In Competition No. 2576 you were invited to submit New Year’s resolutions of well-known figures past and present.
There can be no finer example to the goal-setting constituency than Jaspistos who, in his late forties though not necessarily at New Year, resolved to do three things which he had regarded with particular dread: to attend an encounter group, to make a parachute jump, and to answer a sex advertisement in person. He achieved all three and emerged in one piece, which puts to shame those unimaginative souls who annually pledge to lose weight, assert control over their finances, find a soulmate, and perhaps do some sort of voluntary work.
I liked Derek Morgan’s Samuel Plimsoll: ‘Draw a line and move on’, and W.J. Webster’s Lord Mandelson: ‘In due course I shall float the Lord Home precedent, but not yet.’ And Shirley Curran proposed the following resolution for one of her fellow competitors, Bill Greenwell: ‘I’ll stop entering Speccie competitions so that other people have a chance to win.’ An honourable mention goes to Steven Baldock and the winners, printed below, get £30 each. There were a few Henry Jameses this week but the best came from Adrian Fry, who bags the bonus fiver. Happy New Year!
Embracing that tradition by which a good many members of society have seen fit to take the turning of the year, not to mention the somehow challenging prospect of a diary as yet clear of engagements, as a signal necessitating their embarkation upon a declared programme of self improvement, perhaps adopting some new mode of behaviour deemed beneficial or virtuous, else abandoning activities upon which society might well frown, I, Henry James, give notice that from the commencement of this coming January and for a theoretically infinite, though more predictably indefinite, period thereafter, it is my avowed intention to attempt to desist from a certain characteristic trait evident in my prose, the net effect of my circumscription of this trait to be nothing less than a reduction in the circumlocutive quality of the very sentences of which my works, be they epistolary or novelistic in nature, have hitherto been constructed.
Adrian Fry/Henry James
What we call resolution
Is, at best, the promise of failure. But here on
this cusp
between two fraught times, the sun low in the sky,
and a light frost fading, I resolve to make no
more claims
that one thing resembles another, when it
clearly does not.
I will imply no longer that our failure to read
Heraclitus
has us going to hell in a handcart. I will make
an end
of such senseless logorrhoeic ravings as:
‘Haruspicate the garboard strake in the sea’s
mouth’.
I abjure, now and forever, the fraudulent use
of the definite article to counterfeit shared
experience,
as in ‘For us, now, the cloud and the rose are
one
in the autumn campanile’. I will not,
while my mind holds, again presume to append
unhelpful polyglot footnotes to manifest
gibberish.
I will never again attempt a verse play.
Michael Swan/T.S. Eliot
All I want this New Year is to make people
happy
but if I make them happy
they will know that I made them happy
and that they used to be unhappy
which will make them more unhappy
and I will be unhappy
throughout the New Year
and that will mean, unhappily, that my
resolution
will be irresolution, even though
I resolved it would not
and so, if I tell people that they will be unhappy
if they are not happy
and that I will be unhappy if
they are not happy with my being happy that they are not unhappy
they will be happier than if I make people
happy
by making them happy
So I think this year I will give up empathy
Bill Greenwell/R.D. Laing
Next Year I will not require children to suffer whether they come unto me or not. I will tell social workers that they can see. I will not speak in parables, but will say clearly what I mean. I will give a precise definition of a witch, so that innocent old ladies are safe. I will clear up the problems associated with the sex of my father, the identity of the Spirit, and the family trinity. To stop further killing, I will name the false prophets who have come after me. I will say definitely whether the Turin shroud is the one I carefully folded up after I rose. I will clarify my position on stoning — I know I said it was sometimes okay, but we all make the occasional mistake for God’s sake. Which reminds me — I will have a quiet word with Dan Brown.
Frank McDonald/Jesus
Abraham Lincoln: There are too many ceremonial distractions that go with being President, so in future I shall give up making pointless visits to the theatre just for the sake of showing my face.
Sigmund Freud: I resolve to be kind, tolerant, helpful, modest, polite, law-abiding and non-judgmental — or is that just my superego speaking?
Pablo Picasso: The future is blue.
Adolf Hitler: Time to grow up. This year I shall definitely pack in all this street-corner agitating, stop obsessing about the Jews and get a job with a future, maybe as a tram conductor.
Andy Warhol: Like, whatever.
Germaine Greer: My New Year’s Resolution? To listen to and respect the opinions of those who disagree with me, the ignorant bloody fools.
Russell Brand: More money. More fame. More sex. More provocation. More narcissism. More self-marketing. More fame. More money. More sex. Can’t lose.
Basil Ransome-Davies
No. 2579: Cyber verse
You are invited to submit a poem in praise of or denouncing the world wide web (16 lines maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2579’ by 15 January or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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