There’s a saga going on about a Cambridge academic named Jason Arday who claims a lot of things about himself that…shall we say, strain credulity.
An item today:
See, long before we get to the last three credulity-straining paragraphs, I’m cringing at the writing of the first three. It reeks of phony to me. All of it. It doesn’t read like genuine autobiography or memoir, it reads like a public relations pamphlet. It’s stiff, it’s self-conscious, it’s imitative, it’s grandiose; above all it’s straining to be Fine Writing and failing completely. That kind of writing makes my hackles go up. I probably look like a dog snarling as I read it.
In short he comes across as both fake and pretentious. Not a charming combination, in my book.
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