Reply to Rebecca #25
Reply to Rebecca #25
Austen, Yates, Thomas, Hancock -- such a literary and cultural feast, which I hope our readers appreciate
Dear Rebecca
Thank you for your recent letter, in which you channelled your inner Austen. You did a marvellous job both of writing in an Austen style and spoiling the plot of Mansfield Park. I am afraid I can’t match your Austen style because it’s a long time since I read any of her books, apart from a couple of weeks ago. I signed up for a course on Jane Austen novels, but sadly Mansfield Park isn’t one of them. However, I bought a copy recently, and so shall read it on my own so to speak.
It was wonderful of
to let us know about the Austen Substack: . I’ve subscribed but not read very much yet. I also found Jane Austen’s World, which has this wonderful letter, or part of a letter, written by Jane Austen:You deserve a longer letter than this, but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve…
Here’s a serious question for you. Do you think we’ve lost something precious in our modern age of informality? I love phrases like “it is my unhappy fate”; Dornford Yates, writing in the 1920s, would sometimes declare:
A malignant Fate has decreed that…
I think that’s rather nice, and humorous because it is so exaggerated.
This leads me on to another question. I love the Dornford Yates books, but Yates himself was obnoxious according to this website:
Dornford Yates (William Mercer) was not a nice man and in his books makes no secret of his dislikes. These include: Jews, foreigners (especially Germans), nouveaux riches, vulgar upstarts, badly dressed people and members of the lower orders who don’t know their place.
Dylan Thomas wrote beautiful poetry and prose, but apparently was pretty awful to his wife and daughter.
T.S.Eliot wrote some lovely poetry but was an antisemite.
So my question to you is: do you find that learning unpleasant things about a writer spoils your enjoyment of their work? For myself, I try to let the work speak for itself, and not think about the person. This discussion came up recently in the literature class I’m in, and the general consensus was that it’s possible to admire the work despite the writer.
My, what a serious turn this has taken all of a sudden, so let us return to chortleisms.
Regarding your electricity meter whirling round, when I was at university, living in a hall of residence, we people I knew used to stick a coin in the meter to stop the wheel going round at all. Every so often a shout would go out, “The electricity people are here”, because they couldn’t understand why a building with 300 residents in the depth of winter appeared to use no electricity at all.
Well, they did understand, which is why they carried out these unannounced raids. But you would think they might have come incognito, ie in unmarked vans instead of ones emblazoned with “Electricity Board”.
When the warning cry erupted, we all rapidly removed the coin and tried to look innocent.
“Not much electricity used? I’m very frugal, Sir, and am out at lectures most of the time, or in the university library, making inroads in my attempts to expand the frontiers of human knowledge for the betterment of society.”
Indeed, it was at uni where I learnt the subtle art of BS. For example, in one book I came across this:
There is the same prolixity, the same degree of periphrasis, the same tendency to circumlocution, the same Teutonic insistence on the virtues of profundity.
All of which means, as far as I can make out, that the two authors the writer was referring to each had a tendency to be long-winded.
I found that whenever I inserted that paragraph into a random place in an essay, it would always attract a tick from the tutor, regardless of the context. I suspect the tutors thought it was so removed from the subject matter and so arcane that it must be profound. I lent the quote to a friend of mine, who sent a jar of coffee to the manufacturer because he discovered a hair in it, which we thought was probably his own. In his letter of complaint, he inserted that paragraph. A few days later he received a huge package of coffee, chocolate and other comestibles together with a grovelling letter of apology. If you see that paragraph, or something like it, in one of my book reviews, please don’t say anything.
Thanks very much for the Tony Hancock excerpt and transcript. There was a period when they re-ran his Hancock’s Half Hour series with Sid James. Interestingly, I think, the humour has lasted. I’ve seen a few episodes of old shows now and again and they’re often no longer funny, if indeed they ever were. Here’s an egg advert involving Tony Hancock trying to solve a crossword:
You are here. Really? This photo reminds me of what I always thought when I saw such notices when I was around five years old:
I would think:
Why is it telling me I’m here? I already know that I’m here and nowhere else.
Isn’t it funny how children construe the world in a logic all their own?
Thank you for sharing your journal entry. You were very complimentary about me and Elaine. We really enjoyed the day and was disappointed that it had to come to a close. I do hope we get to do it again sometime.
To anyone who has virtually steamed open this letter, catch up with Rebecca’s reply (next Wednesday) by subscribing to her newsletter now. Rebecca muses about getting lost, getting arty and getting old. She is one of the best writers on Substack, and her articles are always rich in terms of illustrations and incisiveness.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this chortlefest. Do leave a comment or two.
Such a thought-provoking post, Terry - I've been thinking about the question you've raised, and have read the comments about it in this thread with interest.
It's tricky, isn't it, to love the work, but not its creator. Should we allow the former, or condemn both work and creator equally?
What is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, is to HAVE these discussions. Love the painting but despise the moral standing of the artist? Let's talk about that. Let's bring up why we despise the artist, and talk about whatever that awful thing about that artist may be or may have been. Let's talk about that at least as much as - no, more than - we talk about the art. Or the music. Or the book.
Gosh and wow, Terry. There's so much to think about here. Thank you so very much for another terrific letter: one very different in part to our canon of correspondence so far, but so very valuable! Thank you.
Loved the links to Jane Austen - I've passed one along to my daughter who loves Jane A. Thanks, too, for raising an interesting question above loving the writing but not the writer. I'm chewing on that. I thought of this parallel: I love many artists' works but not some of their life choices. While standing in front of a favorite painting, I usually think about what I know of the artist's private life, and it DOES make a difference in how I'm drawn to his or her work(s). Does my heart embrace or recoil? Separating an artist's work from his/her life is convenient compartmentalization when I recoil. Embracing an artist's life and his or her work, enriches and broadens my love for his or her work(s). Still chewing. Thanks for another great post.