More on Harry
Arindam Banerjee
>Deborah Stevenson,,, <stev...@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu> wrote in message news:<f9pJ9.4630$Vf3....@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>...
>> adda...@bigpond.com (Arindam Banerjee) writes:
>>
>>>We did not have "mum's boyfriend" or "dad's
>> >girlfriend" in children's literature, or children's lives, 40
years
>> >ago.
>>
>> And this is a bit of retrospective wishfulness. Of course
children's
>> lives included parents' boyfriends and girlfriends forty years ago.
>Did they indeed? I did not find any references in any Western
>childrens' literature books I read in the 60s and 70s. I mean Enid
>Blyton, Richmal Crompton, etc.
Those aren't actually books from the 60s and 70s (well, Crompton
isn't--I
never remember Blyton's dates). However, I was referring to your
comment
about children's lives, which I now think I misread. I thought you
were
using the global "we," and instead you were discussing the specific
"we"
in which you were reading. My "we" certainly had parental divorce and
dating, but that of course doesn't mean that everybody's did.
AB: I read books as I got them or found them, from wherever. Seems to
me Darwinian principles were involved, about the Western books
attracting my notice. Only the fittest survived, for my thirdworld
eyes! :) Same applied for Hollywood movies as well - the crappy ones
never came, and we knew nothing about them.
The traditional nuclear family was
>standard, with aunts and uncles also there. In contrast, Indian
>childrens' literature of the time dealt with life in the joint family
>situation, which was under assault.
Interesting. I'm not familiar with the "joint family" term--can you
explain?
AB: If you really want to know, you should read a book on Indian
sociology. In brief, the Indian Hindu joint family is a social
structure, where a number of families, linked by blood ties or
(rarely) adoption, headed by a patriarch (or matriarch), live under
the same roof, and eat food cooked from the same kitchen.
>And what about the divorce rates
>in the West - were they the same 40 years ago?
No, not the same, but divorce was certainly extant. As, of course,
were
widowhood and widowerhood (the former especially post-war), also
situations that may lead to parent dating.
AB: But "living in sin" was given social sanction, or not?
The boyfriends and
>girlfriends came with the USAn novels of adoloscence, meaning the
>works of Mr James Hadley Chase, etc.
Now this is interesting, because he has virtually no impact in
America.
AIUI, he never actually lived there, so it's sort of like Karl May and
the
Indians.
AB: He did have a great deal of impact upon young Indian minds, and
coloured their views of US. I did not know he never lived in USA!
>But even the works of Mr
>Alistair Maclean was reasonably free from boyfriends and girlfriends.
While Maclean was very popular with young people, I think he'd come
under the heading of "literature of adolescence" as a borrowing, like
Orson Scott Card, in the US>
>> Children's lives included parents' divorces, and deaths, and
remarriages,
>> and intervening states. One of the authors whose come up fondly in
this
>> thread is Edward Eager--Edward Eager, who definitely depicted a
mother
>> with a boyfriend, who dealt (albeit not very well) with racism and
>> deliquency, and whose fans are apparently forgetting those parts of
his
>> books.
>Edward Eager did not make it to India, to my knowledge.
I'm not entirely surprised; I'd rather doubt he was imported much of
anywhere.
From the sound of things, importation was a big factor in Anglophone
Indian children's literature--am I correctly understanding? It also
sounds like the Children's Book Trust was important in creating some
solid
homegrown material, but that they concentrated a bit more on books for
younger children. Does that jibe with your experience?
AB: I don't know. The books I read were from the school library; the
British Council Library; borrowed from friends or relatives; bought
from bookshops. I have no idea about the selection processes involved.
Certainly there were people who made decisions about the selections.
I think they should be the usual lot of academics, booksellers and
those associated with publishing. We got a pretty wide choice in the
Book Fairs. That was one time when I could do a lot of reading at no
expense!
>We have to
>get a bit statistical to make sense. A single example is not enough.
I'd love to hear more statistics, especially about other places; on
the
other hand, I'm not sure we've got a specific theory we're trying to
quantify here, and I'm happy just to hear about what other people's
experiences are/were.
>my children thought worth reading. I think they went through the
>usual stages. What was missing in their lives was the comics we loved
>(Superman, Batman, Phantom, Disney, Archie). In place they had
>computer games. I think we were better off with the comics. But that
>could just be nostalgia.
Then again, it might not :-). Graphic narrative is a pretty
interesting
phenomenon, and I also think it functions socially a lot differently
than
computer games.
AB: Yes, computer games or computer narratives are inter-active. One
interacts with the machine, more than with humans. While good for
individual development, so far as getting information is concerned, it
is not by itself conducive to social development. However, with
networking games, this negative aspect is being overcome.
>The problem with New Realism is that it is hardly realistic, it only
>seems so;
I'd be inclined to agree with this, hence my tendency to use the term
as a
proper noun rather than a descriptive term.
it being based upon armchair-speculating too-much-assuming
>Einsteinian thought-experimentation. To be really realistic, the
>authors would have to work much harder, and spend much more time in
>the field - analysing, balancing, judging, experimenting with live
>subjects. In short, New Realism is a media-driven fraud.
And I'm not inclined to agree with this. If its goal was to produce
documentation, then yes, it's a fraud. But its goal was to produce
literature, and often enough it did.
AB: So what do you call literature? A few years ago, "The Age"
newspaper ran a short story competition. The winners were published.
I thought the main criterion for winning that competition was to write
such mind-blowing stuff with peculiar styles, that no one could
possibly understand, but be made to think that something immensely
profound was being written. Modern published poetry - of the kind I
saw in literary journals a few years ago, these days I do not come
near them - was even worse, being concentrated and hopelessly
meaningless nonsense. Are we extending this concept of adult
literature to childrens' literature?
>Harry
>Potter is the great fightback to that. Harry's parents (solidly
>married, happy couple) are dead. They exist as an inspiring memory to
>Harry. Rowling fights "New Realism" lies with magic, and longing.
>That, I believe, is the reason for her stupendous success.
Well, we may be meaning different things with New Realism here, as
it's
kind of peaked and over in the US. However, if that's the reason for
Rowling's stupendous success with kids (and I know you didn't say
"with
kids," but that's the part of the viewpoint I'm exploring at the
moment),
what's the reason for the tremendous success of _The Outsiders_
(classic
USAn New Realism) or _Harriet the Spy_ (one of the early landmarks of
the
genre)?
AB: I cannot say, I don't think they made any impression on my
children, if they ever came across them.
It may be that there's a bigger gap in Australia (though I wouldn't
have
thought that Paul Jennings was grimly New Realistic :-)), but I don't
think the situation is quite as oppositional here as your theory seems
to
postulate.
AB: But no one can deny the staggering success of Harry Potter. Maybe
the readers are saying something to the pseudo-realistic writers and
their publishers? And not just Harry. Tolkien (also magical) is
pretty strongly in favour.
>I am not really impressed, frankly, by all that I have seen and read
>over the last 13 years of bringing up two kids in Australia. Here we
>have very good libraries, both in schools and councils. The
>illustrated books are excellent, I will allow. But the quality of
>writing, characterisation, plots overall are poor and at best
>unremarkable. Nothing really sticks in the mind, unlike the
>unforgettable William, Bunter, Biggles, of the past.
I'm not sure that Bunter and Biggles stick in the mind because of
their
high quality writing and subtle characterization, frankly :-).
AB: They were for boys.
>think of. But now, we have quite a cast, along with Harry. Hermione,
>Ron, Draco... I think good times may well be back!
I'm in favor of just about anything that brings people good times :-).
Deborah Stevenson
(stev...@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu)
Rich Clancey
+>>>We did not have "mum's boyfriend" or "dad's
+>> >girlfriend" in children's literature, or children's lives, 40
+ years
>ago.
I sure remember an awful lot of Stepmothers and Stepfathers in
the stuff I read when I was a kid, 40 years ago.
--
rich clancey r...@world.std.com