By writing about news events at a distance Burn draws together threads and parallels which aren’t spotted at the time because of a lack of perspective. Some of those coincidences don’t really hit the mark (Madeleine McCann and Marilyn Monroe having the same initials, say) but the drawing together of news strands is a really interesting exercise. Perhaps this is the role of the professional journalist in the future: the citizen journalists collect the fragments and the journalist sticks them together into the whole.

I thought there were some interesting parallels in terms of form with BS Johnson – ie the novel as something other than fiction. None of Johnson’s book really worked, of course, but as experiments they are fascinating. Strange that as a journalist himself Johnson didn’t have a similar idea himself. Maybe he would have gotten around to it eventually.

The other great value in the book is Burn’s sympathetic writing about celebrity and media, which is excellent – his coverage of the McCann disappearance is thoughtful and balanced.

Oh, and I kind of assumed the bits about Thatcher in the park were made up, but maybe I am wrong.

(Posted this at your blog too, John)

Google or friendfeed throw these together into that pandemonium so beautifully described above. It’s the digital equivalent of a press cuttings book.

But I don’t look at the feeds and think they represent the people I know any more than I would think googling a friend who has never been mentioned on the web and finding nothing represents them.

As and afterthought: there may be a small group of people springing up who’s egos seem t be driving them to live their life on the web. They are as credible to me as people who try to live their lives through the pages of Hello.