Looking for Enid - The mystery of the odd anagram

[Kitty]

I think it is awfully difficult to impose a modern political reading on a vintage text. For example E Nesbit, a lifelong socialist, has been very misread using this methodology (mainly by amateur critics who have fallen into the trap of failing to research her well-documented political beliefs!). I prefer to try to take any text in the context of its own time, and if I can't do that, because the sentiments offend me too much, I just leave the book alone.

[tkurbjuhn]

@ anita: according to Robert Putnam ( http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c4ac4a74-570f ... ck_check=1 ), people with " good character" only show up in a society which is not based on ethnic diversity. And this society is shown by Enid Blyton, there are very few foreigners with positive connotations in her books, and these foreigners don´t belong to the regular gang of kids. It would be easy to get some information on what Enid Blyton herself thougth on this theme by asking her daughter. I don´t belief that Mrs. Blyton constructed her stories in the way she did just because she obeyed to the values of her time. If she would have been against the nationalism of her time, I think she would have build in this thinking in some way in her books.

[Anita Bensoussane]

[Tkurbjuhn:] ...according to Robert Putnam ( http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c4ac4a74-570f ... ck_check=1 ), people with " good character" only show up in a society which is not based on ethnic diversity.

Sorry, but that statement sounds laughable to me!

I read the Robert Putnam piece and don't think it's true that diversity necessarily creates distrust. It can do if people of different races within a society are wary of one another and avoid mixing, and that has happened in certain areas of Britain. However, where mixing does occur (and it is that which constitues a truly diverse community; not groups living in different parts of the same town but having little or nothing to do with one another) barriers can be broken down. Learning the language of a country is one of the factors which aids integration, I think, and if I were to move to another country where English isn't spoken my first priority would be to learn to communicate in the language of my new community as quickly as possible.

I still believe that Enid Blyton was merely portraying the British society she saw around her, which at that time was mainly white. If she were writing today she would undoubtedly include characters from a range of ethnic backgrounds in her stories.

Anita

[tkurbjuhn]

I am not so xenophobic as it seems from this discussion. My wife ist not-european, and I think contacts are possible on an individual basis or on the basis of little educated groups: and this is the world shown in the Blyton books.
My experience at work shows me that probably Mr. Putnam is right. I have worked many years in jobs at the bottom of society, newspaper-delivery for example. The staff was from all continents and there was allmost no contact between the ethnic groups. And the tensions between the members of the same ethnic were high, too.
I know England only from the Blyton books, some newspaper-reading and one visit in the last year. Perhaps it is a " disappointed love", as I see that people behave racist but don´t speak about it. Behaving racist means: when visiting Beaconsfield or Bourne End, you see very few foreigners. You see some Ferraris and signs like " neighbourhood watch", for me a sign that fear and distrust have already arrived in the parts of the society, where you don´t have mixture of ethnics.Anita, the mixing in the way you describe doesn´t occur.When visiting London-Barking, you see the same as in Beaconsfield, only the other way round. There ist no contact between the races. The (white) police guys keep sitting in their police station a few meters away, whilst in a shop two black shop-owners have a hard boxing fight beating a third black man out of their shop. I am used to such scenes from Berlin, but I think that the people living in Beaconsfield would be a bit shocked having seen it.
This rich people living in Beaconsfield don´t live the diversity lifestyle they preach. It is the same development as in Germany where there is a saying "links reden, rechts leben"( talk left-wing, live right-wing).

[Anita Bensoussane]

[Tkurbjuhn:] My wife ist not-european, and I think contacts are possible on an individual basis or on the basis of little educated groups...

Well, that's where it all starts, surely? Such small-scale contacts are extremely important in helping people get established and feel that they belong to a country. Putting down roots is essential, since a feeling of alienation from one's community can lead to people becoming social misfits and perhaps even turning to crime in the long run (it's not only immigrants who can feel alienated of course; indigenous people may feel alienated from society too if they consider that they've been let down by their family, school, social workers, those in positions of authority, etc.)

My husband is also from abroad (he's Moroccan) and in the last fortnight alone we have socialised with families or individuals from Pakistan, China, Spain and Croatia, all of whom live in our town. There are people of lots of different races at my husband's workplace and at our children's schools - that's the norm in large towns like ours, though not in all areas of Britain simply because newcomers to a country tend to settle in larger towns and cities, where there are more jobs. Racism rears its ugly head from time to time and there is a BNP presence in our district, but thankfully people who judge others by the colour of their skin are outnumbered by those who relate to others according to their character.

Sorry for straying so far from the topic!

Anita

[tkurbjuhn]

The England you describe and the country I visited last year seem to be two different countries. I didn´t get the impression that the people living in Beaconsfield are longing to be visited by the ones living in London-Barking, as I don´t have get the impression the people living in Berlin-Zehlendorf want to be visited by the people living in Berlin-Neukölln. Because of the hate-speech-laws people don´t dare to speak openly anymore, but their behavior is a speech of its own. They move away, but don´t dare to speak about the true reasons: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1770" target="_blank
Perhaps I am disappointed because in my mind England always was a country with democratic traditions, perhaps I misinterpreted the Blyton books in this way. In reality the british people seem to behave far more like the parents of Pip and Bets Hilton or even Goon than the find-outers or inspector Jenks. And because of the germans getting the democracy with a written constitution presented as a gift after WWII, they seem to have more rights in free speech than the people in England.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Unfortunately ghettos have developed in some places, with people of different races living virtually separate existences within the same town. That situation needs to be addressed and, since there are other towns which are multi-racial yet haven't experienced such problems, hopefully they will prove to be a source of help and advice.

We're all members of the human race - that's what's important. And that's what comes through to me in Enid Blyton's books.

Although I have criticised some of Duncan McLaren's theories in Looking for Enid , the book is a celebration of Enid's creativity and zest for life and it's good to be reminded of that when so many critics seem to want to brand Blyton as racist or sexist, unable to get beyond that and see what the enduring appeal of her work really is.

Anita

[Tony Summerfield]

Two more reviews of Duncan's book to digest. The first from The List by Peggy Hughes isn't over enthusiastic, but the other one in The Times by Frank Cottrell Boyce, spends more time tearing into any adults (us!) who like Enid Blyton books.

For those that don't know who he is, Frank Cottrell Boyce won the Carnegie medal for his book Millions and his follow up book, Framed, got shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread (now Costa) Children's Book Prize and the Guardian Children's book prize. At a wild guess he is not too keen on Enid Blyton!

[Kate Mary]

Thanks for keeping us up to speed on the reviews, Tony, I'm beginning to feel sorry for Duncan McLaren. With regard to Frank Cottrell Boyce, I did start to read "Millions" but decided life was too short. As a general rule I don't read anything that has been shortlisted for the Booker, Orange, Whitbread, Guardian or any other prize, but I picked it up on my tea break at the library when I had nothing else to read.

Kate.

[Ming]

The Times article really made me a bit annoyed.

[Anita Bensoussane]

[Frank Cottrell Boyce writing in The Times:] Whenever I come across adults who enthuse about Enid Blyton I feel just as bewildered as I did that day. It's not Blyton's fault but the fact is that her books share an iconography with the more bracing kinds of erotica — leggy tomboys getting into scrapes, girls in school uniform left bound and gagged in underground chambers and so on.

Frank Cottrell Boyce would obviously be totally bemused by this website, then! I notice that he says nothing at all of substance in his criticism of adult Blyton fans, but instead resorts to wildly exaggerated accounts of the "erotica" that he apparently sees in Enid Blyton books. And he's the one accusing us of being perverted?!

[Frank Cottrell Boyce:] If you're looking to reconnect with the big baby inside yourself, that's fine. But if you want something to share with your children, do what Blyton did — read The Princess and Curdie. Reading them Blyton is the equivalent of feeding them Spangles.

Not only exaggeration here, but inaccuracy. Enid Blyton never tells us whether she read The Princess and the Curdie, though she does talk about having read The Princess and the Goblin about a dozen times.

Enid Blyton and Spangles were both a part of my childhood. It's even possible that I sometimes read an Enid Blyton book while sucking Spangles!

Anita

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

It often seems to me that reviews tell us far more about the mind set of the reviewer than what is actually being reviewed!

Viv

[Tony Summerfield]

With regard to Frank Cottrell Boyce, I did start to read "Millions" but decided life was too short. As a general rule I don't read anything that has been shortlisted for the Booker, Orange, Whitbread, Guardian or any other prize, but I picked it up on my tea break at the library when I had nothing else to read.

Kate.

I have read Millions as well, Kate - and I finished it! I do agree with you about these prize-winning children's books, the judges do tend to pick oddballs as the winners and certainly Millions is a very quirky book (it was also turned into a film). It came out in 2004 and the follow-up, Framed, was published a year later, but Frank Cottrell Boyce has had nothing published since then.

Clearly he found that it was easier to criticise other authors than it was to write his own books.

[RDMorrell]

It often seems to me that reviews tell us far more about the mind set of the reviewer than what is actually being reviewed!

Viv

I think that's a very astute observation. It also seems to me that there is a great deal of prejudice against Enid Blyton - which is ironic, given how often she has been accused of various forms of prejudice herself!

[Eddie Muir]

I agree wholeheartedly with the views of Lucky Star and Julie2owlsdene regarding the textual changes in Enid Blyton's books. As far as I'm concerned all literary works - whether it's Dickens, Richmal Crompton or whoever - are also historical works which reflect the values, attitudes and character of the age in which the writers lived. To make any changes to the text of a work is sacrilege and totally deplorable. The recent chunks of textual replacement inflicted on Enid Blyton's books is totally unnecessary and do much to spoil the spirit of the stories. Some changes are more ridiculous than others and a case in point is the change in the Egmont edition of the Mystery series which makes Fatty call his mother "mummy". As if someone of his stature would refer to his maternal parent in this manner: too silly for words. In the original books, Fatty always referred to her as "mother". This is only one of many irritating and gratuitous textual changes in the recent editions of Enid Blyton's books.