This morning I woke up to the clattering of the roadwork going on outside my sister Michelle's house. The sun was blazing, but because the shutters were all fastened, I had slept in till 11:30. A disturbing notion for one who is usually sweating down the road to the melody of Jimi Hendrix music on a morning run, at 5:00am on school mornings. So I got up and went for a run to purge my laziness.
Since I came to visit Michelle here in Toulouse, I've been able to stand back a little from the madness of the last few months. Landing back in London, getting back in touch with friends and family I've missed, and fighting my way to some sort of normality in a tough work environment. Being in the airport and reading Bertrand Russell's lectures on why he's not a Christian gave me solace in my pagan condition. And spending time around my neice Zoe is just great. She keeps patting me on the chest and reminding me that I'm her Tonton (uncle), and that she's Zoe. Obviously she's picked up on the clueless, confused look on my face and wants to set things straight for me.
I've littered the place with books I've brought on my own initiative, and one series requested by Zoe herself. It's called In the Night Garden. A rather disturbing airheaded bimbo called Upsy-Daisy prances about a hill littered with multicoloured balls of something or other, and is invariably joined by an alien creature with a head in the shape of a monkey-nut, known to his viewers as Iggle-Piggle. There is no discenable plot to any of this. They give each other kisses and eventually engage in some form of dance resembling a bunch of drunken babies trying to perform Cats, the Musical but forgetting the steps.
I feel so old reading this stuff and lamenting some sort of narrative. The poststructuralist senselessness of it disturbs me. Maybe it's a good thing that kids are brought up on this stuff now. It might do a better job of preparing them for the insanity of education and the world of facebook and myspace which awaits them, than Enid Blighton's pathetic trash.
Bertrand Russell is helping me remember why I reject Christianity now. A brilliant article in this collection, called Nice People, is a hilariously scathing reminder of the vagaries of Christian thinking, and how its rampant righteousness pervades Western thinking. He is clearly biased against the faith, but seems to know enough about it to be genuine and lucid. I definitely reccommend it to anybody in need of a good, clear analysis of religion, without delving into overcomplicated theological rants.
Meanwhile, the prospect of moving further into the centre of London looms now. Got to get a flat somewhere downtown so I can be nearer to my new school, and generally within reach of the rest of the human race rather than at the total mercy of London's fashionable Hounslow.
I am more and more comfortable in the knowledge that my senseless chaos of a life, hanging by a thread of momentary reflection between episodes of Scrubs on Sky television, is actually good fun. Accepting like Russell does that we don't need to live in fear by clinging onto religious belief, is actually quite comforting. And if all else fails, there's the knowledge that...
Sheep go to hell
Thursday, April 10, 2008
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6 comments:
Hi David
it is fun to read your blogging again! Loved to read of your interaction with Zoe.
Don't know how well you know Enid Blyton's work, but I have been a life long admirer of her work, and continue to enjoy it. At last count, I have read more than 130 of her books, but that's nothing since she wrote 600-700 - she was prolific. I found, and still find, her writings to be enchanting, sincere, very moral, very much an extension of her self, highly imaginative, very captivating, and totally magical. Naturally, it is of a certain period, reflecting that period's biases and values. But what of it? It does not detract from the sheer readability of her writings, the clarity and ditinctiveness of her writing voice, and her incredible power to captivate a cast audience - and I do mean vast. People in the commonwealth, many of them, grew up on Blyton stories and continue to adore them. For many, it was Blyton that helped them into the English-speaking world, Blyton that opened the doors to their life-long love for books and reading and narrative, Blyton who ignited imaginations and informed so many childhood games. My two precious nieces will inherit the considerable Blyton collection my sis and I so painstakingly and lovingly collected for many years, bought for us at a time when money was definitely not abundant in our household, but these we deemed treasures and preferred over any other treats. And I am even now investing endless resources of time and money to seek out still more Blyton treasures to send to my nieces. Blyton has always had her critics, even during her lifetime, but it has never lessened the magic for her young (and not so young) readers worldwide. So long live Blyton, I say, and may her genius continue to bring truly endless hours of joy to her readers.
Hi David
it is fun to read your blogging again! Loved to read of your interaction with Zoe.
Don't know how well you know Enid Blyton's work, but I have been a life long admirer of her work, and continue to enjoy it. At last count, I have read more than 130 of her books, but that's nothing since she wrote 600-700 - she was prolific. I found, and still find, her writings to be enchanting, sincere, very moral, very much an extension of her self, highly imaginative, very captivating, and totally magical. Naturally, it is of a certain period, reflecting that period's biases and values. But what of it? It does not detract from the sheer readability of her writings, the clarity and ditinctiveness of her writing voice, and her incredible power to captivate a cast audience - and I do mean vast. People in the commonwealth, many of them, grew up on Blyton stories and continue to adore them. For many, it was Blyton that helped them into the English-speaking world, Blyton that opened the doors to their life-long love for books and reading and narrative, Blyton who ignited imaginations and informed so many childhood games. My two precious nieces will inherit the considerable Blyton collection my sis and I so painstakingly and lovingly collected for many years, bought for us at a time when money was definitely not abundant in our household, but these we deemed treasures and preferred over any other treats. And I am even now investing endless resources of time and money to seek out still more Blyton treasures to send to my nieces. Blyton has always had her critics, even during her lifetime, but it has never lessened the magic for her young (and not so young) readers worldwide. So long live Blyton, I say, and may her genius continue to bring truly endless hours of joy to her readers.
Oops. Why did I think Enid Blyton was male? Looks like I should check my facts a bit.
I'm just not into literature which is moralistic in nature, especially when it's aimed at young children. My memory is of a set of gooey stereotypes of gender and social roles, which really irritated me when I reread them later in life.
The fact that people grew up on her writing doesn't necessarily mean it's good. Plenty of children's writers from the postwar period are not read anymore because their values and politics were more than questionable at the time. I'm not classifying Blyton as one of them, I'm just expressing personal dislike. I'd have to go back and read more of the Famous Five and all that shinanigans to criticise her with any authority.
But it's good to hear your views. I have come across a lot of recent literature for children which is hugely imaginative and empowering for kids, both in English and in French. There's a series of books called 'Rue du Monde' which tells world literature tales with the most incredible illustrations, and really gets the imagination going as I think kids lit should.
So it's really a case of expressing preference here rather than proper lit crit.
Hi David
(Isn't Enid a typically woman's name? Funny, I always thought it was.)
Anyway, you are right that Blyton writes into her stories very set gender and social roles. (I don't find them 'gooey', in fact, I found them extremely clear cut and equally clearly stated.) Blyton was a product of her time and really believed in those roles, lived them, practised them, reflected them. To her, they were right. Very right, in fact. That was her value system. I find this entirely natural. She is a writer doing what writers who write well often do - they write out of the life they know, what they experience all around them. Her writing in fact is a wonderful portrait of how people in a certain time and place thought, acted, held moral values.
You are also perfectly correct that her books are moralistic in tone. In her autobiography, it tells us that she says many a time how she writes to teach children as much as entertain - for she was a teacher, and took her Montessori qualifications in Ipswich actually! She was a brilliant teacher by all accounts, managing to engage even difficult children, very creative in her teaching methods, adored by her students, and very involved, going way over the calls of duty, really devoted as a teacher.
I liked her clear moral position when I was reading as a child. As you know, many children like clear boundaries, and hers were very clear and rationales were provided too. It hugely appealed to me as a child.
I was going to say that I really hope you will read lots more Blyton books, and NOT her Famous Five series. They were fine, but nowhere near her best. (Can recommend you lots of her others series which I love much more. Could even lend you some.) But I have my reservations - if the very aspects you dislike about her writing are precisely those which she relies on as strengths, then it is unlikely it will be to your tastes! Also, Blyton writes for children - this is definite and deliberate - so adults may find it hard to be touched by her magic if they did not already experience it as a child. She has an exceptional understanding of the child's mind and likings, used to test out her stories on her own children and on the ones she taught anyway. She also wrote columns for children, magazines, answered their thousands of letters to her...she dealt with children all her life, and there is something about her mind that in a sense, never entirely grew up - she knows this too, she said she hoped she never would entirely grow up, even when she was a child. And she never did! That is part of what makes her writing truly outstanding, in my opinion anyway. It has something ethereally timeless about it. Her child-mentality stayed with her all her adult life - and was even played out in her personal life, quite clearly.
When I read Blyton, I think of those lines by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, about loving with the passions of childhood...so true, the single mindedness, that zeal, passion of a quality that usually only children can feel, and which changes in textures as they grow and their minds get complicated and cluttered....Blyton retained that child-passion, I feel, which comes through in her writing. I said many a time I found her writing magical, well, I think the magic is derived from that very passion, which bridges my adult mind and child mind, which is so hard to do. But Blyton does it for me. Now that's magic to me, in my life at least, that's magic! (laugh!)
Hi David
(Isn't Enid a typically woman's name? Funny, I always thought it was.)
Anyway, you are right that Blyton writes into her stories very set gender and social roles. (I don't find them 'gooey', in fact, I found them extremely clear cut and equally clearly stated.) Blyton was a product of her time and really believed in those roles, lived them, practised them, reflected them. To her, they were right. Very right, in fact. That was her value system. I find this entirely natural. She is a writer doing what writers who write well often do - they write out of the life they know, what they experience all around them. Her writing in fact is a wonderful portrait of how people in a certain time and place thought, acted, held moral values.
You are also perfectly correct that her books are moralistic in tone. In her autobiography, it tells us that she says many a time how she writes to teach children as much as entertain - for she was a teacher, and took her Montessori qualifications in Ipswich actually! She was a brilliant teacher by all accounts, managing to engage even difficult children, very creative in her teaching methods, adored by her students, and very involved, going way over the calls of duty, really devoted as a teacher.
I liked her clear moral position when I was reading as a child. As you know, many children like clear boundaries, and hers were very clear and rationales were provided too. It hugely appealed to me as a child.
I was going to say that I really hope you will read lots more Blyton books, and NOT her Famous Five series. They were fine, but nowhere near her best. (Can recommend you lots of her others series which I love much more. Could even lend you some.) But I have my reservations - if the very aspects you dislike about her writing are precisely those which she relies on as strengths, then it is unlikely it will be to your tastes! Also, Blyton writes for children - this is definite and deliberate - so adults may find it hard to be touched by her magic if they did not already experience it as a child. She has an exceptional understanding of the child's mind and likings, used to test out her stories on her own children and on the ones she taught anyway. She also wrote columns for children, magazines, answered their thousands of letters to her...she dealt with children all her life, and there is something about her mind that in a sense, never entirely grew up - she knows this too, she said she hoped she never would entirely grow up, even when she was a child. And she never did! That is part of what makes her writing truly outstanding, in my opinion anyway. It has something ethereally timeless about it. Her child-mentality stayed with her all her adult life - and was even played out in her personal life, quite clearly.
When I read Blyton, I think of those lines by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, about loving with the passions of childhood...so true, the single mindedness, that zeal, passion of a quality that usually only children can feel, and which changes in textures as they grow and their minds get complicated and cluttered....Blyton retained that child-passion, I feel, which comes through in her writing. I said many a time I found her writing magical, well, I think the magic is derived from that very passion, which bridges my adult mind and child mind, which is so hard to do. But Blyton does it for me. Now that's magic to me, in my life at least, that's magic! (laugh!)
David, I am sorry, I don't know why my comments in this particular post keeps getting published twice - really sorry for the inconvenience! It's just this one, the others are fine!
Lisa.
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