Читать книгу Grumpy Old Men: New Year, Same Old Crap - David Quantick - Страница 12

The overwhelming weight of the past or what? It’s bad enough we have to deal with all the living celebrities without having to take note of everyone who went before. Scarcely an hour goes by without somebody unveiling a monument or a blue plaque to some minor non-entity of the past. It’s as though every human being who had some tiny claim to fame has been listed like a historic building, and so, like a historic building, cannot be knocked down or removed from the public consciousness.

The internet (see THE INTERNET) contributes to this as well, with websites and nostalgia groups and obsessive research, all devoted to someone who co-hosted a moderately unsuccessful radio show in the late 1990s, or who once played bass guitar on an album by someone who never had a hit, or who wrote a novel that a film which didn’t do very well was based on.

It’s important to note and to pay respects to those who have gone on before us, but please! Does that have to mean everyone? We’ve got enough on our plate reading the complete works of Shakespeare and listening to everything Beethoven did without having to nod approvingly at the excellent work done by the man who drew Captain Soldier in Warface! magazine or the lady who would have introduced orchids to Lancashire only she had a cold.