Public libraries and the lockdowns

My local public library was closed for several months earlier this year because of the coronavirus restrictions.  The online reservation service was not available for a while after they re-opened; now that it has been reinstated there are so many rules and restrictions that for me library visits are just not worth the trouble.

I don't want to have to deal with the welcoming committee at the door with their demands for contact details for Test and Trace, not to mention the compulsory face masks and hand sanitising! Reserving books would entail letting them know in advance what time I am coming to collect them, which doesn't appeal either.

I took two library books out just before the first lockdown started; they were automatically renewed so I didn't have to pay any fines for non-return. Taking them back when my library re-opened in July is the only time I have visited the place since March.

Some people max-ed out their library cards just before the first lockdown started so as to get a lot of reading material in before holing up at home; I have been filling the gap with online and downloaded material and by reading some of my own books one last time before donating them to charity shops. 

Former library books: a slight digression

My local library has book sales from time to time, but I have never seen anything I want. When it comes to buying books, there are much better sources.

Many of the books I have been reading during the lockdown were second hand and came from charity shops or eBay; ironically, many of them were ex library!  I bought them either before I re-joined the public library because I had no choice but to pay for reading material or after because they were not in the online catalogue. 

The Polar Express: a controversial Christmas film

The Polar Express (2004) is a film about some children who take a ride on a magical train to the North Pole to visit Santa Claus and his elves.

It was the first film I ever saw in an IMAX cinema. I went to the drum-shaped BFI one at Waterloo, which has the biggest screen in Britain. This was my Christmas treat for 2004.

I think that this was the first time I ever saw  'uncanny valley' CGI characters too, so there were three new experiences in one outing.

The snowy landscapes in The Polar Express were beautiful, but the film as a whole was rather eerie; it had a weird and dreamlike atmosphere that made me feel uneasy. I did not like the hybrid animated/human characters either: they gave me the uncomfortable, something isn't right, feelings that some robotic people in this world do, people who seem neither dead nor fully alive, people who seem more like ghosts or zombies than real people.

The film was in 3-D; the roller-coaster swoops of the camera made me dizzy!

The friend who came to see the film with me had much the same opinion of it: the IMAX experience was great apart from the times when we had to close our eyes because the vertical drops made us feel seasick, but parts of the film were rather disturbing.

With hindsight, even the 'normal' scenes in The Polar Express, children in their homes for example, seem like fantasy; they look like an alternate version of reality similar to the one in the film Coraline (2009). 

Stella Gibbons’s My American and writing: Part III

There comes a time when Amy Lee changes direction: she stops producing tales of heroism and adventure and joins the school of domestic realism. 

The  reasons given for this drastic transformation are rather contrived and not altogether convincing. I suspect that this element was introduced mainly for the sake of the plot and to make some points; Stella Gibbons could also have used it to clear up some unfinished business of her own .

From danger and death to domesticity

As a child Amy Lee scribbles non-stop, producing exciting adventure stories such as Pharaoh’s Curse: A Tale of  Ancient Egypt and The Wolf of Leningrad: A Thrilling Story of The Russian Revolution purely for her own enjoyment. The books she reads fire her imagination and provide the ideas for her stories.

As a young woman, she writes exciting adventure stories for publication.  She may not have any first-hand knowledge, any personal experience, of the sort of people and action that she writes about, but her readers love her work. She becomes a best-seller; her books are made into films and this gains her world-wide popularity.

After moving to America, Amy Lee changes track and writes a very different kind of story for a whole new constituency of readers:

“Her stories of family life communicated (because she herself felt it) to the passing of an examination or the breaking of a betrothal the excitement she had once given to escapes from death and last-minute rescues, and she charmed her readers by showing them the variety and interest of every day.”

So what happened here? Why did Amy abandon her heroic avatars? Why the farewell to adventure in favour of embracing mundane subject matters? One of the reasons given is that Amy's adventure stories lack moral values; they are in some ways unethical, unedifying and unwholesome, something that she is unaware of until she visits America and comes in for some direct criticism. She also cools off after experiencing danger, death amd great fear at first hand.

John Christopher’s Guardians: Part IV

One criticism I have of The Guardians is that it ends just when the most interesting and exciting part of the story is about to start. Perhaps John Christopher was intending to write a sequel but never got around to it!

I also find the final part of the story and the ending disappointing and unsatisfactory. What we get seems just an outline or a summary when compared with the early chapters. 

There is a lack of balance and consistency of approach in that while it takes two thirds of the book just to get the young hero Rob Randall out of his old life in the Conurb of London and into his new school in the County, some of the most crucial developments in the story are covered in just the last few pages. Perhaps there was a mad rush to beat a deadline or there was a problem with exceeding an agreed word count.

The detailed description of’ Rob’s escape from the awful boarding school and journey to the County is not balanced with equally detailed accounts of his subsequent experiences up to the point where he learns something terrible about how the Guardians of the County deal with dissidents. 

The Guardians 

After the revolt has been put down, a patrol of Guardians comes to the house looking for Mike. Even though the Giffords insist that Rob knows nothing and was not involved in the uprising, they take him away for questioning.

He is ‘interviewed’ by Sir Percy Gregory, the Lord Lieutenant of the County. Sir Percy reveals that he has known all along that Rob is an imposter:

“You can, of course, no longer be treated as an ordinary member of our society. You are not one, after all. You are a Conurban, posing as County. You are listed by the Conurb police as a runaway from the boarding school at Barnes. So I don't mind telling you that this society is not so haphazard and unorganized as it seems. Things are investigated and checked: thoroughly. We had the boy from Nepal and the absentee from the boarding school matched within twenty-four hours of the first automatic query.”

Rob realises that it is useless to say that he knows nothing at all about the plot. He tells Sir Percy everything he knows about the dissident schoolboys, but he doesn’t mention Mike’s recent visit to the Gifford home.

Stella Gibbons’s My American and writing: Part II

Stella Gibbons's romance My American contains much writing-related material. The previous article contains extracts that describe the writing process; this article is mainly about the relationship between Amy Lee, adventure stories and Stella Gibbons herself.

There are some autobiographical elements in My American: some of what Stella Gibbons says about Amy Lee, her childhood, her inner states, her imagination and her stories applies to Stella herself. 

Stella Gibbons and adventure stories

Reading about Amy Lee's early tales of danger and adventure such as The Hero of the Desert and The Mummy's Curse reminded me of something I once read about Stella Gibbons: she liked the books of Sir Henry Rider Haggard very much indeed, and more than anything else she wanted to write similar stories.

Her nephew and biographer Reggie Oliver said this:

“Amy as a writer is Stella, but without her sophistication or intellect; and to create her character, Stella projected her immature, adolescent self into Amy’s adulthood. Amy writes romantic adventure stories of the kind that Stella wrote at the age of twelve, based on Rider Haggard and Ouida.”

Amy Lee's early stories certainly sound just like the sort that Stella Gibbons wished she could write. She must eventually have come to realise that she had no talent for creating such stories; she had to settle for describing ordinary people shopping at the Archway in north London as opposed to colourful characters searching for King Solomon's mines in Africa! 

It makes sense that if Stella Gibbons couldn't do in real life something she very much wanted to do, she would do it vicariously in fiction. This may be a second-best substitute and form of compensation, but it is better than nothing – for both readers and writers.

John Christopher’s Guardians: Part III

Rob Randall learns to cope quite well with life at his new school, but then some unexpected problems arise in the form of his friend and schoolmate Mike Gifford's attempts to recruit him into a revolutionary group. 

Changing places

Rob's arrival in the County is responsible for a big change in Mike's attitude towards the Conurbs and their inhabitants.  Up to this point his view of the other side has always been the typical aristocratic one of denigration and dismissal:

“Like everyone else in the County he knew a little about the Conurb: enough to be contemptuous of it. It was the place of the mob, where people dashed around in electrocars, crowded together like sardines, listened to raucous pop music, watched holovision and the bloodthirsty Games - for the most part watched the Games on holovision. 

It was the place where everyone ate processed foods and liked them, where there were riots and civil disturbances, where no one knew how to behave properly, how to dress or exchange courtesies, how to speak English even. It was the place one knew existed and, apart from thanking God one did not have to live there, preferred to forget.”

Rob's personality and his achievements in his new life cause Mike to revise his opinions and think along different lines. He asks Rob many questions about his earlier life, the people he knew and the Conurbs. He sounds Rob out on the subject of possible changes in the relationship between the Conurbs and the County. Rob sees nothing wrong with the existing system that keeps them divided, and even if there were areas for improvement he thinks that no one could do anything about it. Even if something could be done, would the County want hordes of Conurbans pouring in and ruining everything? 

Stella Gibbons’s My American and writing: Part I

As previously mentioned, Stella Gibbons makes some insightful comments about writers, writing and the imagination in her novel My American, in which Amy Lee is the main character. Amy's love of reading, writing and research and her need for solitude as a young girl are all very typical of people who grow up to be writers. 

This article contains some particularly significant extracts with the commentary they inspire:

Freely flowing words and ideas

What Stella Gibbons says about Amy's writing is a good description of what it feels like when the ideas and words come easily:

“Her stories never stuck, but sometimes she enjoyed writing them more than she did at other times. When the pen flew and her hand ached, when there was nothing real in the world except the white paper before her and the flying tip of the nib, and the picture in her mind that she was describing turned so quickly into words that she could no longer tell at what instant the figures in it became marks on the paper—then the story was Beginning to Run, and unfortunate is the writer who has never tasted such a moment.”

Unfortunate indeed is the writer whose creations are never fluent and painless - or frictionless as Rudyard Kipling would say.

And yes, the whole outer world often does disappear for some people when they are engrossed in reading or writing.

More freely flowing words and ideas

After getting a job as an office girl, Amy is sent to collect some copy from a very famous writer who has produced many stories for the boys’ magazine she works for.

Some amusing criticisms of public libraries

This is the sixth article in the series about public libraries, with more still to come.

As previously mentioned, the value or otherwise of public libraries to the community was discussed in detail on the old Conservative Conspiracy Forum. Four members including me were strongly in favour of them while three took a negative view. 

While I couldn’t agree from my own experience with some of the criticisms, at least one of the antis lived in a small village so what they said may be true in the case of public libraries outside the big cities.

While some of the points made by the critics may have been valid, others seemed feeble, off the mark or even a little bizarre. 

I have salvaged some of the old material for reproducing on here. 

Uncomfortable chairs and spying

One CC member said this:

“I pretty much stopped using the library when they changed all the chairs to uncomfortable plastic jobs, because lots kept on breaking, and staining.”

Who says you have to read your library books in house! 

This is a good point where reference libraries and people who go in to use the Internet are concerned though.

Then there was this gem:

“You're being spied upon in the library, too - those places are covered in CCTV cameras, and every book you take out is kept on your record in the library's database, which can be accessed at will by the local government. Unfortunately, Big Brother surveillance is a feature of 21st century life, whether you're online or offline.”

I would be happy for anyone to see a list of the books I have borrowed, and anyway why would anyone be interested in me as an individual? Monitoring borrowings highlights patterns; it enables libraries to obtain statistics on which books are being taken out and by which demographics. Such information may help to decide which books are bought and which sold off. Maybe they discard certain books when they have not been borrowed for many years.

John Christopher’s Guardians: Part II

Just like Elizabeth Goudge’s Linnets and Valerians, John Christopher’s Guardians is a slender little children’s paperback that at first sight might possibly have just enough material to inspire a paragraph or two of commentary. I found however that the more times I went through these books, the more material of interest I noticed and the more articles I needed to produce in order to cover it.

I investigated the Linnets book because I learned that it had a witch in it; working on the Borribles article reminded me of the Guardians book, which I first read ages ago just for the story. This time around, it is the issues and connections that are the main objects of interest.

In addition to the connections mentioned in Part I, The Guardians has some scenes and elements that remind me very much of Robert A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy.  Before going into this and some further connections, there is more of Rob Randall’s story to be told.

Rob arrives in the County
Rob Randall, the young orphaned Conurban hero of The Guardians, runs away from his hated boarding school to a place that he sees as his only option i.e. the County. 

He may have planned his escape and journey to the County carefully, but he has not thought much about what he will do when he gets there. 

Conurbans are like Borribles in that they prefer crowded streets to empty fields! Rob has not thought about the effect that the wide open spaces will have on him:

“Rob found himself shivering, not just with cold but at the sight of darkness, the thought of the emptiness beyond. All his life, like everyone else in the Conurbs, he had been surrounded by the comforting presence of others - all the millions of them. Being glad to have a little privacy occasionally was not the same as wanting to go out there, alone.”

However, Rob is tough and adaptable and he is interested in new experiences:

“Two rabbits appeared from the wood and he watched them, fascinated. It was hard to believe he was really here, in the County, with plants budding, wild things living all around him. And yet already this was the reality, the Conurb  - with its packed streets, high-rise buildings, crawling electrocars - the fantasy.”

John Christopher’s Guardians: Part I

The Guardians by John Christopher is a dystopian science fiction novel that was first published in 1970. Just like Michael de Larrabeiti’s Borribles trilogy, it was written for children and teenagers. 

The Guardians has nothing like the number of characters and adventures that can be found in the Borrible books, but this little story has an issue in common with them. 

The Guardians is a book of interest because of the character of the young hero Rob Randall and the question of which is the better of the two very different and complementary lifestyles it describes. It also contains some material that reminds me of other books mentioned on here.

The two worlds of The Guardians
The Guardians is set in England in the year 2052. England is divided into two distinct societies, the Conurbs and the County.

The Conurbs are highly-populated towns where modern technology is much in evidence. The majority of English people live in Conurbs. They are mainly workers. There are occasional riots, but the people are mostly kept quiet with entertainment in the form of carnivals and arena games that appeal to the bloodthirsty - bread and circuses with holovision.

The County is the sparsely-populated countryside, the home of the aristocratic minority. They are mainly people of independent means. They prefer not to use much technology; they have horses for transport. Their lifestyle is rather like that of Edwardian gentry at the height of the British Empire.

Huge fences keep the two societies separate physically, and a carefully controlled, conditioned and manipulated mutual 'us and them' mentality keeps them apart psychologically.

Something about Rob Randall
The story opens in a public library - this is an encouraging start!

The library is in the Conurb of London. Unfortunately it is dilapidated, decaying and well past its prime. People have become less individual, less inquiring and have mostly stopped reading books. Rob Randall, who likes solitude and has a love of reading, is the only person under fifty who goes there. He likes stories filled with excitement and adventures.

Rob’s mother, who was born in the County and who encouraged him to use the library, is dead; his father, who is an electrician, is killed in a work accident early on in the book. Rob is then sent by the authorities to a horrible state boarding school where the food is awful and he is given a very hard time by the masters, the prefects and the other boys.

Stella Gibbons’s Amy Lee and the nightmare journey

Stella Gibbons lived her entire life in the Hampstead and Highgate area of London; she displays her great knowledge of and love for ‘Ham & High’ and other areas of north London in many of her books. 

Stella Gibbons was surely also familiar from personal experience with the sort of nightmare journeys that are mentioned in several other articles on here; there is a similar but much smaller-scale nightmare episode in her novel My American. 

My American opens with a description of 12-year-old Amy Lee’s visit to Kenwood House in Hampstead on a beautiful autumn day in 1928. Exploring the house and grounds is a wonderful way to spend her birthday, but Amy's journey home is something of an endurance test. 

The nightmare is very short-lived; Amy gets just a tiny taste of what people in other articles got in huge doses, and she soon recovers.

There are some very familiar elements in the account of the return journey: bad decisions, wasted effort, unexpected setbacks, 'difficult' people and being cold, tired, hungry, alone and penniless with darkness coming on. It is these familiar features make her ordeal worth commenting on.

The end of the visit to Kenwood

Amy enjoys her visit to Kenwood very much. However, the day is very cold and when dusk is imminent she decides it is time to go home. 

She now has to face a reality that is full of problems.

She is sick with hunger as she has had nothing to eat since early morning.  

She spent her birthday shilling on a packet of postcards as a souvenir of her visit; now she has almost no money left. Buying something for her collection of mementos rather than saving her money for the practicalities reminds me of Antonia White, whose purchase of an expensive handbag in Vienna left her very short of money for her return journey. 

Context and the total picture: Part III

The previous article in the series describes how some people who for better or worse put painful personal experiences into the context of a few other, often well-known, people’s lives decide to leave it at that.  They go just as far as they want or are able to go.

Now it is time to say something about the next steps on the path to detecting and understanding the unseen influences that appear to be at work in certain people’s lives.

Up to this point, candidates for moving on may have come across some interesting information incidentally and in small amounts; now they change their approach and do some investigations - actively looking for writers with Celtic connections after coming across one or two with Scottish ancestry for example. This involves a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach. 

This stage also involves putting aside the personal approach in favour of thinking objectively and analytically about various patterns and common elements in the lives of many people of interest. These may or may not be elements that the investigator shares with them. 

Investigators may then move on to a stage where they start to wonder what, if anything, might be behind the patterns they detect. They start to think about the What, the Who, the How and the Why.

For example, I have experienced some unexpected, unwelcome and unsettling encounters  with people from the past. Recently I discovered that this also happened to the novelist Antonia White.  These encounters are not just random painful personal experiences shared with one or two others: looked at objectively and summarised, they are typical of the unpleasant incidents that certain selected people endure when, for example, they are at a low ebb, have received a jarring shock or had an encounter with an energy vampire.

This leads to speculation about orchestration, distress signals, telepathy and people who are remotely controlled by puppet masters behind the scenes! What forces are in operation? How does it all work? Who or what is behind it?

More about Stella Gibbons’s young writer Amy Lee

Stella Gibbons's My American is described as a romance. As mentioned in the first article, the main aspect of interest in the book is not the story itself but what Stella Gibbons has to say about writers and writing. 

The young writer Amy Lee may be a fictional character, but she is in many ways a classic, textbook case. She shares many attributes and experiences with people featured on here. She needs solitude; she lives to read and write. 

A new life for the young orphan Amy Lee
Luckily for Amy her father has left a small amount of money, enough to cover her expenses until she leaves school. 

She moves downstairs to live with her landlady Mrs Beeding, a tough but kindly Yorkshirewoman, and the rest of the Beeding family:

“Their only fault as a family was their inability to imagine a human being who might sometimes wish to be alone; and in this they were not unique.”

Amy has to share a bedroom with one of the Beeding girls; luckily it is not that dreadful young drama queen Mona, who is always poking into Amy’s affairs!

Family life benefits Amy in some ways. She is well fed, well clothed and well treated. Her worst fears are not realised: she even manages to get some time to herself and a place to read:

“For a week after Tim’s funeral Amy was able to escape for a little while every evening up to the flat and read or dream (she did not dare to write, for fear of interruption and consequent discovery)..."

Amy starts to resettle herself into her secret world:

“The Beedings were used to her ways and left her in peace except for an occasional friendly shriek up the stairs, explaining her taste for solitude to one another by saying that Aime was a great reader, for none of them knew that she was also a great writer.”

Stella Gibbons’s young writer Amy Lee

The writer Amy Lee is the main character and main person of interest in Stella Gibbons’s novel My American (1939).

This is not a book that I enjoy reading for the story - I am not too wild about the title either! The plot is rather contrived, and I don't find the American scenes and characters very convincing; they don’t hold my attention at all and I have nothing to say about them. Amy Lee herself becomes much less interesting once she grows up and moves to the USA too.

The many references to parts of north London in the early chapters of the book are another matter; I love to read about places that I know very well. 

Just as Michael de Larrabeiti’s detailed descriptions of Battersea and Wandsworth came from personal experience, so did Stella Gibbons’s descriptions of places such as Highbury and the Holloway Road.

My American opens with a description of the beauties of Hampstead’s Kenwood House and its grounds, which Stella Gibbons obviously liked very much as she mentions Kenwood in several of her other novels.

The most relevant and significant aspect is what this book says about the personality, outlook, behaviour, problems and experiences of a developing young writer and about writers and writing in general. Stella Gibbons makes some very insightful comments from time to time. Some of this material may be autobiographical; some of it may be wishful thinking!

I detect a few more examples of Stella Gibbons’s white magic too.

While most of Stella Gibbons’s other books - apart from The Shadow of a Sorcerer - inspire little or no commentary, My American is full of relevant and quotable material, some of which comes very close to home. 

It is a book that is partly boring, partly annoying, partly painful and partly fascinating to read. 

It even contains a few amusing passages.

Some writers with Celtic connections

The starting point for this article was a line in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novella The Parasite, which has been the subject of many articles.

Austin Gilroy thinks that the witch Helen Penclosa got her hooks deep into him because of his Celtic origin and that his colleague Charles Sadler got off lightly because of his phlegmatic Saxon temperament.

This made me wonder whether people of Celtic origin really are more open to unseen influences than those of other ancestries. I have Irish connections on one side and Scottish on the other, so this topic is of great interest to me.

I remembered that some of the writers featured or mentioned in this blog had Cornish, Irish, Scottish or Welsh connections; I decided to do a quick investigation and list any more people on here who are known or appear to be of Celtic descent on one or both sides.

People of interest with Celtic connections
Conan Doyle may have been born in Edinburgh, but he had Irish Catholic parents.

Joan Aiken’s Canadian-born mother was a MacDonald, which suggests Scottish ancestors.

J. M. Barrie was a Scotsman.

Angela Brazil had a Scottish grandfather on her mother’s side.

The Brontës had an Irish father and a Cornish mother.

John Buchan was a Scotsman.

Taylor Caldwell was of Scottish origin on both sides. She was descended from the MacGregor clan on her mother’s side.

James Cameron has remote Scottish connections.

Andrew Carnegie, whose public libraries have inspired many writers, was a Scotsman.

The family of Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) had some Irish connections.

Eoin Colfer is Irish.

Marie Corelli’s real father was almost certainly the Scottish poet Charles Mackay.

Predatory ghosts in Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood books

Jonathan Stroud’s predatory ghosts were introduced in a brief article in which some of their similarities to Terry Pratchett’s Elves were mentioned.

Since then, I have re-read Jonathan Stroud’s excellent Lockwood & Co. series and experienced an attack by a predator. This has inspired me to repeat, enhance and add to some of the original material.

The Lockwood & Co. books

The main characters in these supernatural thrillers are very interesting, and there is much witty and amusing dialogue. The action mostly takes place in and around an alternative version of modern-day London, which for me makes the stories even more enjoyable to read.

While much of the material doesn't inspire commentary, there is some particularly illuminating and relevant information about predatory ghosts in The Empty Grave, the fifth and final full-length Lockwood & Co. novel. 

Just as Terry Pratchett did with his Elves, Jonathan Stroud gives some warnings about his ghosts in words that have a wider application - to energy vampires and other predators for example - and provide independent confirmation of a few points made on here.

Jonathan Stroud’s ghosts
The ghosts that invade the world of the living are known as Visitors; they come from the Other Side. They are malignant and very dangerous, often deadly. There is an ever-increasing infestation of them, known as the Problem.

Destroying these ghosts is a profession in itself, a service rather like exorcism or pest control, which is where Anthony Lockwood and his fellow agents in his paranormal detection agency Lockwood & Co. come in. 

In their world, the only good ghost is an eradicated ghost.

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part XIII: Don Martin's cartoons

The cartoonist Don Martin is yet another example of someone whose work can be used to counteract the damaging effects of reading too much negative, depressing and distressing material.

His pictures help to balance the books; they are a good defence against the dark arts.

Working on this article gave me a good break from investigating Jean Rhys!

Don Martin the man
Don Martin (1931 - 2000) was an American cartoonist. His best-known work appeared in Mad Magazine between 1956 and 1988.

He had bad problems with his eyes throughout his life, yet he produced some unforgettable pictures.

Don Martin with an example of his work:

Don Martin Man
Don Martin had a unique, immediately recognisable style. 

His cartoon people often hold their fingers in a particular way and their feet fold over. They often have similar and typical expressions too.

Here is a good example of a Don Martin Man:

Jean Rhys and Antonia White: some similarities

I have been working my way through Carole Angier’s definitive and very detailed biography of the writer Jean Rhys. 

Jean Rhys: Life and Work is over 700 pages long; it includes a literary study of her novels and short stories. I suppose that people who want information about Jean Rhys  and her life will find this book a goldmine and people who like her writings will enjoy reading it, but I found it very depressing.

Jean Rhys got a brief mention in one of the articles about Diana Wynne Jones’s Aunt Maria; the time has now come to say something more about her. Anyone who wants very detailed information about her life and works is best off reading the biography; here I just want to highlight a few elements of particular interest, especially ones that she has in common with other featured writers. 

I found some very familiar features in Carole Angier’s biography; I had already encountered much similar material while investigating other writers. Jean Rhys is in many ways a classic, text-book case. Although she has features in common with several other writers, in my opinion it is Antonia White whom Jean Rhys on the whole most resembles. 

Some of the similarities
Both Jean Rhys and Antonia White were very interested in expensive clothes and beauty treatments - to the detriment of their finances! 

They both spent some time at convent schools.

They both attended the Academy of Dramatic Art in London’s Gower Street and later went on the stage in minor roles for a short time. It was not very successful; they found the touring tiring and the life disillusioning. Acting was a false start for both of them.

They were both self-obsessed. They could never bear to be alone. Both made screaming scenes. Both suffered from poor impulse control. Both led tortured lives. 

The uncanny timing of an unwelcome letter

I have mentioned in the past a particular form of unconscious sabotage, one that involves timing. Madeleine L’Engle’s Zachary Grey for example is an expert at taking actions that might have been deliberately arranged to deplete or even wipe out his victim’s inner resources and reserves shortly before she needs to draw heavily on them. How could he have possibly known what was going to happen?

I have on several occasions been on the receiving end of such actions myself. The introductory article gives examples of letters that ‘by chance’ arrived at the worst possible time:

“Family letters were infrequent, so the timing of these two was very significant. It is amazing how these unconscious saboteurs can ensure that their victims are hit where and when it hurts most.”

Another such letter arrived out of the blue recently, just before I received some very depressing news. This time however I was not badly affected, just slightly annoyed. If this was yet another attempted attack, it fell very flat!

The unwelcome and unnecessary letter
A letter arrived in the post from a family member I have minimal contact with, offering to send someone round with anything I might need. This was completely unnecessary; I replied immediately that I had not got the coronavirus, had plenty of supplies, could easily get more and had people I could call on for assistance if required.

An hour or two later, I got an email from a friend telling me that her father had died. I knew that he had been ill, but thought that he was recovering. He was an exceptionally nice and kind man; this was not a devastating, heart-breaking bereavement, but I felt very sad indeed to think that I would never see him again.

What a coincidence that the only communication apart from Christmas cards that I have received from this person for many years should arrive just before I had some very bad news, and, conversely, that the only very upsetting news of this kind I have received for many years should have been preceded by this unexpected and unwelcome letter.

Something about Michael de Larrabeiti’s Borribles

Just like Alan Garner’s Owl Service, Michael de Larrabeiti’s Borrible books are for me once read, never forgotten.

The Borrible books are urban fantasy; the Borrible people whose adventures they recount are something of a wainscot society. The three Borrible books, which were later published in one volume, are:

The Borribles (1976)
The Borribles Go for Broke (1981)
Across the Dark Metropolis (1986).

There are no metaphysical elements in these books and they don’t contain much material that is relevant to this blog, but they do inspire some commentary.

The Borrible books are intended for older children but have a much wider appeal. Although I discovered them only as an adult, I found them fascinating; they left an immediate and permanent impression on the first reading. A big attraction for me is that they are set in London; they mention many places and features that I know well.

The Borrible books are a very good read, but they should have a warning for the faint-hearted and squeamish! They contain some vile, cruel, dangerous and sinister characters, there is much violence and killing, and some of the action takes place in very filthy and squalid surroundings such as sewers and junkyards.

In addition to that, they are sometimes seen as subversive. Across the Dark Metropolis, the third book in the series, was originally scheduled to be released in 1985, but the publishers pulled out at the last moment because of the riots in London. They felt that its strong anti-police message and glamourising of lawlessness made it unsuitable for publication in the climate of the time. By coincidence, some of the riots took place in areas of London that are mentioned in the book, Brixton for example.

What are Borribles?
Borribles are feral runaway children who never grow into adults - so long as they remain at liberty and their pointed ears remain unclipped. Some of them are around one hundred years old, but they still look like children.

Artemis Fowl and the demon cult leader: Part II

The other demon of interest in Eoin Colfer's Lost Colony is called Leon Abbot. He is one of the worst of the demons and the secret enemy of our cute little friend Number One. He is the cult leader type; many of the things he says and does are familiar from personal experience.

Leon Abbott the cult leader
Leon Abbot is the demon pride leader; he makes all the big decisions and has ways of bringing Council members round to his way of thinking.

He is the demons' self-proclaimed saviour and their hero. 

Leon Abbot is a liar and a manipulator. The truth means nothing to him.

Number One sees through him, but the other imps lap up his self-glorifying legends. Number One sees him as a loudmouth braggart, but the other imps and demons worship him, giving him the attention, adulation and total trust and obedience that he demands. 

He may have scales, horns and a tail, but Leon Abbot is  a classic, textbook case. Many of the things he says and does can be found in the list in the cult overview: for example, he has a superiority complex, sometimes behaves like an attack dog and presents himself as the sole supplier.

He is just the type to lead his followers to disaster.

The Demonic Bible
Leon Abbot brought a book back from the old world, a book that would save them all according to Abbot.

The book is called Lady Heatherington Smythe's Hedgerow. The demons treat it as their bible and use it not only as the source of all their knowledge about humans but also as a source of names:

“They didn't have real names, not until after they warped. Then they would be given a name from the sacred text.”

This explains the unusual names that demons have, names such as Leon Abbot for example. However, surely the book doesn’t contain nearly enough names to go round!

Artemis Fowl and the demon cult leader: Part I

I read the first three of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl fantasy novels when they were first published. I remembered them recently when compiling a list of light and amusing reading that would help to counteract the effects of negative and disturbing material.

I needed a break from reading about the writer Jean Rhys, which is even more depressing than reading about Stella Benson and Antonia White! I decided to renew my acquaintance with Artemis the young Irish prodigy and his fairy friends.

I found that there are now eight Artemis Fowl books. I am reading my way through them all. I didn’t expect to find anything that would inspire any articles, and I was right - until I reached Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony (2006), the fifth book in the series.

The Lost Colony contains some material that immediately reminded me of what I have read and written about cult leaders and people who feel different on the inside from everyone around them.

The Artemis Fowl books contain many supernatural entities, including elves, dwarves, trolls and goblins; The Lost Colony features demons.  One of them reminds me of certain writers who felt different right from the start and went on to develop a special gift, and another one behaves exactly like a cult leader. 

Something about Eoin Colfer’s demons
Eoin Colfer’s demons begin life as imps. They go through a process called ‘warping’, which turns them into demons. It sounds similar to the way in which a caterpillar builds a cocoon then emerges as a butterfly.

A very few imps never warp into maturity. While ordinary full-grown demons have no magic of their own, these special imps become warlocks who can perform magic.

Most of the demons are collective-minded, bloodthirsty and aggressive with few redeeming characteristics, but there is one exception.

This special, different demon is called Number One.

John Buchan, L. M. Montgomery and some snakes

I neither love and revere snakes nor hate and fear them. I once horrified a friend by trying to stroke a big snake in a small zoo. I couldn’t understand why she reacted the way she did! 

Snakes certainly bring out strong emotions in people, and in fiction they represent evil more often than good.

The discovery that both Stella Benson and Antonia White were lovers of snakes made me wonder whether any more writers of interest shared their views. Did anyone other than Stella Benson believe that they had the soul of a snake?

I looked for obvious personal opinions as opposed to standard Biblical references where they are classic symbols of evil.

I couldn’t find any more positive references to snakes by the people featured on here apart from Gerald Durrell, who doesn’t really count because he was a conservationist and zookeeper who loved all wildlife.

I found that neither John Buchan nor L. M. Montgomery had a good word to say about snakes. Buchan used them to describe some of his villains and L. M. Montgomery obviously loathed and feared them.

A few snake references from John Buchan
This is from The Thirty-Nine Steps:

“...the real boss... with an eye like a rattlesnake.”

“Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest ordeal of all. There was something weird and devilish in those eyes, cold, malignant, unearthly, and most hellishly clever. They fascinated me like the bright eyes of a snake. “

This is from The Power House:

“It was with profound relief that I found myself in Piccadilly in the wholesome company of my kind. I had carried myself boldly enough in the last hour, but I would not have gone through it again for a king's ransom. Do you know what it is to deal with a pure intelligence, a brain stripped of every shred of humanity? It is like being in the company of a snake.”

This is from Mr Standfast:

“Blenkiron got out of his chair and stood above me. 'I tell you, Dick, that man makes my spine cold. He hasn’t a drop of good red blood in him. The dirtiest apache is a Christian gentleman compared to Moxon Ivery. He’s as cruel as a snake and as deep as hell.'”

Context and the total picture: Part II

Part I introduces the idea that putting painful experiences into the context of the lives of well-known people can have both positive and negative effects. 

Some people are the worse for learning that they are not alone, some take comfort in the idea and try to make the best of things and a few of them take another big step forward: they start noticing patterns, joining dots and making connections. 

It seems strange to me that some of the writers featured on here appear never to have reached even the first stage. Their writings are full of insights about themselves and their lives but they looked at it all in isolation. 

No context for their lives
I first mentioned this important point in an article about the poet Kathleen Raine: I said that while she made a good, honest evaluation of herself and her life, she did not compare it with the personalities and lives of other creative writers. She actually had many ideas, insights, feelings and experiences in common with some of them, but she never, at least publicly, did much to put her life into the context of the lives of other, similar, people. 

For example, she admitted that her thoughts about and feelings for Gavin Maxwell placed a heavy and intrusive psychic burden on him and that he eventually turned against her because of this. He may not have been the only person she had a bad effect on: he called her a destroyer.

Would it have made things better or worse if she had known about the terrible effect that J. M. Barrie had on the Llewelyn Davies boys and their parents or Benjamin Disraeli had on various people?

84 years of John Buchan’s Island of Sheep

The Island of Sheep, published as The Man from the Norlands in the US, is the fifth and final book in the series of John Buchan’s Richard Hannay adventures; it follows The Three Hostages.

The Island of Sheep was first published in July 1936, so its 84th anniversary is this month. 

I said in the article about Mr Standfast that The Island of Sheep was lower in my estimation than The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle and The Three Hostages. The latter was published in 1924; the 12-year gap between The Island of Sheep and its immediate predecessor suggests to me that John Buchan had finished with Richard Hannay but finally gave in to pressure from publishers and demands from dedicated Hannay fans for more exciting adventure stories.

The new thriller that he produced does not in my opinion have the appeal of some of the earlier books. Something is missing. Rudyard Kipling would have said that Buchan’s creative spirit or daemon was not involved in the construction process. 

Much of the material is familiar from the previous books; there are many descriptions of fishing, wildlife, sheep and Buchan’s beloved Scottish landscape and its people for example. 

There isn’t much that inspires commentary apart from a few miscellaneous passages and Richard Hannay’s ambivalent feelings and ideas about his comfortable life.

Richard Hannay’s inner conflicts
At the start of The Three Hostages, Richard Hannay was living a quiet life as a country gentleman. He had paid his dues and earned it. Having to leave it all to go on a mission seemed like a fate worse than death to him. 

At the start of The Island of Sheep, Richard Hannay has been living the quiet life for many years. His attitude towards it has changed: it is much more complicated and ambivalent this time around.