Mostly The Dark is Rising...
Feb. 18th, 2006 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lady_schrapnellJust finished the reread of all five books of The Dark is Rising sequence - which I interrupted (partly to get a break from the hideously small print of my horrible all-in-one edition) with a reread of Joan Aiken'sThe Stolen Lake. That went right after The Grey King, for the interest of extraordinarily similar motifs with extraordinarily dissimilar end-result! Weird.
I read the books (with the possible exception of Over Sea, Under Stone, which I might easily have read as a child without any clear memory of having done so) first to older daughter, and didn't have any very strong memories about the books - we'd liked them enough to read them all, obviously, but I wasn't grabbed strongly enough for rereads to younger daughter, or to buy all of them. So the consideration in Four British Fantasists I had really to follow almost in abstract (always well backed-up by quotation, of course, so not difficult to do!). (Not true for King of Shadows, which I'd read more recently to older daughter, and had loved.) Now working in the other direction, and rereading the texts with all the material in 4BF in my head, was both fascinating and a bit - disconcerting, maybe. For one thing, I found some of the writing so powerful and the work overall so very rich, that I wondered why I hadn't responded more deeply to it the first time around. At the same time, reading with critical debates about the books in mind kept me somewhat distanced and yet sure that the analyzing I was doing while reading had not happened the first time.
All in all, I ended up feeling that they were wonderful, if flawed, and the sheer scope of the sequence more than compensates for the weaknesses. For me, obviously - this is a personal response rather than an evaluation, and what she's doing is so very much my kind of thing, while it will leave lots cold. But I do wish the time-travelling possible (sometimes) in the books could have been allowed her and she could have had a very close, very admiring reader of the books as works-in-progress who was ready to nit-pick, pointing out to her all the little problems. I can easily picture it: 'Susan, this scene is just wonderful - beautifully evocative and terrifying. But this line contradicts what you said two pages/chapters/books ago.' Or 'Fantastic - but you haven't quite thought out the consequences of allowing the Light/Dark the ability to do Whatever - if they can do this here, why couldn't they just have...' And one of the things I'd love to have got thrown out are the bits in which the various waves of invaders of England are said to be of the Dark (destroying just for the fun of it), until they're pacified by the land and become Ferdinand-ly flower-pickers ready to be gratuitously attacked by the next wave. I do not for a second believe that the books give evidence of SC as a nasty imperialist-type (whether convinced by Charlie's carefully thought-out discussion or the texts themselves), but you don't have to be sitting in the neighbouring island-nation with some awareness of its history to have big problems with that idea!
May ask permission to quote a chunk from Four British Fantasists, which said so much more than I ever could, and so well, about the delights of the sequence.
Now back to course text reading - though found I wasn't at all in the mood for The Jungle Book this morning, for some reason. Maybe Wind in the Willows, or ... don't know yet!
I read the books (with the possible exception of Over Sea, Under Stone, which I might easily have read as a child without any clear memory of having done so) first to older daughter, and didn't have any very strong memories about the books - we'd liked them enough to read them all, obviously, but I wasn't grabbed strongly enough for rereads to younger daughter, or to buy all of them. So the consideration in Four British Fantasists I had really to follow almost in abstract (always well backed-up by quotation, of course, so not difficult to do!). (Not true for King of Shadows, which I'd read more recently to older daughter, and had loved.) Now working in the other direction, and rereading the texts with all the material in 4BF in my head, was both fascinating and a bit - disconcerting, maybe. For one thing, I found some of the writing so powerful and the work overall so very rich, that I wondered why I hadn't responded more deeply to it the first time around. At the same time, reading with critical debates about the books in mind kept me somewhat distanced and yet sure that the analyzing I was doing while reading had not happened the first time.
All in all, I ended up feeling that they were wonderful, if flawed, and the sheer scope of the sequence more than compensates for the weaknesses. For me, obviously - this is a personal response rather than an evaluation, and what she's doing is so very much my kind of thing, while it will leave lots cold. But I do wish the time-travelling possible (sometimes) in the books could have been allowed her and she could have had a very close, very admiring reader of the books as works-in-progress who was ready to nit-pick, pointing out to her all the little problems. I can easily picture it: 'Susan, this scene is just wonderful - beautifully evocative and terrifying. But this line contradicts what you said two pages/chapters/books ago.' Or 'Fantastic - but you haven't quite thought out the consequences of allowing the Light/Dark the ability to do Whatever - if they can do this here, why couldn't they just have...' And one of the things I'd love to have got thrown out are the bits in which the various waves of invaders of England are said to be of the Dark (destroying just for the fun of it), until they're pacified by the land and become Ferdinand-ly flower-pickers ready to be gratuitously attacked by the next wave. I do not for a second believe that the books give evidence of SC as a nasty imperialist-type (whether convinced by Charlie's carefully thought-out discussion or the texts themselves), but you don't have to be sitting in the neighbouring island-nation with some awareness of its history to have big problems with that idea!
May ask permission to quote a chunk from Four British Fantasists, which said so much more than I ever could, and so well, about the delights of the sequence.
Now back to course text reading - though found I wasn't at all in the mood for The Jungle Book this morning, for some reason. Maybe Wind in the Willows, or ... don't know yet!
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-18 04:57 pm (UTC)And now I'm even more intrigued by Four British fantasists!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-24 12:40 am (UTC)As you should be. ;) Do you think a library near you will be likely to be ordering it, or be convinceable to order it? It's not horrendously priced as academic books go, but that's still pretty serious money. Charlie doesn't know about author's copies yet, but there may have to be a Down Under loan copy, if libraries won't co-operate.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-24 06:31 pm (UTC)And if those avenues don't work we'll talk about a Down Under copy :)