Posted by Peter H on March 19, 2004 at 19:10:51 from 213.122.47.123 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Praise from the past posted by Prue Eckett on March 19, 2004 at 06:30:21:
The ‘no quarrelling’ criticism of AR is a good old debating topic (none the worse for that) and came up regularly in the early Lit Weekends of TARS. Critics like Peter Hunt and Nicholas Tucker have commented that there should perhaps have been more emotional inter-reaction among the Swallows. I have never agreed with this. AR had a particular object in mind when he wrote the books - to construct an adventure in which the children had to pit their wits against an enemy, or sometimes against the terrain. To have any hope of success, they had to show a corporate sense of purpose, and remain totally ‘focussed’ on their aim. The reader is swept along with this. Quarrels among the children would be a distraction for them and boring for us, and the ‘natives’ would win out every time. AR lightly sketches in a few friction points eg Susan nagging Roger, Nancy having a go at Peggy, just to preserve a background ‘half-tone’ impression of typical sibling squabbling, while they all co-operate in the essential common purpose. It is like an artist painting in a few blades of grass to represent all of them - we take it on trust that there are millions of blades but we are more interested in the people or animals which are the subject of the painting, and we don’t want to be tediously presented with every clump of grass in detail. The same could be said, incidentally, about the clothes the characters wear, or latrine arrangements (although these are not even hinted at).