You are the headmaster

"Mother, I don't want to go to school! The teachers are nasty, the kids bully me, the food is horrible. I don't want to go to school!" "But you must - you are the headmaster".

Is it just me who admits the agony of the first week of classes, are everybody just pretending? This first decisive hour of meeting a new bunch of students: will they like me? Will they respect me? Will I be exposed as a bluff who doesn't really know all those things I claim to know (apparently a very common feeling, even among the most confident public figures)? Will they notice that I missed my hairdresser appointment and my hair looks like a crow's nest (and will they notice next week that I have had a haircut)? Are they scrutinising my jacket rather than listening to my explications? Do they think my ear-rings are ridiculous? Do they wish they had never chosen this class? Do they feel my anxiety? Do they realise how vulnerable I am? Are they irritated by my gesticulation (get something to hold on to)? Are they disturbed by my accent? What if I start talking to them in a wrong language (has happened)? Monolingual people have no idea how tiresome it is to speak a foreign language all the time, even if you've done it for forty years. Still more two foreign languages. Do they hate my jokes (never try to make a joke in a foreign language)? Are they making fun of me when I am not looking? Are they just being polite, suppresing the desire to shoot pencils at me? Are they relieved when we finish?

The week is over. Whatever I've done wrong, whatever the impression the students now have of me makes no difference. You either win or lose, nothing in between. So the agony is gone.

Traintrotting

Last Monday I went to London - not to look at the Queen, but to give a talk at Roehampton university. The first time I didn't get to Roehampton was many years ago when I was invited to give a talk, but it turned out that there was a general strike on that day, so the university was closed. I spent the day with Kim Reynolds. I had not met Kim before, and we had arranged the talk over email. In fact, she invited me to stay with her in Lewes where she lived then. I remember I thought: "This person invites a total stranger to stay with her - I like it!"

I flew to Gatwick and stayed the first night at an airport hotel because I was going to Cardiff early in the morning (I missed my train and never gave that talk, but that's another story). I got back from Cardiff well over midnight and wondered how I would get in touch with Kim: it was long before mobile phones. Very early in the morning, earlier than I wished to be awake, there was a phone call, and Kim arranged for us to meet in a cafe by National Theatre. I was a bit perplexed by the choice of meeting place, but why not (since then, I've been to this cafe several times, it's really nice). Again, we had not met, but we figured out who we were, had our coffee, went to the Museum of Childhood and then took the train to Lewes. It was so absurd that it was wonderful. It is a long journey from London to Lewes. The train was full to the brim, so we couldn't even talk. It was late when we arrived, but it was a perfect evening. Very early in the morning Kim had to go to London after she had directed me to the local bookstore where I spent some time before I caught my train to Clapham Junction where I changed for Reading. I had never changed so many trains in so few days.

About that other story: I missed my morning train from Gatwick to Reading, where I was to change for Cardiff, because the hotel reception gave me wrong information. The railway officer advised me to take a train to London Victoria, underground to Paddington, train to Reading and perhaps catch the train I was originally supposed to take. It was madness, but sort of a challenge. Of course I didn't catch that train. Since it was long before mobile phones I had no chance to call Cardiff to say I would possibly be late. I had no time to stop and call from a phone booth. Well, I missed that talk, but I had some great time in Cardiff, only it turned out that the train I was to take back to Reading to change to Clapham Junction... are you still with me? - well, that train didn't stop at Reading, so it was all the way to London, Paddinston, underground, Victoria, Clapham Junction. I was younger then, too.

I finally got to Reading which was why I came to the UK in the first place, and it felt good to know that there would be some days before I had to get on the train again.

Two books of two weeks

I have now read two more YA books that Marilyn recommended at the conference last month and that I am sure I would never have discovered on my own. In fact, both covers would have efficiently put me off, even though I see how they might be attractive for the target audience.

After I had read a page and a half of Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, I knew I would enjoy every page of it, no matter the subject. It was so beautifully written. And the subject is still darker than Forbidden. The book starts with incest and rape, and you just wonder where it can go from there. Yet there is no explicit language; but it is told in a way that makes you understand what is happening and how abominable it is. Multiple narrators and multiple perspective, and you never quite know who is speaking. Many intertwined stories to keep track of. Subtle boundaries between dream and reality (and the reality itself is unreal), ambivalent human-animal metamorphosis, and all the time you think: all right, this is the ending, what is going to happen on the remaining 200 pages? And, when you have reconciled with the idea that the ultimate ending will be conventional, everything is suddenly put upside down again. A book full of surprises. A book full of allusions. A masterpiece all the way through.

Kevin Brooks' iBoy also starts with rape. I don't mind as long as it is not “a book about rape”, which it isn't. Actually its aboutness (fascinating jargon, isn't it) is irrelevant. But it is of being human, in the best sense of the notion. Crafted skilfully as a thriller – I literally couldn't put it away, kept reading well beyond midnight, which is exceptionally rare with me. Making use of something indispensible for today's young readers (three years from now, its sci-fi premise may either feel outdated or a horrifying truth). Posing all the BIG questions recognisable from YA fiction, but in a new angle. The question that kept coming to me was: How is the author going to manage the ending? I was disappointed because it was too neat for the unendurable tension of the story. Yes, I know all about not leaving young readers without hope, but it felt too easy. The BIG questions are not resolved.

Still, reading two excellent books within two weeks is more than I can remember.

To be continued

So J. K. has confirmed something that most of us know: it is possible to write sequels to completed sagas. And not only sequels, but prequels, sidequels and all other quels that have become so tremendously popular.

Some time before the publication of the ultimate Harry Potter volume, the largest Swedish daily asked me to comment upon the speculations whether Rowling intended to let Harry die. Ostensibly she had said that it was right to kill off the protagonist, so that nobody could write a sequel.

As if this had ever stopped literary thieves.

But it is surely more appropriate for Rowling to supply the missing bits herself. For instance, a book, or preferably several, about Harry's life before he learned that he was a wizard. Nice books about his everyday adventures with the abominable cousin. There is perhaps less suspense in everyday events than in Harry's breath-taking escapades at Hogwarts, but that should not be a problem for a skilful writer like Rowling, and genuine fans want to know everything about their idol. If it is possible to publish Scarlett's Childhood for Gone with the Wind fans, why not Harry's Childhood?

A series of at least five books can tell us about Harry's parents, especially his father's pranks of which we have seen glimpses throughout the saga. Details about his friendship and rivalry with Harry's teachers will certainly be appreciated by many readers. In this series, the erotic aspect can be developed that was lacking in the original books. Further, both Dumbledore and Snape justify a multivolume narrative.

Hermione, Ron and Ginny can have their own series each, and the Weasley twins will be popular, as literary twins always are. Unfortunately, Mergione's Mission and Sen Awesley's Twelve Deeds have already been written by an inventive Russian team, but otherwise the sky is the limit. Moreover, Hermione has the magic hourglass that allows her to be simultaneously in two places, so she can have twice as many volumes as Ron. If Harry borrows the hourglass, his seven years in school can be described all over again, in a parallel dimension.

Harry Potter's Cook Book and Harry Potter's Feng Shui will sell well, and so will The Secret Diary of Harry Potter, Aged 13 and ¾, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Muggle.

But the best pursuit is of course the fates of Harry's children. It turns out that just before his demise Voldemort secretly fathered a daughter who twenty years later seeks revenge. The gender aspect will give this series of twelve books a fresh and modern tone.

If this sounds too much for a lifetime, there are many models of ghost writer teams producing five books every month. These should preferably be well educated and versed in myths as well as world literature to satisfy the expectations set up by Rowling's ingenious allusions. A lucrative field for redundant professors of literature.

PS All ideas in this blog post are copyright-protected and on offer for the highest bid. Proposals below six digits will not be considered.

Skip religion and get some honey

Yesterday was season's first Fellow's dinner at Homerton College where also new Fellows were sworn in. When I was sworn in exactly a year ago, there was a little card from which I had to read my oath. It was concluded by "...a place of knowledge, learning and research". It turned out some months later that this card was irretrievably lost, and for subsequent swearing in, a new card was produced, with a text from Statutes, with the concluding formula read as "knowledge, learning, religion and research". I remember saying to someone by my side that I was glad religion wasn't mentioned when I was sworn in. Apparently, I wasn't the only one to react. At yesterday's ceremony, the Principal said to the new Fellows: "The oath mentions religion - if you are uncofmortable with it, skip it".

On the table, alongside glasses of champagne there were jars of honey produced on the premises by our fantastic biology Fellow, for sale at a reasonable price.

Banned books

Colleagues are talking a lot about Banned Books Week. Here are just two of many excellent articles on the subject. I used to be quite contemptuous about this form of censorship. In the late '90s I contributed to a special issue of the journal Paradoxa on censorship in children’s literature. With my background in a country with real censorship, where 2,500 writers paid with their lives for their written words during the Great Terror, I found the practice of removing children’s books from libraries or pasting underwear over Mickey’s private parts in In the Night Kitchen touchingly innocent. I now admit that I was wrong. No censorship is innocent.

I have written about silly examples of Swedish children's books published in the US, when a striptease dancer in a nonsense verse The Pirate Book turned into a “smashing lady” and got a proper black dress over her naked breasts. Or another nonsensical story, Else-Marie and Her Seven Daddies, where a girl takes a bath with her mother and her tiny imaginary daddies – in the US edition, the artist agreed to produce another picture with the girl reading in an armchair. Nobody objected to the seven daddies then. They probably would today.

I was upset when the mother was deleted from the image in the American version of The Wild Baby Goes to Sea, because it was an important part of the story that a parent is allowed to participate in imaginary adventures. Authors and artists agree to do such interventions because otherwise their books will not be translated, and the US market is powerful.

But it is still worse with original books. When I taught in California, my colleagues told me I was exceptionally brave because I had The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on my syllabus. I thought they were joking. The students explained how controversial this book was in the eyes of the school district authorities and how challenging, not to say reckless, it would be for them to choose it for classroom use.

My two other rather unexpected teaching experiences concerned Bridge to Terabithia and The Giver, two novels which I regard among the best works for children published in the US during the last 50 years. I was prepared for the discussion around the theme of death. In fact, I was very well prepared for this discussion of “sensitive issues”, with lots of good arguments I have been using in my courses in Sweden. But the students did not object to death as a subject in a children’s book. On the contrary, they thought that Bridge to Terabithia was a wonderful book to use in the classroom to talk to children about death (my intention had been to show, just as the author says herself, that this is not “a book about death”. Never mind). But they were concerned about the mention of religion. Jess’s family owns a Bible and goes to church on Easter Day. In the novel, this is an opportunity to discuss diversity, since Leslie’s parents are atheists, and she has never been to church. However, a student pointed out in her paper, as a teacher she was not allowed to discuss religion in the classroom without the parents’ consent; which means that a whole level of significance in the novel would have to be excluded from classroom discussion. Or maybe the novel can be censored? Let the family go to a market instead – this is what was done in translated children’s books in the Soviet Union whenever church visits were mentioned. Only how can a visit to a market inspire the underlying ideas of the novel about life and death, sin and reconciliation? Best not to use it at all then.

But the argument against The Giver – which by the way most of the students agreed was the best novel in the whole course – made me laugh and cry at the same time. The novel cannot be taught in schools, a student claimed in a paper, because it describes extrasensory perception, which parents may find offensive and inappropriate. The half of me that was laughing said: “Hey, this is a story, this is sort of science fiction!” But the other half sighed with resignation: “Poor kids! Not only are they denied the pleasures of the demonic Harry Potter, but also The Giver is dangerous, and not at all for the reasons I would think subversive”.

These are some of the aspects of censorship I brought home from my years in California and shared with my Swedish colleagues. Together, we laughed. Today I believe we are all in dismay. Alfie Atkins' father is not allowed to smoke his pipe any more. Critics, publishers and educators in Sweden, which I have always thought was an enlightened country, very seriously discuss whether nudity, sex, alcohol, smoking, politics, religion should be allowed in children's books. Whether death is an appropriate subject. Whether books should be removed form libraries because characters eat meat or drink coffee.

I am concerned. Censorship is spreading. How can we protect our children from overprotective adults?

Stranger than fiction

Fiction is full of serendipities, and we are used to accept them as part of literary conventions. When serendipities occur in real life it feels uncanny. In my yesterday's post I mentioned a writer who once asked me what it was like to be dying. I didn't want to give the name, but I must now: it was Alan Garner.

In today's Independent there is an interview with Garner, that among other things mentions his near-death experiences. It also mentions places that I remember well: the Medicine House with its gigantic chimney, the railway at the bottom of the garden, Jodrell Bank radio telescope, Alderley Edge with its caves. It evokes other places: the Old Man of Mow, the Green Chapel, the fake ruin from Red Shift. All uncanny places with dreams and memories woven into them. Obviously, the interview was written when I wrote my blog yesterday.