(no subject)

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Anyone want to talk about "the canon" in terms of what the Marlows (to say nothing of Patrick, whom they quite clearly regard as the dangerous intellectual, in the old Russian joke sense ("Why do the KGB always send three people to make an arrest?" "One to read the charge out, one to write the accused's answer down, and the third to keep an eye on the two dangerous intellectuals")) regard as normal to have read at the ages at which they are portrayed, whether it could be regarded as in any sense normal except for an ultra-bright kid at a particular era in British educational thinking, whether the presence of "the canon" is/was objectively more daunting or exhilarating for (i) us at the time we encountered Forest (ii) a hypothetical child at the present day reading Forest for the first time?

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Apart from commenting that there are a range of allusions from Surtees (quoted in Peter's Room) to Star Trek (I think in The Attic Term) and that Peter has heard of pulp classics of a bygone age such as Three Weeks, don't have any intelligent thoughts to communicate, as most of my brain has, like my luggage, not caught up with me yet.
Except to ponder, is it that Patrick is particularly intellectual, or that Ginty is doing that classic feminine-mystiquey thing of showing interest in the interests of the male?

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

I think Patrick is seen as having intellectual interests beyond those of the Marlows - even though Ginty isn't the brightest Marlow. Look at the Tennyson and such he quotes when riding in the dark, and Four Sacred Plays et al. After all, he is Ginty's age. Of course, he's the only child and has had those months on his back with nothing to do but read so one can imagine he's precocious, also.

[coughingbear]

Meant to reply to this ages ago...

I agree about Patrick's intellectual interests - Nick's very impressed by his books when she sees them in Falconer's Lure, most of them being 'the sort of fat histories Kay read'. She respectfully recognises Neale's Elizabeth (1934) and Chambers' Thomas More (1935). Pretty standard for someone interested in that period in 1957 when FL was published, but clear he has a lot of others as well (wonder if he read Christopher Hill's English Revolution?). He also appears to have Churchill's biography of Marlborough, which is quite a dedicated read.

In general, I adored it when Nicola liked books which I liked (Sayers, say), and would seek out ones mentioned that I hadn't read. Am pretty sure that's how I found Mary Renault, seeing the name in the library and recognising it from the library book hoo-ha, and Ready-Made Family, which I read a bit later, definitely sent me in search of the Gervase Fen books. And though I quite enjoyed them, can't imagine how Kay could possibly prefer them to Sayers.

(Oh, and I remember blushing when I read the bit about Ginty's show-off with the Sayers Dante translations. Not that I pretended about them to someone I fancied, but I definitely read them to show off a bit and 'prove' that Sayers was a Serious Writer.)