tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post6028837692827243591..comments2024-03-19T02:14:31.704-04:00Comments on <center>OnFiction</center>: Re-reading Swallows and AmazonsKeith Oatleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-71951036304487223162010-07-17T03:26:28.122-04:002010-07-17T03:26:28.122-04:00I'm in London at the moment and, still thinkin...I'm in London at the moment and, still thinking about how Arthur Ransome could be such a delightful and sensitive writer about childhood and such a grumpy old man, I just came across this in the programme of Alan Bennett's new play <i>The habit of art </i> about W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten: "Real artists are not nice people. All their best feelings go into their work and life has the residue." W.H. Auden.Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-63126439833814140862010-07-12T08:33:25.835-04:002010-07-12T08:33:25.835-04:00Thank you very much, Mark, for this comment. I am ...Thank you very much, Mark, for this comment. I am glad you found the piece pleasing. I was worried that it might be a bit soppy. <br /><br />But I think you are right that much of our attachment to place, in childhood or adulthood, isn't attachment in its common-or-garden connotation, but attachment in its developmental psychological connotation, and that is what can make it stirring and profound. <br /><br />And I am delighted that you like our site, and find it worthwhile.Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-39833194218540994842010-07-11T14:47:55.174-04:002010-07-11T14:47:55.174-04:00Dear Keith,
Like Alison I find this a fascinating...Dear Keith,<br /><br />Like Alison I find this a fascinating piece. It’s precisely the sort of thing that keeps me coming back to “On Fiction” and feeling intensely pleased.<br /><br />And it makes me think about how the flip side of attachment is loss. In my own life, I have been amazed by the way in which just the thought (seriously entertained) of moving from a place can reveal one’s attachments—attachments which weren’t really noticed or given their weight because they had become so ordinary. And, if one is contemplating moving, one does experience a sense of loss—or, perhaps, one anticipates the experience of loss.<br /><br />But that anticipated loss is, I think, very different from the real loss experienced by émigrés, as described in Kundera’s novel “Ignorance” or in Eva Hoffman’s memoir “Lost in Translation”. There is in that experience something like helplessness or, even, a painful sense of inevitability akin, perhaps, to the awareness of one’s own mortality. Someone who recalls their youth in their homeland seems to receive a double dose of nostalgia.<br /><br />Anyway, I enjoyed reading this very much, and I shall have to read it again. <br /><br />(Actually, I wish I had more time to dip into your archive. I am sure there are more gems like this one to be found!)formerly a wage slavehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16064562730082906589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-90163683186163576842010-07-09T15:51:25.141-04:002010-07-09T15:51:25.141-04:00Thank you so much, Alison, for this comment. What ...Thank you so much, Alison, for this comment. What a wonderful study: to research the revisiting of children's books that have not been read since childhood. I find the idea that some of your participants explaining that they learned useful facts about sailing rather intriguing. If I had been a participant in your study this response would never have occurred to me. As I said in my post, I think the main effect on me was motivational, something similar to my reading of <i>Love in the time of cholera</i> having given me the desire to visit Cartagena, but much stronger. I did fall in love with sailing, and the love affair lasted for many years. The fact that (for me at least) the world of water and tides and wind really is another world, and that every time I went out sailing I would learn something new were parts of what made sailing so interesting. So now things to do with sailing seem just ordinary knowledge, along the lines of if you want to post a letter you need to put a stamp on it, and I felt recently rather sorry for people in our reading group because we read a Joseph Conrad recently <i>The end of the tether</i> (wonderful) and some people were a bit mystified by some of the nautical terminology. Perhaps these people, too, would say—like some of your participants—that they learned facts about sailing.<br /><br />And thank you so much for the tip about the Marcus Sedgwick book. I will get hold of it and read it.Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-78099999867491300352010-07-09T05:12:49.536-04:002010-07-09T05:12:49.536-04:00Keith, this is a really fascinating post. I am cur...Keith, this is a really fascinating post. I am currently undertaking some research on adults rereading children's books (particularly those that have not been revisited since childhood) and am interested in the kinds of emotional and intellectual processes that emerge from this activity - exactly the issues you are discussing here. Some of my participants have explained that they enjoyed Ransome's work as children because it contained useful 'facts' about sailing and other outdoor activities. I wonder if you enjoyed them for the same reasons and whether you feel the same about that instructional element of the books now that you have your own knowledge of sailing from experience.<br /><br />Incidentally, I highly recommend Marcus Sedgwick's _Blood Red, Snow White_ (Orien Children's, 2007), which is a wonderful mixture of fable and fictionalised auto/biography based on Ransome's intriguing time in Russia. Compelling and brilliantly told.Alison Wallerhttp://roehampton.academia.edu/AlisonWallernoreply@blogger.com