Time and the Marlows

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I have now read all the modern-day Marlow books I can lay my hands on, which is all but The Marlows and the Traitor (which I remember quite well from when I was 11 or so) and The Thuggery Affair (which I gather is no great loss).

I love these books and mourn the lack of any more. In fact: sorrow! I will probably read the Player ones on the strength of them. The characters are so well drawn and well understood and not always likeable either, which makes them feel very real (except for Giles whom I dislike for being so arrogant and full of himself--and unkind in Autumn Term; I hope he never marries) and I also like how we see a part of their lives with so much more having happened and about to. We'll never know what happened between Nicola and Esther when she went back to school, or how Judith recovered from Edward running away, or how Kay coped with her family, and after all, RL is untidy like that too.

Does anyone know whether AF had any plans for future books and what would have happened in them?

The one thing I find jarring in the books is the very obvious placement of each in a different time and often decade. Why did AF feel it was necessary? The mention of the war in the earlier ones is part of them and places them, as does Ginty having to go through an operator to phone London, but apart from that a reader could, if allowed to, imagine the books to be set in their own era; country life and boarding school haven't changed much. Kingscote in the 50s wasn't much different to my school decades later. So I find gratuitous references to the Beatles, Up Pompeii, punks, Morecombe and Wise etc not just jarring but unnecessary to the story and Pastede On. If the Marlows were watching TV without the programme being mentioned, I would just keep reading, but mention a specific programme for no reason and I stop in my tracks, disconcerted.

The deliberate insertion of current slang feels odd too, or is it just because it's no longer current? Did people really call clothes 'gear' back in the 70s? OTOH I do love what I assume is specifically Marlow family slang like natch, trimmensely (both of which I used as a kid), and sorrow. Come to think of it though, 'sorrow' can't be a Marlowism because Patrick says it too.

I'm curious about Peter's dreadful nickname of Binks. How do you get that from Peter? Is it a baby name they keep on calling him? I'm totally with him on his objections to it, but the others persist in using it. Is it some sort of common baby name in England that might stick? My mother had a friend called Bunty and I could never understand how she put up with it. [shudders]

Comments

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Look at how thrilled Lawrie in particular is at the idea of dressing up as a punk and going slumming. And the whole Changear thing is to some extent about a bunch of (largely) well-bred boarding-school girls absconding from the 'Mummy's friends to tea dismals' and dressing in a way that's less specific to their own class.

And is the first time we hear Nicola (or is it Miranda?) using the word 'gear' when she's speaking to the pothead 'townie' in Changear - making an effort to use a different kind of idiolect?

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

I can't remember, but that's probably correct. Of course, by the time 'The Attic Term' was written that whole pop-cultural era had largely played itself out, and was set to face the mortification of punk the following year - but children's and young adult literature even today tends to be a couple of years behind in its description of youth cultures, and was so considerably more at that time when much more of it was written by people who only heard of such things not so much second hand but tenth hand.

I genuinely think that a comparison of some of the later Marlow books with the early ones could be useful for people with no interest in the books *on their own terms*, purely as a documentary guide (written by someone, lest we forget, who strongly disapproved of such changes) of a phenomenon we're all now familiar with - "slumming" and "Mockney" have entered the language - but whose specific origins are rarely explored.

I meant to say above "the mass were beginning to assert themselves as a model *over* the elite" rather than the more ambiguous "from the elite".

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

"slumming" and "Mockney" have entered the language

Did AF coin them then? That's impressive. I know about "Mockney", but not "slumming" unless it means going to a poorer part of town--am I slumming when I go to the closest library? I don't remember seeing either though; were they in The Thuggery Affair? That's one of the two the library system doesn't have.

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

She didn't coin them and indeed she never used them at all - they've only become commonplace since she stopped writing. But what I meant to say is that these terms have entered British English to refer to the social tendency whose beginnings, whose early manifestations, AF chronicled in her later books - I didn't mean that she coined or even used those terms herself! You can see in those later books a surprisingly sympathetic (considering AF's arch-conservative views) response to the early days of a phenomenon that most people in Britain now take for granted.

"slumming" certainly doesn't mean going to a library, indeed those who would be accused of would want to play down the fact that they ever went to libraries - it simply refers to people who prefer to mix in less affluent social circles than they were born or raised in. It tends to be pejorative, with accusations being made of "poverty tourism" and exploitation of the poor. I think these things are quite hard for non-Brits to fully understand, though.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Was she sympathetic? I haven't read 'The Thuggery Affair' so I've only seen the Marlows with their own social group. Lawrie dressing as a punk only wanted to role-play and shock.

I meant "slumming" to mean going to a poorer part of town, not the library! My closest branch is in a suburb where many poor and unemployed people live, that's all.

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

"Sympathetic" is the wrong word, I'll admit. But surprisingly *non-judgemental* would fit. AF doesn't seem to be condemning her characters for wanting to slum it at times: she seems surprisingly non-critical of them as the "author's voice", even though she would surely have hated all they stood for and all that kind of thing represented in terms of social changes (as a socialist Forest fan and thus a living contradiction, my get-out clause is usually that there are some similarities between some of her cultural views and those of traditional socialists, who are quite different from both radical leftists and - shudder - Blairites).

I had guessed that your nearest library was in a poorer part of your town - I just wanted to make sure, I suppose.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

>>>I meant "slumming" to mean going to a poorer part of town, not the library!

Well, you'd expect that, if you mean a publicly funded library.
I remember when it was more socially acceptable to subscribe to a circulating library than to join the public library:
"Oh I never borrow the books - I just use the reference Library."
Daughter of Time (Tey)has a character who is surprised that the book she could only find in the public library "isn't at all soupy".

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Our library branches are in most suburbs. I'm between a very poor one to the west which is closer and has a big parking area by the library, and a bigger library in a very rich suburb to the east where you have to pay for parking. It's an easy choice. I can order on-line from any Auckland branch and have the books delivered to the branch of my choice; it's a great system.

I think it's always been different here. Books have always been too expensive, but NZers are great readers and use the library a lot more than others probably do. Friends, esp those with kids, always have library books lying around. I have friends in the US who buy everything and have thousands of books; I have about 200 which I know I'll read again, and borrow everything else. How else could I read up to six books a week?

Sadly, AF's Players books are not at the library. Sorrow, but in my sense.

[prepneot.livejournal.com]

I think these things are quite hard for non-Brits to fully understand, though.

Not at all. It's a term used here in Australia. I always think of the song "Common People" by Pulp: http://www.rhapsody.com/pulp/differentclass/commonpeople/lyrics.html

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

As would almost everyone in Britain. I think my "non-Brits" line was perhaps a bit harsh - but I would say that it's much easier for people in Commonwealth countries, which despite their current cultural dominance by the US have imbibed a lot from Britain, to understand these class-based things than it is for people in countries that have been less influenced by Britain.

I think quite a few people in the US who used to believe uncritically in the American Dream have realised in recent years how unequal their society actually is and that, even though anyone can *theoretically* make it, most people don't. In many ways the class system in the UK has moved much closer to that in the US.