Casualties of The Battle of Britain
Our house was a temple to The Book. We owned thousands, nay millions of books. They lined the walls, filled the cupboards, and turned the floor into a maze far more complex than Hampton Court's. Books ruled our lives. They were demi-gods. Occasionally, I'd come home to a reenactment of The Battle of Britain in the front room. My beloved parents would be flying round like a pair of demented fighter planes, shrieking and spitting venon at one another. My father would be wearing his traditional uniform of socks and moth-eaten dressing gown and my mother her lemon carpet slippers and housecoat. My entrance would make no difference to their dogfight, but when one of them accidentally (and inevitably) knocked over a pile of books, they'd stop instantly and unite to examine the extent of the damage.
Life contined in this pleasant vein until the day my parents got run down by a newspaper van that thoughtlessly mounted the pavement in Islington High St. It sounds heartless, but looking back, I would say that this was my greatest salvation, because at 15 I was whisked off to live with my mother's stepsister in Totness, Devon.
Bantock, Nick. Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence. Chronicle Books, 1991. ISBN: 0877017883.
posted by JohnM @ 00:40
5 Comments:
I forgot about that bit in the book. Wonderful! Bantock is a clever man.
Stefanie, I'm wondering what you think about the semi-voyeurism of reading Griffin & Sabine in light of your post on memoirs. It seems that's part of the allure.
Oh definitely. But to me there is a difference between letters and memoir. I love reading the letters and diaries of dead writers. They were never meant for public viewing so to me it is an honest and open window into the author's life behind the books. Memoir is meant to be public and no matter how honest an author might be, it is still a public persona. Does that make sense? As for Griffin and Sabine, that is pure fiction--an epistolary novel with the added tactile pleasure of "real" letters.
I definitely agree with you on the public / private distinction, although certain writers seem to be writing for posterity at some point. I guess my point was that, public or private, fiction or memoir, people seem to be drawn to things that are personal, and revealing. I go to a lot of readings, and an extremely common question is 'are your characters based on real people?' Especially regarding the villain. I'm trying to understand where this impulse comes from, since I seem to lack it.
I see what you mean. I lack the impulse to know if the characters are based on real people too. If I find out they are, like Proust's characters tend to be, then I am interested in learning more about the people themselves.
I bet the question at readings comes from people who don't write, who think that everything an author writes about has to be based on real life otherwise how could the author know anything about it? Thus people think Stephen King had a horrible childhood even when he insists otherwise.
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