a means of expressing deeply conservative ideas. Lewis’ joyful Christianity, and Tolkien’s rooted love of language, history and myth, and of England itself, render their fantasies solid, real even.
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3 weeks ago | 
thespectator.com | Philip Womack
Sam Altman, Dark Lord of Chatbots (or the CEO of OpenAI as he is more conventionally known), has released another version of ChatGPT. This one, he claims, can “write” fiction. After being fed prompts, like “metafiction” and “grief,” Sam’s bot, which has been trained on past literature, regurgitated a plausible-sounding chunk of prose.
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4 weeks ago | 
philipwomack.substack.com | Philip Womack
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1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Philip Womack
A recent American study, called ‘They Don’t Read Very Well’, analyses the reading comprehension abilities of English literature students at two Midwestern universities. You may be surprised to discover that the title is not ironic. That they don’t read very well is an understatement along the lines of Spike Milligan’s ‘I told you I was ill’.
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1 month ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Philip Womack
A recent American study, called ‘They Don’t Read Very Well’, analyses the reading comprehension abilities of English literature students at two Midwestern universities. You may be surprised to discover that the title is not ironic. That they don’t read very well is an understatement along the lines of Spike Milligan’s ‘I told you I was ill’. The study’s subjects were given the first paragraph of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, and asked to read it out loud, parsing the sentences for meaning.
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1 month ago | 
philipwomack.substack.com | Philip Womack
Much attention is given to the monument to William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. Recent scholarship has placed it firmly within the context of academic monuments: demi-figures of scholars and priests in Oxford and elsewhere, in which a gowned figure rests his hands on a cushion, holding a book or a skull. Will, of course, is holding a quill and a piece of paper. There is another monument (in London), to a Merchant Taylor called John Stow, which shows him holding a quill in a similar position.
