Sexist and racist elements?

[Wolfgang]

Anita's right, it's Upper 4th Malory Towers.

[Courtenay]

When reading this thread I sometimes have the feeling that people don't know this quotation:

" ... and not even realizing how she had distorted the facts, so that though most of them were capable of simple and kindly explanations, she had presented them as pictures of real badness."

I haven't read the Malory Towers books myself, but that's a jolly good quote.

[Rob Houghton]

     By the way, Rob, I'm a bit puzzled by part of what you said: you said you don't much like the "tag lines" at the ends of chapters, but you do like the passages in short stories and novels that talk to the reader.
     I'm not really sure what a tag line is, so I wasn't quite sure what you were referring to - but I took it to refer to authorial comments inserted into a narrative. So it seemed to me these two things you don't and do like, respectively, were really similar kinds of things. So what distinction were you drawing there? (Just wondering....)

I guess the distinction I'm drawing isn't a very clear one, as I do like the author intrusion sometimes, but not always. I liked it as a small child, in the short stories, where Enid might say something like 'it really served him right, didn't it?' etc - but I've never liked Enid's over-use of the technique in the later Famous Five, Secret Seven, or Barney books, where she purely uses the author-intrusion method as a means of providing a 'cliff-hanger'. A good example of one is the end of chapter 8 of 'Look Out Secret Seven' -

"Yes - it was! Hold your breath a little longer, Secret Seven. Lie down Scamper. Tom Smith is in hiding now - waiting, waiting, waiting - for somebody else to come'

She also uses the 'author-intrusion' method at the end of nearly every chapter of 'The Hidey Hole' when in fact she could just as easily described the scene to create tension, rather than speak directly to the reader. I find it more intrusive in her mystery/adventure books, but not so bad in the Galliano stories etc.

Funnily enough, I do enjoy the author intrusion that E Nesbit uses - and also AA Milne - but they are very much a part of the author's style, whereas Enid only dabbles with the technique.

[Daisy]

I've never been keen on it in the long novels - short stories are different, I agree. I felt the direction of remarks to me, the reader,somehow interrupted the feel of the whole thing for me. It's hard to explain. Sometimes it jarred more than at others.

[Fiona1986]

I'm not a fan of the 'author intrusions' for the most part. They jar me out of the story. It's like breaking the fourth wall on TV or when someone accidentally looks directly at the camera and reminds you it's all an act.

[Courtenay]

I don't mind author intrusions if they're kept to a minimum — as I think others have said, they're usually better in stories for younger children. "Breaking the fourth wall" in TV or stage shows can be fun sometimes, precisely because the actors aren't "meant" to do it, but it only really works if it's done skilfully and with humour. (Where would panto be without it?? )

[Rob Houghton]

One of the best musicals of all time - Blood Brothers - uses auther intrusion throughout and it's very effective, so I agree, sometimes it works well - especially on stage.

[Courtenay]

Oh no it doesn't! (Oh yes it does...)

[MJE]

I've never been keen on it in the long novels - short stories are different, I agree. I felt the direction of remarks to me, the reader,somehow interrupted the feel of the whole thing for me. It's hard to explain. Sometimes it jarred more than at others.

     Funny - a few have said it's different between short stories and novels - but this makes no difference at all to me. What am I missing, I wonder.
     A couple mentioned the fourth wall, so I guess my earlier comment about that made my point clear anyway. I wouldn't know much about the effectiveness of it in stage productions, since I don't ever attend those; but I would definitely think it a special effect of some kind to achieve a comedic or rhetorical effect, but not a standard story-telling technique - whether on stage or in a book.
     I think I have occasionally seen a film where a voice came in, and it seemed to be the voice of the protagonist, but he or she was not speaking to other characters, but his voice just superimposed, appearing to address the viewer to fill in background details that need to be conveyed, but are difficult to work into the actual film itself. And that does kind of work for me when done right - but I think it would usually still be better avoided and put into the film narrative itself, if that can be done somehow. It probably works best in work of an autobiographical nature - the sort of thing that, if it were in a book, would be written in the first person anyway, and much of it in the present tense.
     (I'm trying to think where I've seen this, and am not quite sure I remember. But I have a feeling both "The Castle" and "Red Dog" did it, and it did seem to work in those kinds of films (if I am remembering correctly, it being several years now since I saw either of these.)

Regards, Michael.

[Daisy]

I've never been keen on it in the long novels - short stories are different, I agree. I felt the direction of remarks to me, the reader,somehow interrupted the feel of the whole thing for me. It's hard to explain. Sometimes it jarred more than at others.

Funny - a few have said it's different between short stories and novels - but this makes no difference at all to me. What am I missing, I wonder.

I think for me the short stories never absorbed me into the narrative the way a longer novel can, so the ending which addresses the reader didn't have the same impact. I also used a lot of the stories to read aloud to classes of 5 and 6 year olds when I taught infants - we had a 15 minute story time at the end of each school day. It was useful to use Enid's questions then - it saved me asking some of my own!

[Rob Houghton]

It's interesting how for the most part I dislike author intrusions in EB's longer books, but I absolutely love the author intrusions in E Nesbit. Without them, I wouldn't find 'The Enchanted Castle' half so entertaining. E Nesbit uses author intrusion in such a clever chatty way, whereas Enid's author intrusion is more often used to add drama or suspense - not a technique I'm keen on. I think that's why I don't mind the author intrusion in the short stories - it's usually just a jokey comment rather an attempt at being suspenseful.

[Tony Summerfield]

One of the best musicals of all time - Blood Brothers - uses auther intrusion throughout and it's very effective, so I agree, sometimes it works well - especially on stage.

I fully agree with you here, Rob, it worked very well in Blood Brothers. I suspect a similar technique will be used in the musical version of The Go-Between which I am going to see next month in London. Michael Crawford is the narrator looking back at events that happened in his childhood, and I believe that the musical follows the original book more closely than the recent excellent BBC production which really only used Jim Broadbent as the old Leo at either end of the story.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I too love the narration in Blood Brothers - it's really chilling and allows the audience to view things with a degree of advance knowledge, colouring all the events that unfold on the stage. I've seen Blood Brothers three times (including once with Tony, where Marti Pellow of Wet Wet Wet was the narrator).

I do like the author intrusion sometimes, but not always. I liked it as a small child, in the short stories, where Enid might say something like 'it really served him right, didn't it?' etc - but I've never liked Enid's over-use of the technique in the later Famous Five, Secret Seven, or Barney books, where she purely uses the author-intrusion method as a means of providing a 'cliff-hanger'. A good example of one is the end of chapter 8 of 'Look Out Secret Seven' -

"Yes - it was! Hold your breath a little longer, Secret Seven. Lie down Scamper. Tom Smith is in hiding now - waiting, waiting, waiting - for somebody else to come'

I've never been keen on it in the long novels - short stories are different, I agree. I felt the direction of remarks to me, the reader,somehow interrupted the feel of the whole thing for me.

I would definitely think it a special effect of some kind to achieve a comedic or rhetorical effect, but not a standard story-telling technique - whether on stage or in a book.

I think for me the short stories never absorbed me into the narrative the way a longer novel can, so the ending which addresses the reader didn't have the same impact. I also used a lot of the stories to read aloud to classes of 5 and 6 year olds when I taught infants - we had a 15 minute story time at the end of each school day. It was useful to use Enid's questions then - it saved me asking some of my own!

E Nesbit uses author intrusion in such a clever chatty way, whereas Enid's author intrusion is more often used to add drama or suspense - not a technique I'm keen on. I think that's why I don't mind the author intrusion in the short stories - it's usually just a jokey comment rather an attempt at being suspenseful.

It's interesting to contemplate the different types of authorial insertions. In Enid Blyton's short stories they tend to come right at the end and I agree that that does work particularly well. Rather than rushing straight onto the next story, it's nice to be prompted to stop for a moment and ponder on what one has just read. Although the questions may be considered rhetorical, it's natural for them to be taken literally by small children and elicit a response, encouraging youngsters to reflect on the story's message and relate it to their own life. Great idea to use the questions to provoke a classroom discussion, Daisy!

I see what you mean about Enid Blyton sometimes overusing the technique as a means of providing suspense or a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter, Rob, but if it's used sparingly I think it can be effective. As a child, when I read interjections like, "Yes - it was! Hold your breath a little longer, Secret Seven. Lie down Scamper. Tom Smith is in hiding now - waiting, waiting, waiting - for somebody else to come", they added to the tension and I didn't feel that the spell was broken. They were anxious, urgent comments, perhaps spoken by an observer or disembodied voice (I'm not sure I even stopped to wonder who, or thought of it as "the author"), and they enhanced the atmosphere for me because the sense of disquiet that they expressed echoed my own feelings of trepidation. In the short stories, however, I had an impression of Enid Blyton herself reaching out to me and including me in her circle.

Tony's mention of The Go-Between got me thinking that the first line of that novel goes rather well with this thread:

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

[Courtenay]

When I attended researcher David Rudd's excellent talk at the Blyton exhibition in Canterbury last year, one of the best points he made was that Enid's style is that of a real storyteller — she writes just as if she's watching the story unfold in front of her (which is how she herself described her writing process) and relating it to a group of children gathered around her. Her authorial interjections are a natural part of that technique, whether she's addressing her audience or speaking directly to her characters. I agree it can be a tiresome device when overused, but I think Enid normally manages not to overdo it.

As for C.S. Lewis, who's been mentioned a few times — if I'm remembering rightly, he used authorial interjections quite a lot in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, his first book for children, but I'm pretty sure he did it less often in the later Narnia books. Maybe his own style was maturing as he went! But I never minded it in those books either. Again, so long as it's not done so often as to be trite, it can really help the reader to feel included in the telling of the story.

Tony's mention of The Go-Between got me thinking that the first line of that novel goes rather well with this thread:

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

Good point!

[Rob Houghton]

I've just realised the difference between author intrusion that I enjoy and author intrusion that I don't enjoy! It's very simple actually - but it only came to me when I looked through a few other Secret Seven books just now to see if Enid used the technique a lot at the end of chapters.

I discovered that she did use the technique quite a lot in The Secret Seven series - even though I'd imagined that she used it more in the later books in the series, as this is where I've noticed it most. I thought it was a technique she seemed to fall back on more as she got older and her memory and skill began to fade - but looking at the earlier books, she used author intrusion quite frequently.

So - what was the difference between the later books and the earlier ones? Looking more closely, I discovered that the type of author intrusion I dislike is where Enid actually talks to her characters, rather than to her readers. The parts where she talks to her readers - such as at the end of short stories, or the start and end of the Galliano books, etc, is a nice technique which I don't mind too much, and even enjoy (especially in E Nesbit books) but during the late 1950's and early 1960's Enid started speaking to her characters rather than her readers - such as in the later Secret Seven books, and also Famous Fives, and even the last couple of Barney books.