Those wonderful books of the past...

[fajrdrako]

This week’s question is suggested by Island Editions:

Do you have a favourite book, now out of print, that you would like to see become available again? (I have several…)

My first thought was of books of my childhood. The first would be A Treasury of Great Poems, edited by Louis Untermeyer. Not actually intended for children, this book was given to my mother by her Sunday School class when she got married in 1944. She loved it, as did I. It had a friendly, clear introduction to each poet and each poem, and the poems were well chosen, and I got more of an education in poetry from this book than I ever did in high school or university English classes. It had in it poems that are still my favourites, like the wonderful translation Tennyson wrote of "The Battle of Brunanburh". Can't you just imagine how that burned its shield-wall into my adolescent imagination?

Then there is He Went With Christopher Columbus or any of the books by Louise Andrews Kent, whom I loved as a kid. I was mad over history. This book sent me into years of happy role-playing games as a stowaway or cabin boy/girl with Columbus. All the Kent books fanned my imagination and increased my love of history.

Likewise, Merrylips by Jean Marie Dix, a wonderful adventure about a little girl in the English Civil War.

So, dragging myself away from childhood reading - there's Edward, Edward or any of the novels of Lolah Burford. Historical novels with a psychological slant - themes of white slavery and abuse of aristocratic privilege.

O City of Byzantium by Niketas Choniates. It ought to be in print. It's a wonderful book. I can't think why it isn't. It ought to be a much-read classic. Likewise, I'd love to see L'histoire de guillaume le maréchal in print again - it was last published in Paris in the 1870s - but now that it's available online, my feelings aren't quite so urgent. I love electronic technology.

Because I like this topic, I asked this question of a couple of my friends. One said "Dickens' magazine 'Household Words'." Another cited the Pitman shorthand version of A Sign of Four. Another said, "The works of John Masefield" - which actually is in print, but (appallingly) not available in Canada, for copyright reasons.

There's also a Louis Untermeyer poem I've been looking for and not finding anywhere - I don't know if it's in print or not, and I can't remember the title of the book where I originally found it. It was something like The Oxford Book of Naughty Verse, and it was called something along the lines of, "To his right-beloved Shakespeare, from WH", and it begins: "Whenas (methinks that is a pretty way to start)...." and it ends:

In thy next poem, if thou wouldst give me joy,
Please make it clear I'm not that kind of boy?

Does this sound familiar to anyone here?

Comments

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

One key aspect, especially with the romance novels, is that they are not intended for a domestic audience. Academic historiography here has moved far beyond this sort of thing, but fiction has not caught up, especially the fiction produced in N America.

I do wonder if there are issues that might be defined as a "diaspora mentality"? I note that several novelists in the tartanised subgenre make much in their introductions of "being of Highland descent", or words to that effect (as if that renders the need for proper research unnecessary!). It seems to me that for people in N America (and indeed, no doubt also in Australasia) who claim Scots ancestry, what prevails is a highly inauthentic notion of "Scottishness" (for which read "Highlandness", since they seem to work under the assumption that that is the only Scots identity), based on Walter Scott and such modern dross as Braveheart. They get hung up on the notion of "authentic Scottishness=Highlandness=Jacobitism", with the result that non-Highland Scots, or non-Jacobite (Highland or not) are made invisible or are depicted as "not true Scots", "anglicised", "traitors", & c. It's over-simplistic on every level, politically, religiously, & c.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Romance tends to favour the exotic and the nostalgic. For Americans, that means the geneological past, and the far away. I'd say "for Canadians" too, but the point is that the money-rich American market is where the romance market is aimed.

I do wonder if there are issues that might be defined as a "diaspora mentality"?

I'd say, undoubtledly. I think we can see it historically - a similar mentality to medieval Europeans writing about Alexander the Great, or the glory days of King Arthur's legendary Britain. (The latter hasn't gone away. Or, come to think of it, the former.) I wonder if displaced Saxons c. 1100 were making up similar stories in their Byzantine exile. Or the Norse in Kiev.

In North America (and I can't speak for Australia/NZ but I'd bet it's the same) it isn't just the Scots background but also the Irish. I wonder if it's cross-cultural - i.e., after a few generations, or a few dozen generations, will the Lebanese and Vietnamese immigrants be telling similar stories of their imagined homselands? I have seen it, a very little bit, with the Chinese.

And oddly enough, I've not really seen it with French Canada, which tends more to look at the future, and to see France not so much as a romanticized homeland, but an alternate oppressor. Much more like the attitude of the multi-generational Scots-Americans to the English.

Maybe that's it: the Americans fought a big war with the English, and so won't romanticize them (at least, not in the same way) so they romanticize the Scots instead, making them fellow-victims.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's it: the Americans fought a big war with the English, and so won't romanticize them (at least, not in the same way) so they romanticize the Scots instead, making them fellow-victims.

Which is utter victim-complex bollocks, and reveals how warped their knowledge of history is. They fought the British, which includes Scots, with (at the time) an army that was about a quarter Scots (officers and men) and also with a goodly proportion of Irish. Scots were loathed by the American rebels as they were prominent in the colonial administration, and Jefferson was especially nasty about them. Highlanders were also prominent in the Loyalist forces in New York State and in the south. I'm reminded of the primary school history teacher I met at King's Mountain, who asked, re: Pattie, "What was a Scotsman doing fighting for the British?" I had to explain Britain to her as a concept…

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, it's all imaginary, but we're talking about fiction here. Romanticized fiction all the way.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I find their confusion over English/British pretty disturbing, given how they expect everyone else to grasp their far bigger and more complex federal system!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I once asked a friend from the Manchester area what she would call her country, and she didn't have an answer for me. I think "UK" is now the proper political designation - ? There are all sorts of reasons for the confusion, including the perception that the British Empire was run by the English, because it was ruled by the King or Queen of England.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

There are all sorts of reasons for the confusion, including the perception that the British Empire was run by the English, because it was ruled by the King or Queen of England.

Since 1603, the Kings and Queens of Scots(the crown was a Scots takeover). The British Empire was run very much by the Scots (see Tom Devine's books). False perceptions are a major problems.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

We get very little English (or British) history here in high schools. Most of it even in my time was post World War II history, and dealt with the UK only insofar as it affected recent Canadian history. What people know about history, they learned - mostly - from Hollywood.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

And that is the basic problem: inadequate teaching of history; a preference for dubious myth over reality.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

All most people get is the dubious myth. Of course they believe it; there's no one to tell them different. (They don't believe me...!)

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

What's also odd about it is that people want their identities to be perceived as based on "victimhood".

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That doesn't seem odd to me. I's all part of the same legendary status and heroic journey. Past suffering, heroism in action, villains to oppose.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

It seems very odd to me to regard victimhood as a desirable state, something to be proud of. Reminds me of the peasant in Holy Grail: "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!"

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Hee! Love Monty Python.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I think what's bizarre is that victimhood has come to be seen as morally "more pure", a status to be sought as desirable. Once you accept the label of 'victim', you don't need to take responsibility for anything. It's psychologically unhealthy on an individual or cultural level.