Reading the classics
As a pretentious and earnest teenager I happily chewed my way through large chunks of the classics.
I devoured Jane Austen with great delight; although strangely I loathed Emma the first time I read it, a thought that amuses me now. I doggedly worked my way through DH Lawrence’s torrid prose (“yuck, that’s a mucky book” a classmate exclaimed on seeing me reading Women In Love at the tender age of 13). I tried, and repeatedly failed, to read War And Peace - I could never keep the damn characters straight because they all seemed to have half a dozen different names and I always gave up in disgust and then felt guilty about it. I thrilled to the romanticism of Hardy and the Brontes but E.M Forster made me melancholy. The bleak darkness of Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and Muriel Spark unsettled me while P.G Wodehouse and Nancy Mitford made me laugh.
Frequently I would pick an author and systematically work my way through all their books. I did this for fun. With hindsight it is not too hard to see why I was picked on in secondary school!
Sadly my tolerance for the classics has definitely decreased over the years and, with the exception of Jane Austen whom I reread on a regular basis, these days I struggle to read ‘proper’ literature. But my inner tortured teen still rears her head occasionally and demands to know why I am ‘wasting my time reading rubbishy crime novels when I should be reading something deep and meaningful?’ and I always feel vaguely guilty that I am not. So it was in a fit of January determination that I took Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm out of the library.
Fortunately for me, Cold Comfort Farm is not a serious book, although it certainly parodies them and my previous affectation of highbrow tastes served me in good stead as I giggled my way through Gibbons’ wicked rendering of the English bucolic novel.
Unsurprisingly, my teenage self recognised the fey and poetic Elphine:
‘She will have to be taken in hand at once,’ thought Flora. ‘Another year, and there will be no doing anything with her; for even if she escapes from this place, she will only go and keep a tea-room in Brighton and go all arty-and-crafty about the feet and waist.’
Alas, I fear it is too late, I went arty-and crafty quite some time ago although thankfully I am no longer the anorexic waif who thought that writing bad poetry whilst wafting around on hilltops and sighing a lot was the correct thing to do. I’m not sure that my 15 year old self would have enjoyed Cold Comfort Farm, I rather suspect she might have taken it seriously and completely missed the fact that it’s a parody. Some books are definitely best enjoyed when you’re a little more mature and a lot less romantic.
I devoured Jane Austen with great delight; although strangely I loathed Emma the first time I read it, a thought that amuses me now. I doggedly worked my way through DH Lawrence’s torrid prose (“yuck, that’s a mucky book” a classmate exclaimed on seeing me reading Women In Love at the tender age of 13). I tried, and repeatedly failed, to read War And Peace - I could never keep the damn characters straight because they all seemed to have half a dozen different names and I always gave up in disgust and then felt guilty about it. I thrilled to the romanticism of Hardy and the Brontes but E.M Forster made me melancholy. The bleak darkness of Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and Muriel Spark unsettled me while P.G Wodehouse and Nancy Mitford made me laugh.
Frequently I would pick an author and systematically work my way through all their books. I did this for fun. With hindsight it is not too hard to see why I was picked on in secondary school!
Sadly my tolerance for the classics has definitely decreased over the years and, with the exception of Jane Austen whom I reread on a regular basis, these days I struggle to read ‘proper’ literature. But my inner tortured teen still rears her head occasionally and demands to know why I am ‘wasting my time reading rubbishy crime novels when I should be reading something deep and meaningful?’ and I always feel vaguely guilty that I am not. So it was in a fit of January determination that I took Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm out of the library.
Fortunately for me, Cold Comfort Farm is not a serious book, although it certainly parodies them and my previous affectation of highbrow tastes served me in good stead as I giggled my way through Gibbons’ wicked rendering of the English bucolic novel.
Unsurprisingly, my teenage self recognised the fey and poetic Elphine:
‘She will have to be taken in hand at once,’ thought Flora. ‘Another year, and there will be no doing anything with her; for even if she escapes from this place, she will only go and keep a tea-room in Brighton and go all arty-and-crafty about the feet and waist.’
Alas, I fear it is too late, I went arty-and crafty quite some time ago although thankfully I am no longer the anorexic waif who thought that writing bad poetry whilst wafting around on hilltops and sighing a lot was the correct thing to do. I’m not sure that my 15 year old self would have enjoyed Cold Comfort Farm, I rather suspect she might have taken it seriously and completely missed the fact that it’s a parody. Some books are definitely best enjoyed when you’re a little more mature and a lot less romantic.