A mammoth undertaking

I have just finished the recording of Tom Brown’s School Days that I have been doing for LibriVox. This is my first solo project, and I’m very pleased with it. Now that I’ve finished, though, perhaps it’s time to think about what the book meant to me.

I remembered the book from the 1970’s BBC TV series that I watched as a child. I particularly remembered the scene where Flashman, the school bully, roasts Tom in front of an open fire. But although the struggle against a bullying culture is a large part of the book’s message, I was surprised to realize that it’s main message was the growth of a normal, English boy into an English man.

The opening chapters deal with Tom’s early childhood, and describe country life in the Vale of the White Horse. The people we see there are held up as examples of good, honest working folk, the best that England can produce. The author certainly does not approve of modern customs.

Tom is sent to Rugby, a public school, and we find that he is no better than average at his lessons, but masterful at getting into and out of trouble: he comes home late after a long run; he falls foul of a gamekeeper and a local farmer; and he is involved in a famous fight. The School’s headmaster despairs of him, but he hatches a plan to pair Tom with a “good” boy who will need his protection, and so we meet George Arthur.

For me, this is where the book loses a great deal of its fun. It becomes a catalogue of virtuous behaviour as Tom learns to try properly at his lessons instead of using a crib, to pray nightly as he was taught, and to value honesty and “Christian” manliness. My strong impression is that this second part of the book represents the meat of what Thomas Hughes has to say to us. I found it more than a little priggish and proselytising, and was made distinctly uncomfortable by the overtly Christian message. For instance, one of the scenes that had the greatest effect on Tom was talking with Arthur , who had narrowly survived a bout of fever. The dream that Arthur recounts isn’t at all subtle in its portrayal of Christian ideals, and yet it strongly affected Tom. It would have had me sticking two fingers down my throat if I’d been in Tom’s position.

Nevertheless, I am glad I did re-visit this book. I now have a much deeper appreciation of what it really is. And most importantly, I have a deep pride in what I have made.

Fanny Hill is a famous, nay notorious, novel by John Cleland, whose heroine is a self-described woman of pleasure. The edition I read was the LibriVox audio version, recorded by multiple readers in the early part of 2006. It is the story of a young girl (she is no more than 20 years old at the end of the novel) who falls into “bad” ways. She tells her tale very explicitly, and it seems that the novel was the first widely read book in the English Language that was labelled erotica. At the end of the story, however, Fanny chooses the path of virtue, citing her pleasure in her vices as a measure of how good it is to be virtuous!

Erotica, my arse! This is pornography plain and simple. The characters barely attain two dimensions, even Fanny herself. Most are thin and sketchy, and little more than caricatures. Good characters are all uniformly good looking, and give Fanny a good time sexually, while bad characters are ugly, and they bore and pain her. Worst of all, to my mind, is Fanny’s intolerance of male homosexuality, even though she is thwarted in her attempts to have the only two men she ever sees together arrested for their “crime”.

I didn’t like this book at all. I finished it, just. I made the effort to finish it in tribute to the LibriVox readers who volunteered their time, and partly also because it is so well known that there must be something to it. I kept hoping that there would be more to the book than mere titillation, but the story finished before the quality arrived. My loss. Don’t let it be yours. This book is a warning that notoriety is not a good reason to read a book.

Verdict: no (and only just escaped being a NO).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Frost at Midnight is the fortnightly poem at the moment on LibriVox. It forms a circular journey of linked thoughts, starting with the frost on the window and moving through the writer’s own thoughts, to contemplations about his baby, sleeping in his arms. Next the fluttering flame in the grate reminds him of his school days when he would day-dream while watching a similar flame. Thinking about his own past, and its hardships prompts thoughts about his baby’s future, and his determination that the infant’s future will be as good as his own past was hard, good in all seasons, including winter. And so we return to the quiet frost.

The poem is written in iambic pentameters. A long time ago I learned to scan Latin poetry, so I thought I knew about this: mixtures of spondees (DUM DUM) and dactyls (DUM DI-DI). I was stunned to find that almost every foot was a spondee or a trochee (DUM DI). When I thought about English doggerel, however, with its characteristic dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum rhythm (recall Hiawatha!) I realized that my preconceptions were just that, and that I should discard them.

But I did look through the poem, just to be sure I knew how to read it, and I found a couple of lines where an odd or archaic pronunciation would be necessary to keep the meter. For example the first two lines are

The frost performs its secret ministry
Unhelped by an wind. The owlet’s cry …

in which the word unhelped must be pronounced with three syllables instead of two to keep the meter of the line intact. Interspersed was similar, requiring four, not three syllables. Imagine me now muttering the poem with my fingers beating on the desk in time with each syllable, as I checked every single word to see whether I should say any more of them in that odd way. I found these: populous, numberless, fluttering, and articulate I said with only two syllables each; tower had only one syllable. There were a few others, but you get the picture.

The other challenge in reading the poem was to prevent myself from reading it line by line instead of in meaningful phrases.

What I’ve described makes it seem as though reading the poem was quite an effort, and you’d be right, it was. But I actually found the effort well worth it. By spending so much time on it, and thinking about how I was going to read it aloud, I found that I understood it so much better than I did on first reading. I thought at first it was a little rambling and pointless; by the end I appreciated the circular route the poet had taken, and understood his desire for his child to have a better life than he had had.

It was definitely a positive experience for me, one I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t decided to volunteer at LibriVox. In fact, even when I did volunteer I never imagined I would read poetry, and still less did I imagine that I would enjoy it. Thanks Hugh.

On LibriVox some of us are trying to read a book a week for the whole of 2008. I’ll try to keep a record here of my books. As you might imagine, not all of my books will be printed. I love listening to audio books, some from LibriVox, others by podcasters, and yet others from Podiobooks.

Part of the reason for making this record is to encourage me to think about my reactions to the book. I’ll summarize the text, without spoilers if that is relevant, and then I’ll say whether or not I liked the book. I’ll allow myself four levels of liking:

• N(O!) - I hated it, it’s a surprise that I finished it, if indeed I did.
• n(o) - I didn’t like it, and I may not have finished it.
• y(es) - not bad, but not one of my favourites.
• Y(ES!) - great! I’ll almost certainly re-read this one day and I’ll probably recommend it to friends.

This week’s book is Thornyhold, by Mary Stewart. Geillis (pronounced “Jillis” I think) is the daughter of a clergyman, who was generally unhappy as a child, with only a few bright spots: a short-lived pet; and the very infrequent visits of a magical “sponsor” (what else do you call an irreligious Godmother?) after whom Geillis is named.

When Geillis the sponsor dies, she leaves her cottage Thornyhold to our heroine, who moves into the house and finds the peace and joy that she lacked while growing up. She also discovers that a puzzle has been bequeathed with the house. With the help of a friendly boy, Will, and his father, and a cat called Hodge, Geillis tackles the puzzle and begins to live happily. Will she live happily ever after? The page I linked to, at my local library, lists the book’s genre as Romantic Suspense, so I don’t want to give away the ending.

I loved the book, and devoured it in only a couple of days. I liked Geillis’s indomitable spirit, which she maintained even after a thoroughly dispiriting early life. The magical moments felt plausible but dreamlike, and were a temporary respite from the awfulness that left me hoping for better for her. But the suspense was carefully handled so I wasn’t sure of the outcome until the dénouement, which was satisfying. I have no hesitation in giving it my top mark: Y