Looking for Enid - The mystery of the odd anagram

[Moonraker]

I always take anything (except the date and price) that I read in a newspaper with a pinch of salt. I guess if I had the time and inclination, I could find loads of anagrams to prove or disprove a theory in any author's work.

I agree with Tony, it would be interesting to hear Duncan's comments on this.

By the way, what are you doing reading a Dorset newspaper, Tony? Viv will be getting the Wiltshire Times delivered next!

[Green Hedges]

Thanks for that little nudge, Tony. I agree that it might be useful if I say something here.

It's been interesting and a bit scary reading the press's reaction to my book. But once you put something into print you just have to accept what the world makes of it. On the other hand this is perhaps an opportunity to influence what that reaction will be in at least one quarter.

First, yes, I too had to look up the exact definition of the word 'vet' which crops up in the Observer piece. 'To subject to careful and thorough appraisal' it says in my dictionary. That reassured me, because I knew that the members of the Enid Blyton Society who had read the draft of my book (Tony and Anita) hadn't approved it, just been good enough to read it and to let me have the benefit of their personal and knowledgable views.

The Observer piece concentrates exclusively on the Goon=Hugh thesis, though it's only one facet of the book. I don't mind this because of the confidence with which I continue to hold this opinion. To be honest I think it is the geography that is the key thing, not the anagrams, fascinating though those are. Once you're convinced that Peterswood is truly and consistently Bourne End (and that geography lesson starts right at the beginning of 'The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage' when an outhouse burns down in a very precise location in respect to a particular village and to a particular house) it's only a matter of time before you get round to realising that the series is powered by Enid's feelings towards Hugh. I'll be glad to return to this, though I'd prefer to wait until the book has been read by a few people and commented on in the light of having followed the detailed argument.

The Daily Mail piece had some quotes in it which will be good for raising general interest in the book (the Mail's circulation is between 2 and 3 million) and I was delighted that the book had clearly made a strong impact on Val Hennessey, the reviewer. However, Val's comment that my book is a 'wicked wind-up' is well wide of the mark. 'Irony may be skipping pixie-like over every page', as she puts it, but all that means is that the book is written in a playful and, I hope, entertaining way. But that doesn't mean I don't believe what I'm saying. Above all, I have enormous respect for Enid as a creative tour de force. That's the main thing I try and put over in 'Looking For Enid'. That, and to try and work out what was behind her creative drive.

The book is out on October 8, which I don't think either of the pieces makes clear. There is a bit more about it on the publisher's website:
http://www.portobellobooks.com
Though that doesn't say, for example, that the book is illustrated using full-page Eileen Soper illustrations, with one colour overlays, from Famous Five books. Why are they used? Because they are absolutely marvellous, and the ones chosen are intended to illustrate aspects of Enid's relations with her father and husbands (Thomas, Hugh and Kenneth) and some of the characters she writes about (Fatty and Bets). Again, that won't really make sense until people see the book.

Still, I hope that the thrust of 'Looking For Enid' is beginning to come across and that, come the middle of October, the last thing on the minds of the membership of the Enid Blyton Society will be to bring Enid's wonderful books down on my head, which is full to bursting point of Fatty, Bets, Timmy, Kiki, the Magic Faraway Tree, the Naughtiest Girl, the Little Girl from Capernaum, the Wishing Chair, etcetera, etcetera...

Good luck to you all from,
Duncan McLaren
(aka Green Hedges)

PS Both Ming's and Tony's comments about the title are correct.

[Ming]

It was good to hear from, Duncan.

I hope the comments in the thread don't sound 'rude', I certainly think they aren't, but I guess I'd be slightly miffed if this concerned a book I wrote.

Anyway, much as wondered at the reviews, I have to say I'm really looking forward to my dad going to Hong Kong, and bringing my copy of Looking For Enid.

[Kate Mary]

I have just come back from a week-end in Dorset. I'm rested, relaxed, blood-pressure normal and in possession of a first edition copy of "Hollow Tree House" which cost me a fiver, okay, only a reading copy but it is in reasonable nick. I think I will get a lot more pleasure from reading this than "Looking for Enid". Still, I might read it if the library gets a copy.

Kate.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Hope you had a great time in Dorset, Kate.

The newspaper articles about Looking for Enid have unfortunately focussed disproportionately on the Hugh/Goon theory and on the suggestion that the caves and secret passages in Enid Blyton's books were erotic symbols relating to her relationship with Kenneth. Like Tony, I said on reading the book that I disagreed with both those theories. Although these ideas are explored in detail by Duncan, there is a lot more to the book than that. I'm also surprised that the Observer referred to Looking for Enid as a "biography." Personally I don't view the book as a biography but as an imaginative romp through the world of Enid Blyton. When I read it there were parts that grated but also parts that I enjoyed, especially the more poetic episodes and many of the scenes involving the Find-Outers.

Anita

[Moonraker]

I have just come back from a week-end in Dorset. I'm rested, relaxed, blood-pressure normal

You obviously didn't meet Viv, then!

Hollow Tree House is a really good book. There is a great review of it here!

[Kate Mary]

No, I didn't visit Ginger Pop this trip but I did last year. You are right about "Hollow Tree House", it is a super book and deserves to be better known, copies of the original book are hard to come by and usually expensive, I was lucky to find a first edition for £5.

Kate.
P.S. Nice review, Nigel.

[Tony Summerfield]

We have another review of Looking for Enid in today's Guardian.

[Daisy]

Thanks for the link Tony. Whew! I guess the reviewer wasn't that impressed then!

[Tony Summerfield]

It is sometimes said that no publicity is bad publicity, but nevertheless I don't think that Duncan McLaren will be over pleased with the review of his book in The Sunday Times.

[Green Hedges]

Very true, Tony - I am not over the moon about the review of my book in The Sunday Times.

I've tried posting this response to the review in on the Times Online site, but there is too much for the 'readers response' box.

Here is what I tried to post:

************************************************************************************************
As the author of the book that is here slaughtered by Lucy Mangan, I’d like to say something in its defence. But, first, what’s going on when someone as intelligent and funny as Lucy Mangan clearly is chooses to be so relentlessly negative about a book written with goodwill by a fellow writer about a fellow writer. It puts me in mind of Evelyn Waugh who, when he was at public school, would speak at Lancing College’s debating society for motions he actually opposed, just for the intellectual challenge of it. The clever little so-and-so.

OK, here goes. I don’t ‘unblinkingly hail “The Mystery of Holly Lane” as “fabulous entertainment”’. Approval of the book is immediately followed by the sentence: ‘The only trouble with it is that it botches the directions to Fatty’s house.’ This sentence can no more be taken at face-value than the one that precedes it. It’s called irony. And books, such as ‘Looking For Enid’, that try and take on board the ambiguities of life and literature are packed with the stuff. As Lucy Mangan surely knows.

Next (this is going to be a point-by-point rebuttal, so anyone in a hurry should, of course, skip back to their own life): Blyton’s retelling of the bible story 'The Little Girl at Capernaum' is a "stunning literary achievement" (yes, that is a cliché, but even a feisty writer like Lucy has dotted a relatively short review with phrases such as “downright disturbing”, “catering to the lowest common denominator” and “unremittingly dull”) because, with an admirably light touch, Enid Blyton deals with the emotional fallout of the biographical event that had most impact on herself. That is, Enid’s father leaving her mother when Enid was 12 years old. See the book for the detail and the argument.

Next… Actually, I’ve changed my mind, this isn’t going to be a point-by-pointer or it would go on forever. I’ll just deal with the points in the review that seem most misleading. Lucy Mangan reckons that perhaps my most worthless exercise in ‘Looking For Enid’ was to work out that there is a connection between her first husband and a main character in one of her more ambitious series of books. ‘O dear lord – so what?’ she wails. Well, so this. The fact that Enid’s under-mind was digging deep inside her own life experience when coming up with the Mysteries helps explain why they’re a satisfying and challenging read. And if something is a good read, then a literary biographer will try and find out why it’s a good read. Joy dominates the Mysteries, the joy that partly comes from Enid’s recollection of exploring her environment when she was a child that still had a loving father. But there is a complex tussle going on between Fatty and Goon and it’s important both that Fatty wins it and that he keeps his humiliation of Goon within certain limits. Cos Hugh wasn’t such a bad human being (in fact he was a decent and competent bloke), and he was the man Enid loved wholeheartedly at the start of their marriage.

The correspondence between Peter McKellar and Enid Blyton does indeed shed light on Enid’s creativity. They are printed in an appendix to Barbara Stoney’s 1974 biography but a working knowledge of them pervades ‘Looking For Enid’. That is why Enid’s “under-mind” is referred to so often, it’s her phrase. And it is in these letters that Enid Blyton says that she doesn’t use anything in her books that she has not seen or experienced. From there it is a short step to suggesting – as I do in my book – that what she writes about is intimately tied up with the experiences that have had most affect on her as a person. ‘Our books are facets of ourselves,’ as she admits in a letter to McKellar. Perhaps some editors would have pushed me to say even more about the Blyton-McKellar letters, but for sure I follow up much of what Enid fascinatingly reveals there.

In her Guardian column in 2006, Lucy Mangan has this to say about Enid Blyton:

‘I am listing Blyton instead of a single book because the fact is, she wrote the same one eight billion times a year: it is both pointless and practically impossible to elevate one above another. Wherever you start, you will soon have the measure of proto-lesbian George, dickless Dick, Anne the idiot, Julian the interwar home counties' answer to Jack Bauer, and Timmy the dog. They neither change, evolve nor behave in any way approximating that of real people, probably because their inventor was possessed of only two adjectives - "Queer!" and "Rather queer!" - which weren't as interesting then as they are now.’

Mangan seems to think that Blyton just wrote the Famous Five books. Actually, she wrote one per year for twenty-odd years. Other series such as Noddy, the Mysteries, Malory Towers, the Adventure series, the Family books, the Faraway Tree stories etc. etc. deal with different subjects in different ways. As do many one-off books. As do hundreds of short stories which again come in a variety of types. The statement that she wrote the same book eight billion times a year defies belief, even allowing for irony. But what I want to point out about Lucy Mangan’s overview of Enid Blyton is the number of gratuitous sexual innuendoes it contains in such a short passage. Perhaps that explains why she chooses to end her review by plucking from the 300-odd pages of ‘Looking For Enid’ at her disposal a quote that certainly does look crass when shown out of context. The chapter where the torch quote occurs discusses what impact her second marriage had on her writing. Earlier on in the review, Lucy has a go at me for not answering the question as to whether her reproductive problems fuelled her creative drive. Well, there is a fair bit in one chapter about how her reproductive problems, her sex life, the relationship of her mind to her body in general, may have impacted on her writing at a sub-conscious level. I trust that it will be of interest to the reader. Or is it healthier to suggest that the Famous Five books were written by a robot? Open those sluice gates again. Please.

Early in her review, Lucy states that the ‘normal’ part of the text of ‘Looking For Enid’ is peppered with imaginary conversations between real and fictional characters that lead nowhere and don’t illuminate anything. The kind of thing she means is this:

Noddy: “Oh, Big-Ears, she doesn’t like my book.”
Big-Ears: “Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. You know that.”
Noddy: “Oh, but she doesn’t like my book ONE BIT.”
Big-Ears: “I like your book, Noddy, and I’m very nearly as clever as Isaac Newton. But what really matters is what YOU feel about your own book.”
Noddy: “I love it.”
Big-Ears: “Every word?”
Noddy: “Oh, not EVERY word. But especially the word ENID.”

[Eddie Muir]

I have only just registered to use the Enid Blyton Society forums, although I have been a society member for a number of years and and a life-long Blyton devotee. This then is my first attempt to post a message and so I'm hoping that I am able to press all the right buttons in order that it is read by those who may be interested to hear what I have to say. In this instance, my comments concern Duncan McLaren's book Looking For Enid,which I have just finished reading. For the most part I have found the book immensely interesting and great fun, although I must admit to being more than a little sceptical about the psychological interpretations of the Mystery series and nonplussed by sexual references in the Swanage chapter. However, each to his own and Duncan is as entitled to his opinions and elucidations as the rest of us. I can accept that his view is different from mine. My main concern is when a writer makes glaring textual errors: on at least two occasions the author refers to The Mystery of the EMPTY Room (pages 30 and 120) when he means The Mystery of the SECRET Room. This is most odd particularly when he uses the correct title on pages 105 and 106. Surely these errors should have been picked up during proof reading - and they are mistakes that shouldn't have been made in the first place. This kind of carelessness serves only to fuel a lack of confidence in the validity of the author on the part of the reader.

[Tony Summerfield]

Well done Eddie, I had full confidence in your computer abilities! Nice to have you on board.

[Anita Bensoussane]

[Lucy Mangan in the Sunday Times:]

Like many, many of us, Duncan McLaren was a devoted and indiscriminate consumer of Enid Blyton’s books in his youth, which is a glorious and admirable condition for a child to exist in. It is markedly less glorious and admirable, however, in an adult, and In Looking for Enid (described on the flap as an “endeavour to reach the source of Blyton’s torrent of stories”) it can become downright disturbing.

Lucy Mangan is wrong to say that Duncan McLaren is an "indiscriminate consumer" of Enid Blyton's books. Even as children, many of us questioned various aspects of Blyton's work while still enjoying it. Lucy Mangan could probably poke fun at a lot of us too, in a similar fashion, by taking things we've written on these Forums and quoting them out of context!

Welcome to the Forums, Eddie Muir!

Anita

[Lenoir]

These reviews do tend to make this book sound intriguing, so I will consider buying it. I suppose some of the criticism might be justified, but I’ll have to read the book and decide for myself. It's good to have the author here to explain things too!

One of the points I will agree with right now is the description of The Mystery of Holly Lane as “fabulous entertainment” . (Chapter 4 is great fun.)
In this eleventh book Fatty is in top form and this is one of the best of the series for me.
Next Monday it will be exactly 54 years since it was first published (according to my Methuen copy!).