Week 18 update
Two deaths this week. Up first golf man Peter Oosterhuis: Peter Oosterhuis obituary | Golf | The Guardian
I also enjoyed this closing line:
Have any of the golf punters on here been stuck behind someone with a pair of binoculars ticking off birds in a book?
Oosterhuis died at 75 so he's worth 50 Base Points for @The DA, with a Solo Shot giving him a total of 100 points.
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Second death this week is the writer Paul Auster: Paul Auster, American author of The New York Trilogy, dies aged 77 | Books | The Guardian
I have read one of Paul Auster's books. The one namechecked in that article's title, the New York Trilogy. It's a collection of three stories, ostensibly detective fiction but also extremely postmodern, with the reader quickly going from wondering what's happened to wondering just about everything else - who is this, where are they, can I trust anything that's being said? I read this book when I was in third year at university. I read it again a few years ago having forgot pretty much everything except the basic premise and I was taken aback at how much it resonated with me.
My fourth year at university - and the summer prior to that and effectively a full year after that - was spent having a nervous breakdown about various things. Much of it was caused by the weight of realisation of what the literature I was studying was telling me about the world and my own place in it. While other, more consequential texts followed the New York Trilogy and contributed to this period, upon reflection years later it was easy to see how relatable I found it at the time, even if I couldn't see it at the time.
When I read it again I made note of some passages which stood out to me. One of these is going to be the lead quote to next year's thread, but I'll share another here since it fits well with the Dead Pool:
Auster died at 77 so he's worth 48 Base Points for, er, me. I get a Solo Shot taking that to 98 points.
As a result, the standings look like this:
1. mozam76 402
2. Billy Jean King 380
3. Moomintroll 346
4. psv_killie 335
5. Indale Winton, The DA 328
7. lolls 316
8. Forest_Fifer 297
9. sparky88 291
10. Ned Nederlander 282
11. lichtgilphead 279
12. The_Craig 254
13. pub car king 238
14. JustOneCornetto 225
15. blackislekillie 216
16. The Naitch 213
17. Arch Stanton 207
18. parxyz 206
19. cdhafc1874 204
20. Oystercatcher 198
21. Bully Wee Villa 194
22. weirdcal 191
23. Melanius Mullarkant 176
24. amnarab 169
25. El Guapo, mathematics 164
27. Salvo Montalbano 163
28. TxRover 157
29. alta-pete 156
30. choirbairn, Desp, peasy23 150
33. tamthebam 144
34. Savage Henry 134
35. Arbroathlegend36-0 126
36. Lofarl, qos_75 119
38. Arabdownunder 117
39. buddiepaul, chomp my root, scottsdad, Trogdor 113
43. sleazy, Sweaty Morph 100
45. Miguel Sanchez 98
46. Craig fae the Vale 95
47. ThomCat 94
48. pawpar 90
49. invergowrie arab, Karpaty Lviv, Ray Patterson 78
52. DG.Roma, Mark Connolly, sensorsoupe, Sergeant Wilson, Shotgun 75
57. ICTChris 74
58. D Angelo Barksdale 71
59. Raidernation 60
60. Florentine_Pogen 58
61. Aim Here, Darren 51
63. BillyAnchor, doulikefish 49
65. Enigma, LoonsYouthTeam 44
67. stanton 25
68. Everyone else 0
The spreadsheet has also been updated with these scores: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CsroU6IlQNJOesOqCc5gsI7SCw8ywBS-PUzQwLTJe4g/edit?usp=sharing