Reality and the Reader (more on Peter Duck etc)


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Posted by Mike Dennis on February 12, 2012 at 01:21:06 user MTD.

I discovered (or stumbled upon) AR after my brother was killed in a road accident (I was 7, he was 10 and a vociferous reader, he was already working his way through Churchill’s History of the Second World War) and he had been given S&A, PD and ML at some point. I was a ‘slow reader’ (what I now know to be mild dyslexia) so didn’t read them until three or four years later just because they were still on the shelf.

So my first reading of PD was that it was just another in the series of the green bound books and clearly followed on from S&A, I had not read Treasure Island (though I knew the plot) and so made little connection between the two. As for PD being a meta-fiction, this never occurred to me. I questioned none of it; I was more confused when I read SD and the references to PD’s cave!

ML, was just not as entertaining as all the others because it was set abroad but I still did not question the notion of the circumstances.

What matters most on reflection, is that books I read in childhood still are worth reading as I approach my 60s! Yes, I know more about them and their origins. I know about what influenced and inspired AR. I enjoy some of the differences of opinion on TarBoard, others I just ignore!

AR’s works are both readable and very well written. In comparison I read the first Harry Potter because of the fuss surrounding it, and was disappointed by the quality of writing and the English (I know from my own posts mine leaves a lot of room for improvement, but I know poor writing when I read it.)

Of AR’s work some of the series are regarded by many here as better than others and more realistic. WDMTGTS is to me one of the weakest, because the notion of a group of children sailing across the North Sea in a fog is just too unbelievable, had I been aboard I would have been terrified and dropped anchor and waited to be rescued!

Similarly PM, I think I read it as a child (a great fan of the Ds I look forward to a book where they were centre stage) and not read it since. I tried a year or so ago as so many people here had praised it, but couldn’t get past the second or third chapter.

Then, I do like the Broads books. I holidayed there as a child and so had a direct association. Now I live in the middle of SW (well, just outside the town and we used to live within a couple of hundred yards of Witches Quay) so this has a slightly different affection for me than the other books.

My point? As interested as I am in AR’s inspiration and methods etc. there is a point where over-analysis can destroy the interest. At secondary school in the 1960s I had to study Under Milk Wood, and the teacher’s slavish analysis destroyed any pleasure from knowing the work. When I left school I read it for myself and enjoyed it.



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