Posted by Robert Hill on November 17, 2000 at 13:33:19 from 129.11.159.162:
In Reply to: Ransome and Shute posted by Bruce A Clarke on November 17, 2000 at 08:47:02:
Nevil (not Neville) Shute (real name Nevil Shute Norway) was born about
15 years later than Ransome; this age difference may have had some
influence on the subjects they were interested in, and on whether their
writing looked forward to a more complex age, or backwards to a simpler
one. Or maybe they were just different types of people, or were
influenced by different early experiences.
Although Ransome's later books were written in the 1940s, the whole of
the S&A series (except GN whose chronology is dubious) is set within a
span of 3 years. This was necessary because he wanted to write about
children, not adolescents or adults (indeed his older characters must
have been entering adolescence in the later books but he ignores the
fact.) So if the first book is set in 1929 or 1930, the others had to
be set in the early 1930s, well before WWII. (Though I think it of
interest that the ship that bahaves badly in WDM, written in 1937, is
German.)
So Dick Callum (not Cullum) couldn't, during the books, be interested
in anything developed after the early 30s. Probably he (and maybe
Roger) were interested in aeroplanes, but the setting of the books
provides no circumstances which would lead the narrator to mention
the fact.
Your final question seems a strange one to me. I don't see that any
explanation is required for the fact that two writers who lived at the
same time, but wrote about different things, can both be popular today,
or even that one reader (e.g. me) can like them both.
However, one could find points in parallel between them. For
example, they both have a fairly simple style (the word "simple" is
not intended to suggest that it's _easy_ to write simply), avoiding
unnecessary convolutions of language.