Some progress has been made on the following of late: Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness, American Fantastic Tales - Poe to the Pulps, and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions. The last of these I borrowed from Sakhar quite a few weeks back and it's been lying on my desk. I suppose I'm reading it out of something of a sense of duty, but I'm genuinely getting into it.
But the one I'm really zooming along on now is Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings Goes To School, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. This marks a real return to the past for me, deliberately so - that's why I bought it - or, rather, it should do so. But it doesn't. You can never go back, not to what you were. As a young lad I thought there was nothing funnier than a Jennings book, or more deeply involving. I suspect that at some level I was genuinely at that prep school, the wonderfully cosy Linbury Court, alongside Jennings and his chums. Now I'm a long way distant.
This is not to say I haven't enjoyed reading about Jennings and Darbishire and Mr Carter and Old Wilkie et al. And I've also found them funny, but in a gently predictable way, not with the kind of helpless hilarity I experienced at ten years of age. At that age I thought Buckeridge a genius; I now see him as a very fine, formulaic kind of writer, who sometimes struggles a bit in technical terms. To be specific, the story wobbles more than a little as soon as he leaves the boys behind and focuses on the adult world. And there's a fair amount of this in the first of the Jennings series. In fact, almost an entire chapter is devoted to some trite comedy based on the exploits of the Dunhambury fire brigade, who get called out when Jennings shows a little too much initiative. It doesn't work at all - except, I suppose, for ten-year-olds who don't think too deeply about such matters.
But what does work wonderfully is the glorious wordplay as the boys muddle themselves and everyone around them - who wouldn't love incongruous triangles? - and the archetypal quality of so many of the characters - like the four I mentioned above.
I did think of ordering more of the series on my last amazonian foray, and now I'm glad I didn't. You can never really go back, but you can gain an added appreciation of what it felt like to be there
2 comments:
I remember growing up on Richmal Compton's 'William' series, as well as Leslie Charteris's 'Saint' books. My mother used to go to tea with his sister; he was born Leslie Yin in Singapore.
It's hard to go back, though; you're right. And going forward seems rather uncertain at times. :(
One of the few books I owned as a kid - it was a present fom my Auntie Norah - was a hardback in the 'William' series. I can't remember the exact title though. I read it over and over and over. Just wonderful. Gosh she could write! And how did she understand boys so well? There's a genuine sense of anarchy in more than a few of the stories.
I read a few of the 'Saint' titles as a teenager. Mildly enjoyed them, and I was vaguely aware of Charteris's background. Now I am far more clearly aware. Is there anyone on this little island your mum doesn't know?
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