Sir, – I was amused to read that invitations to the launch of David Norris’s autobiography A Kick Against the Pricks were blocked by the “interweb bad language police” (Miriam Lord’s Week, October 20th) leaving a number of expectant invitees somewhat disgruntled. Given that the title of the Senator’s “kiss and tell” is a play on Samuel Beckett’s “More Pricks than Kicks”, the master of minimalism would have been impressed with an invite that “uninvites” itself! – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Your report (October 12th) of Senator David Norris’s recent book launch not only displays his double-nuanced verbal gymnastic skill; it goes further. His book title, A Kick Against the Pricks is a contemptuous play on the words of Christ to the arch-persecuter, Saul of Tarsus: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (Acts of the Apostles 26:14 Authorised Version).
From more modern translations we learn that the word for “pricks” refers to an ox goad, which would have had thorny spikes. And the metaphor has come into the English language to remind us of how we too may resist the deep pricks of conscience, just as Saul had up until the moment of his conversion.
What does Mr Norris achieve by this? It appears that now his verbal juggling of “pricks” serves to insult especially any who may have ruined his chances during the presidential campaign. Of course, he isn’t the first to use the word with a double meaning, but it does rather suggest how he sees the aggressive promotion of his beliefs by its mischievously confused similarity with the persecuting campaign of Saul of Tarsus himself, except that now Norris is happy to apply the conscience-kicking metaphor in reverse to his opponents, presumably by verbally “kicking” them!
Another big difference, of course, is that neither before nor after Saul became a Christian, would he have championed Mr Norris’s version of human rights.
When a scholarly member of our Senate misapplies Christ’s words in such a deliberately confusing manner, I wonder how far we have come as a society in which Senator Norris thinks he is free to “kick” the values and beliefs of others. Perhaps he merely has a few political scores to settle, but he might have done it without the blatantly injudicious manner in which he handles the biblical metaphor of conscience. – Yours, etc,