The Voice That Thunders, page 10
“In my experience, you are right, it does not test the response of the reader so much as the reader’s memory of the teacher’s response. Also, with schoolchildren, as opposed to undergraduates, I think that analysis limits, rather than illumines, comprehension of a text.
“I go to considerable lengths in my writing to convey aspects of being that are, by their nature, not open to reductive, analytical rationalisation; and to see, as I do, their being made the less, by teachers, in order for them to ‘make sense’ plunges me into pessimism.
“When, as also happens, teachers instruct me to be more didactic, to tell rather than to show, so that my books may be the more easily taught, and, I suspect, the more easily marked, I find it hard to remain constructive in my reply.
“And yet. And yet. The evidence can’t be ignored that some children have their minds and souls opened by teachers who have shared with them a passion for literature. What it comes to is that there are never enough teachers who are good enough. Those with fire in their belly ignite fire in the bellies of the children; and those without, quench any spark.”
I stand by that reply. It is a fact that, of all the letters I get from children, the only depressing ones arrive from a school address.
“We are writing on behalf of form 1P. We think your book Elidor is a bit far fetched and should be for a younger generation. We thought the last bit with Findhorn was the best. This was because of the descriptions, which made a vivid picture in our minds. But the first couple of chapters weren’t all that good. This was because it hadn’t got into much of an adventure. Questions: 1) Where did you get the characters from? 2) Where did the idea of another world come from? 3) Do you enjoy writing books?”
This kind of letter makes me ask questions. What teaching has produced such a lacklustre and sloppy approach? What is the point of the letter? What am I expected to do about it?
I have yet to find answers; perhaps because there is no one to ask. It would be unfair if I were to press the children. Writing to me was patently not their idea. And the teacher is hiding behind them, and cannot be reached.
It would not matter if such letters were a rarity, but they are common. Either there are two or three representative signatories to a single letter, as in the one above, or every child is made to write separately. Repeated phrases, blackboard mantras, tell me what has been taken from the teacher’s instruction, and interlocking patterns of shared statements show who is sitting next to whom. Often there are corrections and ticks in red ink to demonstrate the spontaneity.
Year after year this goes on, with every book; and it is coldly interesting that, without the dates on the letters, it would be hard to put them in their right order. Nothing appears to be changing. One has to close the mind against the implications of what some, and I know that it is only some, teachers are contributing to our culture.
Here is the latest, and it is the worst. It withstands multiple reading, and with each reading any explanation of its being recedes from me. Now it is my turn to ask for help. It is different in that the children’s contributions are accompanied by a signed letter from their teacher: immaculate, apart from its punctuation, in Business English, limned with educational jargon.
“Dear Mr Garner,
I am writing this letter on behalf of forms [X] and [Y] who have recently been studying your book ELIDOR in their English lessons.
“They completed many speaking and listening, reading and writing activities based on the text and found your book very educational and enjoyable to read. The enjoyment experienced when reading the book meant that the pupils were well-motivated which resulted in a positive outcome in terms of the work they produced.
“Please find enclosed some of their letters which outline what the pupils thought of your book and how useful they found it in terms of their learning.
“Many thanks.”
I have quoted that letter exactly, because I do not begin to understand what is going on here. The children wrote, and here are merely enough examples to show my bewilderment at the apparent conflict between the teacher’s letter, and the response of the class. What is going on? Are they on the same planet as each other? I am accustomed to being criticised, but this was a cesspit dumped on my head, and I cannot see the point of the exercise for the teacher or the lesson for me.
I shall run them on, after each other, to try to give some of the effect. The children would be between thirteen and fourteen years old.
“I think that your story was very boring. There was not enough action in it and the plot had been used before. I didn’t really have a favourite part except when the story had finally finished. You could have improved the book by not writing it at all. The Book did not make me want to read it from the start and certainly not from the finish.”
“I think this book is boring but I don’t like reading books anyway but I have read this book and I don’t think it is any good. For starters when I looked at the book I thought it was called Alan Garner. As I was reading this book it started to bore there is nothing funny or interesting. It was a big mistake was reading this book. You should of read this book your self and see what you have gone wrong you should of put something funny in it.”
“Your book is boring and there was not much action and when there was it was no good so you could put more action in it. You could not get in to the story at all because the plot had been used to meany times. In fact it was a mistake writeing the story.”
“I am writing to tell you what I think of your book. Nobody wanted to know. The book didn’t hold my interest at all and I can’t say I have a least favourite part because I didn’t like any of it. It would have been better to have jazzed it up a bit.”
“Your book wasn’t any good and the ending was Rubbish.”
“I thought your book was very borring and there was no action and I would recomend it to people that don’t like action. I would give it 3/10.”
“The best part of your book was the End because I was glad the Story was finished because I didn’t understand it. The worst part was the beginning, because I knew it would go on and on and there was no fun.”
That’s enough. I find the whole thing mesmeric; but you may be by now professionally distressed. The school is an ordinary Comprehensive. I have checked. But something is agley. Failure to connect does not have to be aggressive. I admire this next school, writing of The Owl Service.
“Hi, Alan! This letter is supposed to be 300 words, but I bet you get letters from my other classmates that are only 200. This is 27.”
“I enjoyed reading your novel. I didn’t quite understand the book that much, but it was a great read and I would like to have read it some other time.”
“I liked the book. All the parts were interesting to listen to it when other people were reading it to you because I can’t understand it when I am reading it myself.”
“Hi. My name is Paul. Our English teacher made us read your novel The Owl Service. I think that if your book had been written in English more of my fellow students would have understood it.”
The main drift, is towards a drear comprehension. A teacher, who is typical, alas, wrote:
“For the past three years I have taken The Owl Service with our CSE candidates, and I think, especially with the abler girls, it has been the most popular book on their English literature course. Here are the lines we are working on at present:
1) Try to read Alan Garner’s other books, and write a few sentences about each.
6) In what ways does the poem ‘The Stone Trees’, by John Freeman, remind you of The Owl Service?
8) Answer the questions on the blackboard about The Mabinogion.”
How am I to reply to such as these? I do not understand how I can contribute to what I see as an abuse of story, at which, by replying, I may be thought to connive.
Teachers are no doubt as varied as the rest of our species. What concerns me, is that they are, briefly, in a special position of power at a time when their pupils can be influenced for life. What can I do to protect the future from this young man? It would be easy to diagnose nervousness alone; but I get too many for that to be a transitory lapse of nerve and grammar.
“Dear Alan,
I am a student teacher, beginning my second teaching practice next term.
“So what?
“Well, my scheme of work for class 2 who I am taking for English is an investigation of you and your work. Using you as a springboard, I hope to motivate them sufficiently to write their own interesting and immaginative stories of the inexplicable.
“So what?
“I would like your help. If you can write the boys a letter of encouragement, we would be ‘cock-a-hoop’ and you will have won thirty-one more fans. If you would like to offer suggesstions I would be grateful. If you would like to write a book about me, I would be flattered.
“Hoping to hear from you.”
It is easier for me to cope with Bill the Caveman than with letters such as these. The difficulties, however, seem to work both ways.
“To the Publisher.
Dear Sirs,
As Deputy Headmaster of the above School, I was greatly disturbed when a member of my Staff of this school, brought the book The Owl Service by Alan Garner to me, which had recently been bought on this current requisition. Please refer to Page 64 of this book. I strongly object to the phraseology of this page, and I quote, ‘Welsh git’. We are members of an organized Society, and we are expected to set an example, but if this is supposed to be the Example we set, how can we hope for the future? I find it disturbing that you have published this book. How many more Primary books of this nature have been published? Are other schools, who suffer from the current inflation, having to put up with this kind of rubbish? Isn’t it the job of your Editor to edit these books before publication? Why do you advertise these, amongst worthwhile books, in the Primary Sector?
“I hope that your attention will be drawn to this matter and something could be done about it, at the earliest opportunity. I wonder what the Press would do with this kind of satire. Looking forward to hearing from you in the immediate future.”
What I find most disconcerting here is that someone who writes such prose, with all it suggests, should be qualified to hold a deputy-headship.
“Dear Sir,
I am headteacher of the above school and I would appreciate it if you would forward my letter to Alan Garner.
“It was with his earlier books in mind that I purchased Red Shift. However, having now read it for myself I feel I must protest at some of the words used, such as those on pages 18, 20, 46, 101 and 109. I feel the use of these words add nothing to the story, indeed, they can only cause distress to people such as myself.
“I am very disappointed that Alan Garner has found it necessary to be fashionable in his phraseology at the expense of young and impressionable minds.
“This book was obtained from the Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation, Wakefield, because I took, on past experience, the suitability of the story. Other heads or teachers may not have time to read the book and would naturally include it in their school library with, I feel, irreversible and damaging results.
“I would be very interested in your comments on the matter and hope in future that I may once again recommend Alan Garner books with complete confidence.”
“Alan Garner books”. I spoke earlier about ghetto writing. I wonder, here, whether ghetto reading may not be another danger.
“Dear Mr Garner,
As an English graduate teaching in a grammar school, I have often recommended your books to my pupils. I am therefore disappointed to find that Red Shift does not possess the literary excellence of your earlier work.
“I thought The Owl Service was a very interesting book, with passages of great beauty, but even in that I noticed that slang and bad language were creeping in. If our pupils read this kind of English, they will begin to write it, and this we cannot risk.
“Also, I am sure that some of our intelligent and literary third-formers will not be impressed by the emphasis on violence and a rather distasteful aspect of teenage sexuality found in Red Shift.
“I can see, of course, that both Jan and Tom are victims of an inadequate home background, but I cannot see the necessity for the foul language or the sexual immorality. We know that some teenagers are like them, but we also know that others are strongly idealistic in spite of the so-called permissive society. Why not write for them and help keep them so? Also, why not use your exceptional ability as a writer to perpetuate beautiful English, which seems in grave danger of disappearing?
“I shall look forward to your future books, and hope you will return to your previous high standard.”
The sad aspect of that letter is that the teacher and I care with an equal passion for the same qualities in language. There is so little dividing us, but it is fundamental in its effect on our perceptions.
The problem is not just local. Here is a letter from the librarian of the Horace Ensign Intermediate School, California, to the library supplier in New York.
“A brother librarian finds himself confronted with an irate parent who insists your selection Red Shift should not be on the shelves of any library. He threatens to go to the school board and if necessary hire a lawyer to protest the book.
“What help, if any, can you give us? If we continue to subscribe to your service must we read every book in order to prevent another incident?”
The library supplier’s response was impressive. He sent the librarian a welter of supportive literature to show that the forces represented by the irate parent should, and could, be resisted. It included a booklet entitled What to Do when the Censor Comes. Red Shift was not prosecuted.
It would be dispiriting if all adult, and adult-directed, response were as I have shown. It is a significant element of my daily experience, but, happily, the greater motivator of letters is enthusiasm, not stricture: an excitement of sharing; and it must be said that some of the most supportive and encouraging reactions come from teachers, to whom I have been, without apology, giving what I see to be some necessary stick.
So I shall end on a few of the high notes, the celebrations of the creative act of reading to which teachers offer their lives, for which writers and pupils are grateful. What follows is not about me, but about what we all share in and hope for. It does exist.
“Red Shift is a wonder full book, Tough and smoothly styled as a steel vault. Contents very valuable to all: me too: who want greater freedom of subject matter for Young Adults’ Literature. Awesome applause.”
“I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. I know it’s probably silly, but I just feel I want to say thank you. A 12-year-old and a 20-year-old thank you.
“I have just finished re-reading The Owl Service for about the tenth time since I first read it as a pre-Agatha Christie 12-year-old. And I’m still emotionally churned up by it as I was the first time.
“I think I understand it better now. I mean, I really didn’t have a clue what was going on during my initial reading, other than the barest story outline. But it hit me so hard and so deeply that I have never classed it merely as a book.
“It is, to me, an absorbing emotional experience. I think of it as my book. In the same way that, while you don’t know me, you understand me. You have written for me. Maybe that’s why I’ve got the courage to write to you. I certainly don’t make a habit of this.
“I am a third year student at Frankston’s Teachers’ College and am majoring in Children’s Literature. We have selected one author to ‘study in depth’ this year. I selected you upon the basis of my Owl Service obsession, but have since read most of your other works.
“Do you know, I think my self-indulgent motives for choosing you to study are beginning to backfire on me. I’m having a great deal of trouble writing about your works, especially The Owl Service. It’s too close to me. It has dragged an almost primitive response from me, which I can’t put into words, and, what’s more, don’t want to. And, apart from that, I can’t bear looking at it in terms of literary structure: plot, theme, symbolism, yuk. It’s above that. It is a creation and I can’t destroy it like that.
“I think I’m going to fail this assignment! I’m at the stage now of tearing up articles by respected critics that insist on looking at your work in these terms.
“Anyway, I’ve raved on enough, even though I still haven’t managed to say what I really wanted to. Mainly because I don’t now exactly what it is. I hope you know what it is. Thank you again . . .”
I hope she did not fail her assignment, because there is one teacher in the making who “knows” what books are.
“Your work is becoming known here in Australia, much to the delight of my friend and me. Last year your books were on the reading list for trainee teachers, and it was through discussing the symbolism in Elidor with my friend, who is doing teacher training as a mature age student, that we realized the amazingly hard work you put into the structure of your books. It is giving us the greatest pleasure imaginable to plumb the depths.
“Red Shift had us in raptures. At last here is a writer who seems to know what goes on in our minds as we change babies’ nappies and wash the endless dishes. You say it all for us, and awaken our grey matter once more, so that we can actually put into use all the accumulated data from our reading on myths and legends, Plato, the Eleusinian Mysteries, Jung. Everything is called upon.
“You must go on writing for yourself. It is the only true self we can all share.
“Joan and I discussed whether or not to write to you, because we know you must get a lot of cranky letters, and we didn’t want you to think we were taking your time over nothing. Over nothing?!! It seems to me that, no matter how a writer insulates himself from his critics, he must, somewhere deep down, get some pleasure from knowing that he has touched the heart and mind of a reader, that the message got through. This is the point of this letter. Thank you from us both.”
It is letters such as this that break down the necessary isolation of the writer and create a sense of community: not community of flattery, but a community of caring, emotion and of vision shared. Always the letters are accompanied by a shyness that, one feels, came close to preventing the connection, but the need to speak won through, just as the book did, against all the doubts and fears that attended its creation.
“I go to considerable lengths in my writing to convey aspects of being that are, by their nature, not open to reductive, analytical rationalisation; and to see, as I do, their being made the less, by teachers, in order for them to ‘make sense’ plunges me into pessimism.
“When, as also happens, teachers instruct me to be more didactic, to tell rather than to show, so that my books may be the more easily taught, and, I suspect, the more easily marked, I find it hard to remain constructive in my reply.
“And yet. And yet. The evidence can’t be ignored that some children have their minds and souls opened by teachers who have shared with them a passion for literature. What it comes to is that there are never enough teachers who are good enough. Those with fire in their belly ignite fire in the bellies of the children; and those without, quench any spark.”
I stand by that reply. It is a fact that, of all the letters I get from children, the only depressing ones arrive from a school address.
“We are writing on behalf of form 1P. We think your book Elidor is a bit far fetched and should be for a younger generation. We thought the last bit with Findhorn was the best. This was because of the descriptions, which made a vivid picture in our minds. But the first couple of chapters weren’t all that good. This was because it hadn’t got into much of an adventure. Questions: 1) Where did you get the characters from? 2) Where did the idea of another world come from? 3) Do you enjoy writing books?”
This kind of letter makes me ask questions. What teaching has produced such a lacklustre and sloppy approach? What is the point of the letter? What am I expected to do about it?
I have yet to find answers; perhaps because there is no one to ask. It would be unfair if I were to press the children. Writing to me was patently not their idea. And the teacher is hiding behind them, and cannot be reached.
It would not matter if such letters were a rarity, but they are common. Either there are two or three representative signatories to a single letter, as in the one above, or every child is made to write separately. Repeated phrases, blackboard mantras, tell me what has been taken from the teacher’s instruction, and interlocking patterns of shared statements show who is sitting next to whom. Often there are corrections and ticks in red ink to demonstrate the spontaneity.
Year after year this goes on, with every book; and it is coldly interesting that, without the dates on the letters, it would be hard to put them in their right order. Nothing appears to be changing. One has to close the mind against the implications of what some, and I know that it is only some, teachers are contributing to our culture.
Here is the latest, and it is the worst. It withstands multiple reading, and with each reading any explanation of its being recedes from me. Now it is my turn to ask for help. It is different in that the children’s contributions are accompanied by a signed letter from their teacher: immaculate, apart from its punctuation, in Business English, limned with educational jargon.
“Dear Mr Garner,
I am writing this letter on behalf of forms [X] and [Y] who have recently been studying your book ELIDOR in their English lessons.
“They completed many speaking and listening, reading and writing activities based on the text and found your book very educational and enjoyable to read. The enjoyment experienced when reading the book meant that the pupils were well-motivated which resulted in a positive outcome in terms of the work they produced.
“Please find enclosed some of their letters which outline what the pupils thought of your book and how useful they found it in terms of their learning.
“Many thanks.”
I have quoted that letter exactly, because I do not begin to understand what is going on here. The children wrote, and here are merely enough examples to show my bewilderment at the apparent conflict between the teacher’s letter, and the response of the class. What is going on? Are they on the same planet as each other? I am accustomed to being criticised, but this was a cesspit dumped on my head, and I cannot see the point of the exercise for the teacher or the lesson for me.
I shall run them on, after each other, to try to give some of the effect. The children would be between thirteen and fourteen years old.
“I think that your story was very boring. There was not enough action in it and the plot had been used before. I didn’t really have a favourite part except when the story had finally finished. You could have improved the book by not writing it at all. The Book did not make me want to read it from the start and certainly not from the finish.”
“I think this book is boring but I don’t like reading books anyway but I have read this book and I don’t think it is any good. For starters when I looked at the book I thought it was called Alan Garner. As I was reading this book it started to bore there is nothing funny or interesting. It was a big mistake was reading this book. You should of read this book your self and see what you have gone wrong you should of put something funny in it.”
“Your book is boring and there was not much action and when there was it was no good so you could put more action in it. You could not get in to the story at all because the plot had been used to meany times. In fact it was a mistake writeing the story.”
“I am writing to tell you what I think of your book. Nobody wanted to know. The book didn’t hold my interest at all and I can’t say I have a least favourite part because I didn’t like any of it. It would have been better to have jazzed it up a bit.”
“Your book wasn’t any good and the ending was Rubbish.”
“I thought your book was very borring and there was no action and I would recomend it to people that don’t like action. I would give it 3/10.”
“The best part of your book was the End because I was glad the Story was finished because I didn’t understand it. The worst part was the beginning, because I knew it would go on and on and there was no fun.”
That’s enough. I find the whole thing mesmeric; but you may be by now professionally distressed. The school is an ordinary Comprehensive. I have checked. But something is agley. Failure to connect does not have to be aggressive. I admire this next school, writing of The Owl Service.
“Hi, Alan! This letter is supposed to be 300 words, but I bet you get letters from my other classmates that are only 200. This is 27.”
“I enjoyed reading your novel. I didn’t quite understand the book that much, but it was a great read and I would like to have read it some other time.”
“I liked the book. All the parts were interesting to listen to it when other people were reading it to you because I can’t understand it when I am reading it myself.”
“Hi. My name is Paul. Our English teacher made us read your novel The Owl Service. I think that if your book had been written in English more of my fellow students would have understood it.”
The main drift, is towards a drear comprehension. A teacher, who is typical, alas, wrote:
“For the past three years I have taken The Owl Service with our CSE candidates, and I think, especially with the abler girls, it has been the most popular book on their English literature course. Here are the lines we are working on at present:
1) Try to read Alan Garner’s other books, and write a few sentences about each.
6) In what ways does the poem ‘The Stone Trees’, by John Freeman, remind you of The Owl Service?
8) Answer the questions on the blackboard about The Mabinogion.”
How am I to reply to such as these? I do not understand how I can contribute to what I see as an abuse of story, at which, by replying, I may be thought to connive.
Teachers are no doubt as varied as the rest of our species. What concerns me, is that they are, briefly, in a special position of power at a time when their pupils can be influenced for life. What can I do to protect the future from this young man? It would be easy to diagnose nervousness alone; but I get too many for that to be a transitory lapse of nerve and grammar.
“Dear Alan,
I am a student teacher, beginning my second teaching practice next term.
“So what?
“Well, my scheme of work for class 2 who I am taking for English is an investigation of you and your work. Using you as a springboard, I hope to motivate them sufficiently to write their own interesting and immaginative stories of the inexplicable.
“So what?
“I would like your help. If you can write the boys a letter of encouragement, we would be ‘cock-a-hoop’ and you will have won thirty-one more fans. If you would like to offer suggesstions I would be grateful. If you would like to write a book about me, I would be flattered.
“Hoping to hear from you.”
It is easier for me to cope with Bill the Caveman than with letters such as these. The difficulties, however, seem to work both ways.
“To the Publisher.
Dear Sirs,
As Deputy Headmaster of the above School, I was greatly disturbed when a member of my Staff of this school, brought the book The Owl Service by Alan Garner to me, which had recently been bought on this current requisition. Please refer to Page 64 of this book. I strongly object to the phraseology of this page, and I quote, ‘Welsh git’. We are members of an organized Society, and we are expected to set an example, but if this is supposed to be the Example we set, how can we hope for the future? I find it disturbing that you have published this book. How many more Primary books of this nature have been published? Are other schools, who suffer from the current inflation, having to put up with this kind of rubbish? Isn’t it the job of your Editor to edit these books before publication? Why do you advertise these, amongst worthwhile books, in the Primary Sector?
“I hope that your attention will be drawn to this matter and something could be done about it, at the earliest opportunity. I wonder what the Press would do with this kind of satire. Looking forward to hearing from you in the immediate future.”
What I find most disconcerting here is that someone who writes such prose, with all it suggests, should be qualified to hold a deputy-headship.
“Dear Sir,
I am headteacher of the above school and I would appreciate it if you would forward my letter to Alan Garner.
“It was with his earlier books in mind that I purchased Red Shift. However, having now read it for myself I feel I must protest at some of the words used, such as those on pages 18, 20, 46, 101 and 109. I feel the use of these words add nothing to the story, indeed, they can only cause distress to people such as myself.
“I am very disappointed that Alan Garner has found it necessary to be fashionable in his phraseology at the expense of young and impressionable minds.
“This book was obtained from the Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation, Wakefield, because I took, on past experience, the suitability of the story. Other heads or teachers may not have time to read the book and would naturally include it in their school library with, I feel, irreversible and damaging results.
“I would be very interested in your comments on the matter and hope in future that I may once again recommend Alan Garner books with complete confidence.”
“Alan Garner books”. I spoke earlier about ghetto writing. I wonder, here, whether ghetto reading may not be another danger.
“Dear Mr Garner,
As an English graduate teaching in a grammar school, I have often recommended your books to my pupils. I am therefore disappointed to find that Red Shift does not possess the literary excellence of your earlier work.
“I thought The Owl Service was a very interesting book, with passages of great beauty, but even in that I noticed that slang and bad language were creeping in. If our pupils read this kind of English, they will begin to write it, and this we cannot risk.
“Also, I am sure that some of our intelligent and literary third-formers will not be impressed by the emphasis on violence and a rather distasteful aspect of teenage sexuality found in Red Shift.
“I can see, of course, that both Jan and Tom are victims of an inadequate home background, but I cannot see the necessity for the foul language or the sexual immorality. We know that some teenagers are like them, but we also know that others are strongly idealistic in spite of the so-called permissive society. Why not write for them and help keep them so? Also, why not use your exceptional ability as a writer to perpetuate beautiful English, which seems in grave danger of disappearing?
“I shall look forward to your future books, and hope you will return to your previous high standard.”
The sad aspect of that letter is that the teacher and I care with an equal passion for the same qualities in language. There is so little dividing us, but it is fundamental in its effect on our perceptions.
The problem is not just local. Here is a letter from the librarian of the Horace Ensign Intermediate School, California, to the library supplier in New York.
“A brother librarian finds himself confronted with an irate parent who insists your selection Red Shift should not be on the shelves of any library. He threatens to go to the school board and if necessary hire a lawyer to protest the book.
“What help, if any, can you give us? If we continue to subscribe to your service must we read every book in order to prevent another incident?”
The library supplier’s response was impressive. He sent the librarian a welter of supportive literature to show that the forces represented by the irate parent should, and could, be resisted. It included a booklet entitled What to Do when the Censor Comes. Red Shift was not prosecuted.
It would be dispiriting if all adult, and adult-directed, response were as I have shown. It is a significant element of my daily experience, but, happily, the greater motivator of letters is enthusiasm, not stricture: an excitement of sharing; and it must be said that some of the most supportive and encouraging reactions come from teachers, to whom I have been, without apology, giving what I see to be some necessary stick.
So I shall end on a few of the high notes, the celebrations of the creative act of reading to which teachers offer their lives, for which writers and pupils are grateful. What follows is not about me, but about what we all share in and hope for. It does exist.
“Red Shift is a wonder full book, Tough and smoothly styled as a steel vault. Contents very valuable to all: me too: who want greater freedom of subject matter for Young Adults’ Literature. Awesome applause.”
“I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. I know it’s probably silly, but I just feel I want to say thank you. A 12-year-old and a 20-year-old thank you.
“I have just finished re-reading The Owl Service for about the tenth time since I first read it as a pre-Agatha Christie 12-year-old. And I’m still emotionally churned up by it as I was the first time.
“I think I understand it better now. I mean, I really didn’t have a clue what was going on during my initial reading, other than the barest story outline. But it hit me so hard and so deeply that I have never classed it merely as a book.
“It is, to me, an absorbing emotional experience. I think of it as my book. In the same way that, while you don’t know me, you understand me. You have written for me. Maybe that’s why I’ve got the courage to write to you. I certainly don’t make a habit of this.
“I am a third year student at Frankston’s Teachers’ College and am majoring in Children’s Literature. We have selected one author to ‘study in depth’ this year. I selected you upon the basis of my Owl Service obsession, but have since read most of your other works.
“Do you know, I think my self-indulgent motives for choosing you to study are beginning to backfire on me. I’m having a great deal of trouble writing about your works, especially The Owl Service. It’s too close to me. It has dragged an almost primitive response from me, which I can’t put into words, and, what’s more, don’t want to. And, apart from that, I can’t bear looking at it in terms of literary structure: plot, theme, symbolism, yuk. It’s above that. It is a creation and I can’t destroy it like that.
“I think I’m going to fail this assignment! I’m at the stage now of tearing up articles by respected critics that insist on looking at your work in these terms.
“Anyway, I’ve raved on enough, even though I still haven’t managed to say what I really wanted to. Mainly because I don’t now exactly what it is. I hope you know what it is. Thank you again . . .”
I hope she did not fail her assignment, because there is one teacher in the making who “knows” what books are.
“Your work is becoming known here in Australia, much to the delight of my friend and me. Last year your books were on the reading list for trainee teachers, and it was through discussing the symbolism in Elidor with my friend, who is doing teacher training as a mature age student, that we realized the amazingly hard work you put into the structure of your books. It is giving us the greatest pleasure imaginable to plumb the depths.
“Red Shift had us in raptures. At last here is a writer who seems to know what goes on in our minds as we change babies’ nappies and wash the endless dishes. You say it all for us, and awaken our grey matter once more, so that we can actually put into use all the accumulated data from our reading on myths and legends, Plato, the Eleusinian Mysteries, Jung. Everything is called upon.
“You must go on writing for yourself. It is the only true self we can all share.
“Joan and I discussed whether or not to write to you, because we know you must get a lot of cranky letters, and we didn’t want you to think we were taking your time over nothing. Over nothing?!! It seems to me that, no matter how a writer insulates himself from his critics, he must, somewhere deep down, get some pleasure from knowing that he has touched the heart and mind of a reader, that the message got through. This is the point of this letter. Thank you from us both.”
It is letters such as this that break down the necessary isolation of the writer and create a sense of community: not community of flattery, but a community of caring, emotion and of vision shared. Always the letters are accompanied by a shyness that, one feels, came close to preventing the connection, but the need to speak won through, just as the book did, against all the doubts and fears that attended its creation.
