Why, in the name of all that is holy, would you bother? Enid Blyton's stories are superb, I love them. Who didn't lie there and wish one could sleep on beds of bracken and eat milk kept cool in bubbling brooks and line up one's tins of tongue on shelves oh-so-conveniently occuring naturally in the random cave one had rocked up to? When I was little, of course I wished there were more of them. In the same way that when Roald Dahl died, my brother and I were furious with him because it meant there would be no more books (sorry, Roald, but I'm sure you understand). If kids today don't want to read Enid Blyton's stories, they aren't going to read them. If their eyes no longer set alight at the idea of random children finding treasure in quarries or if they no longer look upon camping out as fun, there is nothing you can do about it. Bastardizing them with overpaid fanfiction is not going to help your cause. And I'm sorry, the King of Siam's royal dragon??? What, did some random villains (inevitably called Jake or Edgar or Stella) steal it from, ya know, Siam, and bury it on Kirrin Island, doubtless in a hitherto undiscovered well, because where else would you hide the royal dragon of Siam?
For all that, there is basically limited damage you can do with the Famous Five and Secret Seven other than give them weak plots which, to be fair to Enid, she did sometimes (let's face it, Five Have Plenty of Fun is no Five Go To Demon Rocks). But Malory Towers has the real capacity to blunder. I have visions of Malory Towers meeting Hogwarts. The four towers, for example. Alicia will become Ron Weasley, Darrell will be Harry Potter and Sally can be Hermione. I can see it now! No, in fact, what I am seeing is that JK Rowling read Malory Towers too. Does Hogwarts have a swimming pool in a cave naturally carved out by the sea though? No, I thought not. In! Your! Face! Potterites!
I think this is just fortuitous timing that old Enid is having a blast of reheated air shortly afterwards being voted Britain's best loved author . I do wonder who on earth's opinion they asked though. I imagine they were all over forty. It's sad to think that in forty years, the top five most loved authors will probably be JK Rowling, JK Rowling, JK Rowling, JK Rowling and Judd Apatow. Anyway, today's top five are fairly uncontroversial, albeit rooted in some sort of idyllic England which exists purely in Richmond: Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, JK Rowling, Jane Austen, Shakespeare.
The first 3 I understand. Fond memories of childhood reading. Or in the case of Rowling, fond memories of feeling like you were a child again. Jane Austen - well, yeah, I enjoy watching her stuff on TV along with eight or nine other million people, not to mention the hotties who prance almost weekly across our screens thanks to her. By rights, it should be Andrew Davies. Shakespeare? Whatever. I was at a performance of King Lear at the Globe last week and people were laughing! Laughing! I swear to God, about half the people at the Globe haven't half an idea what's going on half the time. At the intermission in every play I have ever seen there, the place empties. People have had the 'experience' and then saunter off to get something to eat. But of course he's 'well-loved'.
Where was LM Montgomery? Louisa May Alcott? Frances Hodgson Burnett? Are you seriously telling me that more people love reading Chaucer (number 50) more than making a cup of cocoa, curling up on the sofa and reading Anne of Green Gables? In the words of Mrs Rachel Lynde: "Indeed!"
2 comments:
Well, I think you're being a bit hard on Shakespeare there. He never wrote a play without a laugh or two in it, and of course it's down to the production to play these up or down.
I saw the Globe production I assume you're talking about (though it was in June rather than August). I laughed at the Fool (you have to, else Will's failed); I laughed with the crowd at David Calder's magnificent pathetic old fart, thrashing around like a dismembered squid (then cried, also with the crowd, at his exigence, 'look, her lips, look there ...')
And who couldn't laugh at Joseph Mydell's delivery, in 1.4, of 'Abominable villian! Where is he?'
Of course, you're right there is comedy involved, I just couldn't bear the way people were laughing at this broken man. I realise there is a kind of tragicomedy about Lear's madness, but laughing uproariously at a deranged elderly man who has lost everything including his reason really struck me as quite harsh.
I thought Joseph Mydell was sensational as Gloucester, though.
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