Re: This isn't about 'dinner'


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Previous # Next ] [ Start New Thread ] [ TarBoard ]

Posted by Duncan on February 23, 2008 at 16:07:53 from 195.93.21.2 user Duncan.

In Reply to: Re: This isn't about 'dinner' posted by Jock on February 23, 2008 at 13:44:31:

Is it therefore SUCH a stretch to think that Ransome puts the odd little bit of his politics in there, from time to time? I know there's some dispute as to exactly what AR's politics were - particularly by the time he was writing most of the SA stories, but from a variety of sources there seem to be some features throughout: a strong anti-imperialism, for example; and there is also some evidence that some of the Marxist arguments that would have been everywhere around him when he was living among Bolsheviks did influence him (albeit in slightly unorthodox ways: one letter to Tabitha, included in Signalling From Mars, starts to go into an explanation of Marx's theory of value but he seems to remember after a while that it wasn't really the main point of his comments! I'm talking about the section where he mentions 'all money that comes to you no matter in what way has been earned by someone' and later (about Ivy) 'The accident of possessing what is called capital allows her to take a little bit off the earnings of quite a number of people whom she has never seen. That may seem to you to be a little unfair to them, but as things are arranged it cannot be helped and I don't think you need worry much at present about it, though I hope you will not forget it altogether...') This was in 1931 so nicely in the SA era, and for me raises the question of whether, subtly and unobtrusively, AR gives any similar, 'political' advise to his more supportive young readers!

I've suggested a few possibilities before, and I'm normally 'poo-poo'd, but I'm tempted to have another go.

AR was obviously interested in birds and wrote about them at great length in letters as well as in his books, so the 'conservationist' bits in the SA novels are mostly just what they seem. But there is an anthropomorphic element to these stories where the birds in question (particularly the coots and the divers) have laboured and produced something of value that others - first George Owden and later Mr. Jemmerling - want to profit from (as such, it is Owden who is the true villain of Coot Club, though the way in which the Hullabaloos DON'T CARE about the eggs is almost as bad as wanting to profit from them). The fact that Owden already got more pocket money than any of the Coot Club members was also significant (as was ostentatious splendour of the Jemmerling Collection). I'm not suggesting that AR sat down thinking 'I'm going to write a story about Marx's labour theory of value as an analogy involving egg-collectors' - the stories are far too rich and real to be so reduced; all I'm suggesting is that certain ideas about the world, the way things are and the way they ought to be inevitably guide AR's fingers on the type-writer, as surely as his passions for sailing and angling do.

Missee Lee is - if you read it knowing nothing of AR and those 'certain ideas' - a strange book in many ways. Though surprisingly realistic for a book about fantastic Chinese pirates, is odd: we WANT the island's way-of-life to be protected and for Miss Lee to maintain control and for the gunboats to stay away. That is despite the fact that we know that this is a protection racket (with occasional beheadings) and one that has, until recently, been keeping Captain Flint in solitary confinement and held for ransom. The fact that this state of affairs was preferable to the chaos that existed before Miss Lee took charge effects us; we don't want the gunboats destroying the Three Islands, and as such are guided to an anti-imperialist position. (The argument AR had with John Berry about Nato and China is effectively the same as whether the gunboats should come to the Three Islands!)

Now I shall duck!


Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:
Eel-Mail:

Existing subject (please edit appropriately) :

or is it time to start a New Thread?

Comments:

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL:

post direct to TarBoard test post first

Before posting it is necessary to be a registered user.


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TarBoard ]

Courtesy of Environmental Science, Lancaster

space