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Recent reading
Firstly, there seems to be a lot of new interest in D. K. Broster and her books happening at the moment! I'm delighted, of course. And on that topic, Broster fan and excellent researcher ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theseatheseatheopensea has found this short autobiographical article, in which she talks about her childhood and experiences in the war as well as about her writing process.
London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes (1939-45). Mollie Panter-Downes was the London correspondent for The New Yorker, and this book is a collection of the regular columns she wrote for the magazine throughout the war, updating American readers on various general aspects of how the situation was going. I found the minutiae of the political developments and the details of daily life—rationing, gas-masks, the blackout and so on—recounted as they developed, really fascinating, and it was very illuminating, I suppose, to compare them with my own experiences of the last year and a half in a general sense that this is what big historical events look like on the ground while they're happening. There's a lot of detail on the Blitz, of course—more everyday details, like people's commuter buses having to be re-routed round bombed streets, as well as some striking descriptions of the destruction itself, and people's immediate reactions to the damage to historic buildings like Coventry Cathedral and London churches designed by Wren. There's some discussion of the plans for post-war reconstruction as they were being made. And, with Panter-Downes's audience in mind, there's a lot about the role of the US, from early hopes of help to the presence of American soldiers in London later on. Overall, a really fascinating perspective.
Two College Friends by Frederick W. Loring (1871). I think this is the sort of thing D. K. Broster might have written if she'd been American (and a much less good writer, but never mind). It opens with the two college friends of the title, Ned and Tom, who are BFFs at Harvard and who are having an argument: Ned thinks Tom is in love because he's carrying around a photograph of some girl and won't talk about it, and is upset about this. It turns out the photo is of Tom himself in female costume in a play, and he was planning to give it to Ned as a present because he thought he'd like it. Anyway, this is all very amusing, but then, suddenly, the American Civil War breaks out! Ned and Tom, full of patriotic fervour, both enlist, and the rest of the book follows them on their adventures in the war. The climax of the plot is a beautiful mess of hurt/comfort, mutual love and devotion and gentlemanly honour and duty (featuring Stonewall Jackson in the role of Noble Enemy), which ends in tragedy. It's a very, very slashy book, and Loring seems more or less aware—if not in what I, still working on the Imre ebook, might call the Edward Prime-Stevenson sense—that what he's writing about is love, in a sense comparable to acknowledged romance. This was enjoyable, as was the Broster-ish honour-based drama of the ending. I think its main flaw is that it's far too short—the same plot could easily have filled a book five times longer, and none of the important elements—characters, relationship, plot, historical setting—have anything like the room they need to be developed fully.
The Precious Bane by Mary Webb (1925). I had previously encountered Mary Webb only as the target of Stella Gibbons's satire in Cold Comfort Farm, and, to be fair, I think I might have liked this book better if I hadn't. It's set in rural Shropshire in the early nineteenth century, and narrated by Prue Sarn, a young woman who has a cleft lip ('hare-shotten lip') and lives on a farm by a lake with her brother, who is a determinedly horrible person. There are some really lovely nature descriptions—Webb paints an evocative picture of the lake, especially, and of the sense of being out in the middle of the countryside in the clear air surrounded by birds and insects and working in the fields. And there's a decent message somewhere in there about ableism and how disabled characters can find the happiness they want despite cruelty and prejudice—Prue, who's been told that of course no man will ever look at her, falls in love with the weaver Kester Woodseaves, who it turns out is quite happy to after all. But the whole thing is so melodramatic—both in the events of the plot and in the style of the narration and dialogue, with e.g. characters' prophesied tragic fates (which duly come true later on) being solemnly repeated whenever they're mentioned—that I found it difficult to take seriously, and I also felt that the romance, while admirable in theory, was distinctly unappealing in practice for several reasons.
theseatheseatheopensea has found this short autobiographical article, in which she talks about her childhood and experiences in the war as well as about her writing process.London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes (1939-45). Mollie Panter-Downes was the London correspondent for The New Yorker, and this book is a collection of the regular columns she wrote for the magazine throughout the war, updating American readers on various general aspects of how the situation was going. I found the minutiae of the political developments and the details of daily life—rationing, gas-masks, the blackout and so on—recounted as they developed, really fascinating, and it was very illuminating, I suppose, to compare them with my own experiences of the last year and a half in a general sense that this is what big historical events look like on the ground while they're happening. There's a lot of detail on the Blitz, of course—more everyday details, like people's commuter buses having to be re-routed round bombed streets, as well as some striking descriptions of the destruction itself, and people's immediate reactions to the damage to historic buildings like Coventry Cathedral and London churches designed by Wren. There's some discussion of the plans for post-war reconstruction as they were being made. And, with Panter-Downes's audience in mind, there's a lot about the role of the US, from early hopes of help to the presence of American soldiers in London later on. Overall, a really fascinating perspective.
Two College Friends by Frederick W. Loring (1871). I think this is the sort of thing D. K. Broster might have written if she'd been American (and a much less good writer, but never mind). It opens with the two college friends of the title, Ned and Tom, who are BFFs at Harvard and who are having an argument: Ned thinks Tom is in love because he's carrying around a photograph of some girl and won't talk about it, and is upset about this. It turns out the photo is of Tom himself in female costume in a play, and he was planning to give it to Ned as a present because he thought he'd like it. Anyway, this is all very amusing, but then, suddenly, the American Civil War breaks out! Ned and Tom, full of patriotic fervour, both enlist, and the rest of the book follows them on their adventures in the war. The climax of the plot is a beautiful mess of hurt/comfort, mutual love and devotion and gentlemanly honour and duty (featuring Stonewall Jackson in the role of Noble Enemy), which ends in tragedy. It's a very, very slashy book, and Loring seems more or less aware—if not in what I, still working on the Imre ebook, might call the Edward Prime-Stevenson sense—that what he's writing about is love, in a sense comparable to acknowledged romance. This was enjoyable, as was the Broster-ish honour-based drama of the ending. I think its main flaw is that it's far too short—the same plot could easily have filled a book five times longer, and none of the important elements—characters, relationship, plot, historical setting—have anything like the room they need to be developed fully.
The Precious Bane by Mary Webb (1925). I had previously encountered Mary Webb only as the target of Stella Gibbons's satire in Cold Comfort Farm, and, to be fair, I think I might have liked this book better if I hadn't. It's set in rural Shropshire in the early nineteenth century, and narrated by Prue Sarn, a young woman who has a cleft lip ('hare-shotten lip') and lives on a farm by a lake with her brother, who is a determinedly horrible person. There are some really lovely nature descriptions—Webb paints an evocative picture of the lake, especially, and of the sense of being out in the middle of the countryside in the clear air surrounded by birds and insects and working in the fields. And there's a decent message somewhere in there about ableism and how disabled characters can find the happiness they want despite cruelty and prejudice—Prue, who's been told that of course no man will ever look at her, falls in love with the weaver Kester Woodseaves, who it turns out is quite happy to after all. But the whole thing is so melodramatic—both in the events of the plot and in the style of the narration and dialogue, with e.g. characters' prophesied tragic fates (which duly come true later on) being solemnly repeated whenever they're mentioned—that I found it difficult to take seriously, and I also felt that the romance, while admirable in theory, was distinctly unappealing in practice for several reasons.
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This book is apparently RPF about Loring and his own best friend from college (and I think also one of their professors?). I'd love to know what the best friend made of it, especially because Loring tragically died around the time of publication.
I haven't read The Precious Bane, but I did read Mary Webb's other novel Gone to Earth (because it was on the list of novels that Roald Dahl has Matilda read in Matilda, which is definitely a Choice), and it too is SO melodramatic, and not always in the fun way like Two College Friends. (I think a deep dive into melodrama is often more enjoyable in a less-skilled writer. Webb is too good to pull it off.) There's a scene where there are some birds pecking at windfall cherries "like the world pecks at poet's hearts."
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Heh, I saw your review and tipped
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:D Hahaha, it is good stuff, isn't it... I think this book has a lot in common with Broster's The Wounded Name, which is also very 'id close to the surface'.
Oh yeah, I remember Loring talking about his real best friend in the introduction (though the war part seems to have been made up?). Yeah, it would certainly be interesting to know what he thought of it...!
That is a very good point about Webb being too good to write enjoyable melodrama. I like a good over-the-top Gothic novel or Victorian sensation novel, and that sort of thing can be genuinely good in some ways, but there was too much about The Precious Bane that ought to have been... more seriously(?) better than that.
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