On 3/24/2012 5:54 PM, Hawke wrote:
On 3/24/2012 5:07 PM, George Plimpton wrote:

First I'll take you example of the Bible. The word bible comes from
the
Greek word biblios or something close to that. It means a
collection of
books. So the title bible tells exactly what the bible is.

You know that *now*. You didn't know it two minutes before you did a
Google search on "Bible".

You mean you just learned that from doing a Google search.

Nope. But you did.



Authors generally name their books with names that increase sales. So
to an author the purpose of a title may be to catch attention as well
as provide a way to identify the book.

That's true. A good, catchy title helps to sell a book.

Even if the title implies a lie.


Why do you think it is important to know the percentage of books that
have a title that gives no clue to what the book is about?

It's important because

It isn't important.


As I see
it that is not relevant. It appears you just threw that out for no
reason other than to be typing something. My guess is that a majority
of novels have titles that do not indicate what the book is about.
But
I think a majority of text books do have titles that indicate what
the
book is about. I suggest you look at the New York Times best sellers
list and see if you can guess what the books are about from the
titles.


It's true that novels are the most likely to have a title that may not
tell you anything about what the book is about

Hilton wrote a novel - well, fiction in any case.

You've really made a hell of a lot of claims about a book you've never
even laid eyes on.

The fact you're citing it as gospel tells me everything I need to know.
Oh, that and the fact that the author was a crackpot conspiracy theory
lawyer who eventually got disbarred.

You're full of one lie after another aren't you.

No, no lies. Everything I said about that crackpot Hilton, and about
you, is true.


I never cited that book for anything.

You sure did. You cited the mere title of it as "proof" chortle that
Dole was crooked while in the Senate.



Do you know that Hilton sued the San Francisco Airport and a few dozen
other agencies for hundreds of millions of dollars because he says the
airport noise made him go so completely nuts that his wife and children
left him? Look it up. That's your boy, Ptooey - some scholar and legal
whiz-bang, haw haw haw.


Yes, I did know that.

After I told you. You didn't know it before.


Earnest Hemingway blew his head off. Does that mean his writing was no
good?

Not comparable, unless you're now acknowledging that Hilton wrote fiction.