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.
Friday, 31 July 2020
Thursday, 23 July 2020
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.'”
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.'”
Wednesday, 15 July 2020
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?
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?
Monday, 15 June 2020
Antonia White and a few more familiar elements
This article contains a few more examples of elements that Antonia White had in common with other people featured on here.
Telepathic connections
Antonia White is said to have established a telepathic connection or psychic rapport with a few people during her lifetime.
This is from her daughter Lyndall Hopkinson’s book Nothing to Forgive:
”...a strange telepathy...had again and again compelled me to leave for England just when Antonia most needed someone, although she had never appealed for help.”
Another link was with a young solder called Robert Legg. As Jane Dunn tells us in her biography Antonia White: A Life, they played a game in which they would not communicate verbally. Antonia White describes this phenomenon in her autobiographical novel Beyond the Glass:
“She had become so expert at ‘the game’ that he had only to will her and she went instinctively to the right place at the right time.”
This reminds me of what Joyce Collin-Smith said about the Maharishi Yogi:
“He seemed to have definite hypnotic power. Most of us could be summoned at a distance and would come at the inner command...”
Antonia White too had a telepathic link with an Indian guru, a mystic called Meher Baba. She too believed that he was sending her hypnotic commands.
Feeling different and copying others
Feeling that they are not real people, feeling different on the inside from everyone around them and imitating others for various reasons are common elements in the lives of Antonia White and Stella Benson - and many other creative people.
Telepathic connections
Antonia White is said to have established a telepathic connection or psychic rapport with a few people during her lifetime.
This is from her daughter Lyndall Hopkinson’s book Nothing to Forgive:
”...a strange telepathy...had again and again compelled me to leave for England just when Antonia most needed someone, although she had never appealed for help.”
Another link was with a young solder called Robert Legg. As Jane Dunn tells us in her biography Antonia White: A Life, they played a game in which they would not communicate verbally. Antonia White describes this phenomenon in her autobiographical novel Beyond the Glass:
“She had become so expert at ‘the game’ that he had only to will her and she went instinctively to the right place at the right time.”
This reminds me of what Joyce Collin-Smith said about the Maharishi Yogi:
“He seemed to have definite hypnotic power. Most of us could be summoned at a distance and would come at the inner command...”
Antonia White too had a telepathic link with an Indian guru, a mystic called Meher Baba. She too believed that he was sending her hypnotic commands.
Feeling different and copying others
Feeling that they are not real people, feeling different on the inside from everyone around them and imitating others for various reasons are common elements in the lives of Antonia White and Stella Benson - and many other creative people.
Monday, 8 June 2020
Antonia White, a gold coin and impressionable children
This article was inspired by an incident that I read about in the novelist Antonia White’s account of her early childhood in As Once in May.
It concerns what she called one of the great disappointments of her life. It happened when she was only four years old.
In addition to being a schoolmaster, her father gave private tuition to young men. Antonia got talking to one of these pupils while he was waiting for his lesson. He was so impressed by her knowledge that he gave her a gold coin, a half-sovereign!
When her father arrived and noticed the coin, he forced her to return it. He could not possibly allow her to accept it; it was far too much money for a child of her age. Despite his pupil’s efforts on Antonia’s behalf, her father was adamant. The coin went back into the young man’s pocket.
As she left the room, holding back her tears, she heard her father say:
“It was exceedingly generous of you, but I’m sure that you’ll see my point of view. No, no, she won’t be disappointed. I’m sure she knew all along she couldn’t possibly be allowed to keep it. Don’t worry. By tomorrow she’ll have forgotten all about it.”
This is what Antonia White said decades later:
“He was wrong. After seventy-two years I have not forgotten that breathless moment of possession and the bitter sense of injustice when the treasure was snatched away...”
This is a very good illustration of something that that really stands out in the biographies and autobiographies of many writers: how hard they take some things and how they often never forget and never forgive a childhood injury.
Diana Wynne Jones had this to say, in connection with being permanently affected by not being permitted to read fantasy books as a child:
“And it does bring you hard up against the responsibility adults have, if only because it shows you what a truly lasting impression can be made on a child.”
This is from her book Reflections: On the Magic of Writing, which is full of such insights.
It concerns what she called one of the great disappointments of her life. It happened when she was only four years old.
In addition to being a schoolmaster, her father gave private tuition to young men. Antonia got talking to one of these pupils while he was waiting for his lesson. He was so impressed by her knowledge that he gave her a gold coin, a half-sovereign!
When her father arrived and noticed the coin, he forced her to return it. He could not possibly allow her to accept it; it was far too much money for a child of her age. Despite his pupil’s efforts on Antonia’s behalf, her father was adamant. The coin went back into the young man’s pocket.
As she left the room, holding back her tears, she heard her father say:
“It was exceedingly generous of you, but I’m sure that you’ll see my point of view. No, no, she won’t be disappointed. I’m sure she knew all along she couldn’t possibly be allowed to keep it. Don’t worry. By tomorrow she’ll have forgotten all about it.”
This is what Antonia White said decades later:
“He was wrong. After seventy-two years I have not forgotten that breathless moment of possession and the bitter sense of injustice when the treasure was snatched away...”
This is a very good illustration of something that that really stands out in the biographies and autobiographies of many writers: how hard they take some things and how they often never forget and never forgive a childhood injury.
Diana Wynne Jones had this to say, in connection with being permanently affected by not being permitted to read fantasy books as a child:
“And it does bring you hard up against the responsibility adults have, if only because it shows you what a truly lasting impression can be made on a child.”
This is from her book Reflections: On the Magic of Writing, which is full of such insights.
Wednesday, 27 May 2020
Diana Wynne Jones and two more coincidences
A previous article gives details of two occasions when something that Diana Wynne Jones had just written about manifested in her life.
Diana Wynne Jones’s book Reflections: On the Magic of Writing contains two more examples of this phenomenon.
The first ‘coincidence’ happened at a time when she was working on her book Fire and Hemlock, for which the plot was, she thought, her own invention. An acquaintance railroaded her into a visiting a place where people started discussing a local legend - which strongly resembled her plot.
The second incident happened while she was working on Archer’s Goon. One of the characters discovers a newborn baby in the snow. The same acquaintance went out for a walk and found an abandoned baby!
The two incidents in Diana Wynne Jones’s own words:
The Fire and Hemlock incident
“Sometimes, however, the book comes true while I am actually writing it, and this can be quite upsetting.
Fire and Hemlock was one of those. One of the many things that happened while I was writing it was that an eccentric bachelor friend from Sussex University, who stayed with us while he was lecturing in Bristol, insisted on my driving him to some stone circles in our neighborhood. There, he began having mystic experiences, while I kept getting hung up astride the electric fences that crisscrossed the site. My outcries, he said, were disturbing the vibes, so he sent me to the local pub to wait for him.
As soon as I got there, the landlady and the other customers began talking about these same stone circles and related the local story about their origins. This story is called “The Wicked Wedding”: the bride, who is an evil woman, chooses a young man to marry, but at the wedding, the devil comes, kills the young bridegroom, and marries the lady himself.
This is the story behind Fire and Hemlock and, believe it or not, I had never heard it before - I thought I'd made it up. Well, after various other strange experiences, my eccentric friend went back to Sussex and I finished the book.”
Diana Wynne Jones’s book Reflections: On the Magic of Writing contains two more examples of this phenomenon.
The first ‘coincidence’ happened at a time when she was working on her book Fire and Hemlock, for which the plot was, she thought, her own invention. An acquaintance railroaded her into a visiting a place where people started discussing a local legend - which strongly resembled her plot.
The second incident happened while she was working on Archer’s Goon. One of the characters discovers a newborn baby in the snow. The same acquaintance went out for a walk and found an abandoned baby!
The two incidents in Diana Wynne Jones’s own words:
The Fire and Hemlock incident
“Sometimes, however, the book comes true while I am actually writing it, and this can be quite upsetting.
Fire and Hemlock was one of those. One of the many things that happened while I was writing it was that an eccentric bachelor friend from Sussex University, who stayed with us while he was lecturing in Bristol, insisted on my driving him to some stone circles in our neighborhood. There, he began having mystic experiences, while I kept getting hung up astride the electric fences that crisscrossed the site. My outcries, he said, were disturbing the vibes, so he sent me to the local pub to wait for him.
As soon as I got there, the landlady and the other customers began talking about these same stone circles and related the local story about their origins. This story is called “The Wicked Wedding”: the bride, who is an evil woman, chooses a young man to marry, but at the wedding, the devil comes, kills the young bridegroom, and marries the lady himself.
This is the story behind Fire and Hemlock and, believe it or not, I had never heard it before - I thought I'd made it up. Well, after various other strange experiences, my eccentric friend went back to Sussex and I finished the book.”
Sunday, 17 May 2020
Antonia White's travel nightmare
The novelist Antonia White describes a nightmare journey in her unfinished autobiographical novel Clara IV.
Clara goes on holiday to Austria without her husband; being alone has a bad effect on her. She becomes demoralised and mismanages everything including her money, which helps to make the return journey one long endurance test.
Clara’s travel nightmare
The long journey home involves taking a train to Linz, a train from Linz to Ostend, a steamboat from Ostend to Dover followed by a train to London and finally a taxi to her house.
On the long train ride to Ostend, it seems to Clara as though her journey will never end and she will never find herself safely back home.
By the time she gets to Ostend she is in a trance of weariness. She has had a sleepless night in a horrible third-class compartment, which was all that she could afford. She has not slept for thirty-six hours and as she has very little money left has eaten almost nothing during the journey. She would happily exchange the beautiful and expensive new handbag that she had unwisely bought in Vienna for just a cup of tea and a couple of aspirins. Half blinded by a bad headache, she has to carry her heavy luggage onto the ferry herself as she cannot afford to pay a porter.
White magic on the ferry
Clara is horrified to see how awful she looks and how dirty and creased her clothes are when she catches sight of herself in the washroom mirror, but she is too ill and exhausted to do anything about it until after she has rested for a while.
Clara goes on holiday to Austria without her husband; being alone has a bad effect on her. She becomes demoralised and mismanages everything including her money, which helps to make the return journey one long endurance test.
Clara’s travel nightmare
The long journey home involves taking a train to Linz, a train from Linz to Ostend, a steamboat from Ostend to Dover followed by a train to London and finally a taxi to her house.
On the long train ride to Ostend, it seems to Clara as though her journey will never end and she will never find herself safely back home.
By the time she gets to Ostend she is in a trance of weariness. She has had a sleepless night in a horrible third-class compartment, which was all that she could afford. She has not slept for thirty-six hours and as she has very little money left has eaten almost nothing during the journey. She would happily exchange the beautiful and expensive new handbag that she had unwisely bought in Vienna for just a cup of tea and a couple of aspirins. Half blinded by a bad headache, she has to carry her heavy luggage onto the ferry herself as she cannot afford to pay a porter.
White magic on the ferry
Clara is horrified to see how awful she looks and how dirty and creased her clothes are when she catches sight of herself in the washroom mirror, but she is too ill and exhausted to do anything about it until after she has rested for a while.
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