Posted by Jock on February 11, 2012 at 14:07:16 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Lesson learned or not? posted by Roger Wardale on February 11, 2012 at 06:39:28:
Roger, I came across PD rather late in life, so I suspect that you are correct in your diagnosis
re. my difficulty with the Lowestoft / Crab Island dichotomy.
I read all the books in a rather jumbled order and remember struggling with ML, it just didn't
seem to 'fit' anywhere unlike the other books that fell into a natural order. Actually, at that
time I had not read PD so the 'story-within-a-story' explanation was not available to me. When
I finally read PD, and decided that ML was obviously metafictional as well, that raised another
problem: when and where was ML 'made up'?
I have no idea whether he did or did not see settng off treasure-hunting in 1931 as being
vaguely feasible.
I think that PD gave AR the blue water voyage that he had always planned, but for one reason
or another was never able to undertake. Perhaps there was a hint of jealousy in the bad blood
between him and Alard Coles?
May I ask your advice about a problem that has been flogged to death on TarBoard? I think I've
come up with something genuinely new, but would like to run my idea past an expert before I
launch it publicly. Please send me an e-mail (address is in the message below) if you can help.