An article, tucked away in the inside pages of the newspaper two Sundays ago, rekindled some of my fondest childhood memories (with a twist). It bespoke an impending rewrite of ten bestsellers from the 'Famous Five' series originally authored by the iconic Enid Blyton. Yet, news of the tweak, planned to better their appeal to contemporary pre-teen palates, left me somewhat disquieted.
To talk joys first, my acquaintance with the four kids and their canine cohort (hence the Five) arose in rather happy circumstances. An infrequent happenstance of academic achievement led my father to gift me one of their novels as reward (likely expecting an encore!) from the neighborhood bookstore. The Five were thick with me in but a few pages. For the uninitiated, three were siblings: the eldest, Julian, an early introduction to 'first among equals'; the spirited and fun-loving Dick; and archetypal kid sister Anne. Accompanied by their feisty cousin George (never Georgina), their wondrous tales of adventure made them much more than adolescent characters on elegant typeface. And Timothy, Tim, or mostly Timmy, mongrel pet of supernatural gifts and even higher loyalty, was the dog's dog. If more was needed, he was added motivation for many a young boy to yearn for Man's Best Friend about the house. (No doubt an almost equal number of mothers held the ruthlessly opposite view, and we know how such debates conclude!)
In any event, Ms Blyton’s words and (albeit in smaller fashion) my animated imagination conspired to lend myriad hues to the sketched images. Convenient neighbourhood landmarks and sights from memory were cheekily appended, Rushdiesque, to suffuse them with vividly pulsating life. The Five were my friends next-door, yet magically faraway, in a subliminal construct that only childhood innocence and suitably stimulatory literature can produce. My love affair with the written word commenced with them (and a flock of the prolific Enid’s finest); kept alive thereafter by assorted characters from Fiction and more.
Imagine then, to have editorial scissors run amok this merry company! Guided by the singularly insipid beacon of market research to light the way, a team is attempting to "sensitively and carefully" reconstruct the original. The primary onus, one is given to understand, is to correct an ostensibly antediluvian slang. Unfortunately, such a stance sits well with spin-doctors, not purveyors of young adult literature — but it is perhaps symbolic of our analysis-paralysis times.
To begin with, the charge that today’s young are shying from Five's idiom, while not incredible, sounds frankly tenuous. For it to stick, one must believe that the set of 21 penned over a like number of years ending 1963 — amazingly alive and kicking for many of us through the mid-80s — has managed to age significantly over the succeeding two decades. Equally, it surprises me enormously that a generation at least a thousand times brighter than ours at an equivalent age, needs editorial crutches to understand Blyton’s oeuvre. One can dismiss mine as a jaundiced eye, but such misconceived research may be better illustration of testing biased hypotheses than allegedly passé language or deficiency of acumen.
Of course, true to spin-doctor form, the author's name has been invoked in justification of the exercise. We are reminded how a "passionate" advocate of child literacy as Blyton would appreciate the need for her immortal characters to mouth appropriate conversation-style dialogue. She was, in any case, famously disinterested in the views of critics over 12!
One wonders where such surgery would end, however. Would one, for instance, make George try less hard to be a boy in case not setting the politically correct example to today's youth? Or perhaps have in Anne not the occasionally tear-prone, timid young lady that she was, for fear of hurting Women's Lib? One ought to cleanse the precocious Ju of his 'girls will be girls; boys, boys' elder brother complex. The inappropriately named Dick must need drastic repositioning, surely. Persisting, we could turn our attention to plots and paraphernalia: highlight dangers of presenting camping out as fun; review gypsies’ portrayal lest they take umbrage; check for animal rights violations in Timmy's caricature; evaluate Uncle Quentin’s absent-mindedness as endangering the scientific community; and more!
Incidentally, there would remain a profusion of Blyton waiting to be tackled. Secret Seven, Barney, Mallory Towers, St Clare's — we could be at this for some time (thus keeping certain unnamed cash registers ringing)! Perhaps the indefatigable Blyton preordained the dangers she was flirting with - she had not one but two sets of Five adolescents solving mysteries around England. Now if only she had not let the other group be led by the redoubtable Fatty...
PS: The last named, Frederick Algernon Trotteville, has already been blessed with a trim nouveau visage last year... Who blames Kareena Kapoor for Size Zero fixation?
To talk joys first, my acquaintance with the four kids and their canine cohort (hence the Five) arose in rather happy circumstances. An infrequent happenstance of academic achievement led my father to gift me one of their novels as reward (likely expecting an encore!) from the neighborhood bookstore. The Five were thick with me in but a few pages. For the uninitiated, three were siblings: the eldest, Julian, an early introduction to 'first among equals'; the spirited and fun-loving Dick; and archetypal kid sister Anne. Accompanied by their feisty cousin George (never Georgina), their wondrous tales of adventure made them much more than adolescent characters on elegant typeface. And Timothy, Tim, or mostly Timmy, mongrel pet of supernatural gifts and even higher loyalty, was the dog's dog. If more was needed, he was added motivation for many a young boy to yearn for Man's Best Friend about the house. (No doubt an almost equal number of mothers held the ruthlessly opposite view, and we know how such debates conclude!)
In any event, Ms Blyton’s words and (albeit in smaller fashion) my animated imagination conspired to lend myriad hues to the sketched images. Convenient neighbourhood landmarks and sights from memory were cheekily appended, Rushdiesque, to suffuse them with vividly pulsating life. The Five were my friends next-door, yet magically faraway, in a subliminal construct that only childhood innocence and suitably stimulatory literature can produce. My love affair with the written word commenced with them (and a flock of the prolific Enid’s finest); kept alive thereafter by assorted characters from Fiction and more.
Imagine then, to have editorial scissors run amok this merry company! Guided by the singularly insipid beacon of market research to light the way, a team is attempting to "sensitively and carefully" reconstruct the original. The primary onus, one is given to understand, is to correct an ostensibly antediluvian slang. Unfortunately, such a stance sits well with spin-doctors, not purveyors of young adult literature — but it is perhaps symbolic of our analysis-paralysis times.
To begin with, the charge that today’s young are shying from Five's idiom, while not incredible, sounds frankly tenuous. For it to stick, one must believe that the set of 21 penned over a like number of years ending 1963 — amazingly alive and kicking for many of us through the mid-80s — has managed to age significantly over the succeeding two decades. Equally, it surprises me enormously that a generation at least a thousand times brighter than ours at an equivalent age, needs editorial crutches to understand Blyton’s oeuvre. One can dismiss mine as a jaundiced eye, but such misconceived research may be better illustration of testing biased hypotheses than allegedly passé language or deficiency of acumen.
Of course, true to spin-doctor form, the author's name has been invoked in justification of the exercise. We are reminded how a "passionate" advocate of child literacy as Blyton would appreciate the need for her immortal characters to mouth appropriate conversation-style dialogue. She was, in any case, famously disinterested in the views of critics over 12!
One wonders where such surgery would end, however. Would one, for instance, make George try less hard to be a boy in case not setting the politically correct example to today's youth? Or perhaps have in Anne not the occasionally tear-prone, timid young lady that she was, for fear of hurting Women's Lib? One ought to cleanse the precocious Ju of his 'girls will be girls; boys, boys' elder brother complex. The inappropriately named Dick must need drastic repositioning, surely. Persisting, we could turn our attention to plots and paraphernalia: highlight dangers of presenting camping out as fun; review gypsies’ portrayal lest they take umbrage; check for animal rights violations in Timmy's caricature; evaluate Uncle Quentin’s absent-mindedness as endangering the scientific community; and more!
Incidentally, there would remain a profusion of Blyton waiting to be tackled. Secret Seven, Barney, Mallory Towers, St Clare's — we could be at this for some time (thus keeping certain unnamed cash registers ringing)! Perhaps the indefatigable Blyton preordained the dangers she was flirting with - she had not one but two sets of Five adolescents solving mysteries around England. Now if only she had not let the other group be led by the redoubtable Fatty...
PS: The last named, Frederick Algernon Trotteville, has already been blessed with a trim nouveau visage last year... Who blames Kareena Kapoor for Size Zero fixation?
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