We are visual creatures. I bet 96% of you could recognize pages from a Harry Potter book, even if the actual words had been replaced with nonsense.

My favorite gaffe of this ilk was the considerable complaining when a novel came out, The Little Black Book of [memfault], and neither the hardcover nor the paperback was black. (They were both brown.)

Um, not me. But I did recognize this, from my friendly spammer (

Subject: Neptune green now-accumulated

Full text: "this account then is what he has received from mr. darcy. i am satisfied. but what does he say
consent to be of the party. indeed, eliza, you will be as welcome as either of them."
"that is to say, you had given your permission. i guessed as much." and though he exclaimed at
country; and within five miles of lambton, elizabeth found from her aunt that pemberley was situated.
"what do you think of this sentence, my dear lizzy?" said jane as she finished it. "is it not clear
"a little."
and sat with her till summoned to coffee. she was still very poorly, and elizabeth would not quit her at
creditors in meryton, of whom i shall subjoin a list according to his information? he has given in all
"so much the better. i hope they will not meet at all. but does not jane correspond with his
"now i am quite happy," said she, "for you will be as happy as myself. i always had a value for
"we will go as far as meryton with you," said catherine and lydia. elizabeth accepted their
"some time or other he will be-but it shall not be by me . till i can forget his father, i can never
a day or two passed before jane had courage to speak of her feelings to elizabeth; but at last, on
besides, it was such a pity that lydia should be taken from a regiment where she was acquainted with
"good gracious!" cried maria, after a few minutes' silence, "it seems but a day or two since we
"and they are really to be married!" cried elizabeth, as soon as they were by themselves. "how
"certainly, my dear, nobody said there were; but as to not meeting with many people in this
"what think you of books?" said he, smiling.
as i abominate writing, i would not give up mr. collins's correspondence for any consideration. nay,

Huh. Just got another all P&P spam. This one titled "midnight sun panic-proof." Sounds like a good paint color for your underground bomb shelter, if nothing else.

brenda, heh. I just deleted a P&P spam yesterday, a brief passage about Elizabeth Bennet's skill but lack of diligence in regularly practicing on the pianoforte, entitled "VIARGARA Inspire 3."

Which I thought was really cool -- it's hard to come up with a scenario where a guy could have no name and no nationality.

With millions in refugee camps these days? There are still a fair number of elderly U.S citizens without birth certificates. A rural refugee from the Congo, or Sudan could easily end up without any documentation - no birth cerificates, no passport. You would be issued some sort of documentation soon enough (probably a ration card) but it might well be with a made up name and nationality unknown.

In non spam news (unless you count me), does anyone know anything about this book? [link]

Looks kind of intriguing.

A rural refugee from the Congo, or Sudan could easily end up without any documentation - no birth cerificates, no passport.

Right, but -- refugees from Sudan are pretty much mostly from Sudan, you know? The coolth of the DP camps was that you might be a German or a Polr or a Czech or a Bulgarian originally, and nobody would be really sure if you could hide your accent. You can totally reinvent yourself, so much so that the novel implied that No-name had no passport at all and could cross borders anyway.

I know there are still a bunch of people out there who were born in DP camps, and thus have no native citizenship. There was a guy a couple of years ago, who'd been naturalized as an American, and then got stripped of his citizenship for some felony or other, and the problem was, they couldn't deport him to his native country, because, he kind of didn't have one.

Right, but -- refugees from Sudan are pretty much mostly from Sudan, you know? The coolth of the DP camps was that you might be a German or a Polr or a Czech or a Bulgarian originally, and nobody would be really sure if you could hide your accent. You can totally reinvent yourself, so much so that the novel implied that No-name had no passport at all and could cross borders anyway.

But that can happen too. I knew someone once with a Yugoslavia passport no longer good , after the breakup of former Yugoslavia. Since he was from a Serbian Mother and Croatian Father he refused citizenship in either succesor nation - therefor literally a man without a country. And in Africa a lot these wars are cross country. A lot of the refugees from the Sudanese war are Chadians, cause there are a lot of lighting raids into Chad to commit massacres across the border. The war in the Congo has involved at least five nations bordering it at various times. So a refugee in a camp in the Congo could be from any of a number of nations.

Incidentally being a "man(or woman) without a country" was not a superpower in Flemings time nor is it today. It gives you no special ability to enter a country. No nation has to let you in if you don't hold no passport from it. (Well on human rights grounds they are supposed to if you face death or unjustified imprisonment elsewhere - but you have to prove that, and anyway it is not always honored. And until well after WWII it was not even a legal obligation most places.) You have no special rights as a stateless person, but have no consul, no nation to stand up for you. It can mean a life sentence in refugee camp; Eric Ambler often used stateless people as characters; because their extreme vulnerability let him get them into terrifying situations without needing to have them do anything especially stupid. (Dr. Frigo for example). One of the under-rated great novels of our time The Death Ship by B. Traven had a stateless person as the primary character. It explained why he accepted a berth on the ship, and why he stayed with it - nowhere else to go.

But we have plenty of stateless persons today. And we have a lot of multi-state refugee camps where a person could well be from a number of states.

(Replacing the last line with this - cause while meant as general snark it does not read that way.)

In addition to stateless persons, 9/11 and Katrina set up perfect circumstances for your old persona to die and you become a new person.

Wide Sargasso Sea is excellent.

The BBC adapted that recently with one of my favourite young, British actors, Rafe Spall, as Edward. I think he's going to be in an adaptation of Dracula next.