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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #135 on: 11:31:34, 18-02-2008 » |
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I suppose that when you're looking at a collection of characters that to some extent are so archetypal as those found in the Hundred Acre Wood, the pages of tWitW, the Moomin books or even in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy ('How white and scarlet is that face!/Who knows? In some peculiar place/The painted figures are alight/With faces painted red and white' [apologies for misquoting from memory]), that there are aspects of our almost every character that we can recognise as part of our own make-up. I've always identified with Eeyore, but have aspired to be more like Tigger, always worried that I was more like Rabbit. I am a person who puts down roots, but also someone who is almost completely obsessed with the every day (partly explains my obsession with food) and therefore I identify strongly with Mole but recognise aspects of Badger in my character (and I think we all recognise parts of us tending towards Toaddom). I've already outlined my Moomintroll/Sniff dichotomy (but I fear encroaching Hemulinism at times). I suppose that it's characters like Prunesquallor, Bellcrank and Steerpike that I recognise in my character as well (I like reading the three books as an allegory for internal conflict within a single mind).
Anyone for a muppet? I suppose I always saw myself as Beaker.
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #136 on: 17:09:56, 23-02-2008 » |
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Has anyone taken this test and been anything other than Pooh and Eeyore?
My partner took the test and came out as Rabbit, which is what I had told him years ago. |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #137 on: 17:12:51, 23-02-2008 » |
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I was Tigger, but I knew that before I even took the test.
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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increpatio
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« Reply #138 on: 17:43:45, 23-02-2008 » |
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What a fascinating website
(Looks, funny maybe, but it's not really, the caption being "French man cries as Nazi's march through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris" :/)
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« Last Edit: 03:14:48, 13-03-2008 by increpatio »
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time_is_now
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« Reply #139 on: 19:36:18, 11-03-2008 » |
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How on earth does one spell gaoler? Jailor? Jailer? Gaolor? Only just seen this. You can have 'jailer' or 'gaoler'. Neither of the other two. Edit: Collins disagrees, and thinks 'jailor' is also acceptable. Fie, say I! Fie!!!
(Does anyone have an OED to hand?) |
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« Last Edit: 19:39:39, 11-03-2008 by time_is_now »
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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increpatio
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« Reply #140 on: 01:17:18, 12-03-2008 » |
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How on earth does one spell gaoler? Jailor? Jailer? Gaolor? Only just seen this. You can have 'jailer' or 'gaoler'. Neither of the other two. Edit: Collins disagrees, and thinks 'jailor' is also acceptable. Fie, say I! Fie!!!
(Does anyone have an OED to hand?)Jailor in there, gaolor is not. I qvothe: Spelling: 3 gayholer, 4-6 gailer, 4-7 gayler, 5 gaylere, 6 gaylour, -or, 6-7 gailor, 7 goaler, 7- gaoler . 4 iaioler, iaoler(e, iailere, iaylar, 4-5 iaylere, 4-6 iayler, 4-7 iailer, (5 iaylarde, 6 ioyler), 6-7 iayl-, iailour, 7-8 jaylor, -our, 7- jailer, jailor . 5 geil-, geyl-, geayl-, geyel-, 7 gealer (the first gets a 'gosh' from this corner ) |
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #141 on: 11:15:55, 19-03-2008 » |
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Which of these would Sid go for, and whom would he incarcerate? I don't know why I want to know this.
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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George Garnett
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« Reply #142 on: 11:22:53, 19-03-2008 » |
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Which character from a novel are you? I think I'm probably a male version of Mildred Lathbury in Excellent Women. I'm very, very fond of her anyway which may or may not be the same thing. |
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #143 on: 18:34:20, 19-03-2008 » |
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O good, another Pym fan. sk can't stand her.
I re-read Glass of Blessings and Excellent Women recently. I prefer the first. Can't say I identify with any character in particular. The end of Excellent Women is a bit sad when this kind, intelligent women is condemned to a lifetime of subservience to self important men.
Barbara Pym seems to have both thought men were silly but at the same time adorable.
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Antheil
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« Reply #144 on: 18:38:19, 19-03-2008 » |
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Barbara Pym seems to have both thought men were silly but at the same time adorable.
Don't we all Don B, don't we all!!  |
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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Morticia
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« Reply #145 on: 18:47:45, 19-03-2008 » |
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Another Barabra Pym fan checking in, DB, although I don't think I indentify with any one particular female character in her novels. Just quite a few of them in general! Alas, not the formidable ones  |
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #146 on: 18:53:08, 19-03-2008 » |
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I think I am more Piers than Keith.
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #147 on: 10:48:10, 20-03-2008 » |
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In fact behind the jumble sales, parish meetings, daring visits to coffee bars, evening classes, lectures at learned societies and so on, Barbara Pym's outlook is nearly as bleak and absurd as Samuel Becket's. The cosiness of the world described can make it even more so.
Swanknight gave up on Quartet in Autumn, possibly the bleakest.
I find Glass of Blessings moving because here in the pre-Wolfendon 1950s is a churchgoing, self-consciously cultured and offically sexually inexperienced woman who meets an unambiguous gay couple and is completely unshocked by the fact, and indeed finds them far more fun than her terminally tedious husband.
(Wilmet is shocked at first by the social discrepancy between Piers and Keith, but not their sexuality:
"But, Piers, why did you choose him of all people? I shouldn't have thought you had anything in common?"
"This having things in common," said Piers impatiently, "how overrated it is! Long dreary intellectual conversations, capping each other's obscure quotations - it's so exhausting. It's much more agreeable to come home to some different remarks from the ones one's been hearing all day."
"I'm sure you get those," I said spitefully. )
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« Last Edit: 12:25:08, 20-03-2008 by Don Basilio »
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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George Garnett
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« Reply #148 on: 12:08:41, 20-03-2008 » |
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And yet it doesn't even seem to cross Wilmet's mind that Piers is gay until she goes to visit him in Shepherd's Bush and encounters Keith, bringing to a sudden end her tentative steps towards having a 'thing' with him. We, the readers, saw it coming a mile off but Wilmet didn't: and she is the narrator! (Although maybe part of her sensed that this apparently reckless flirting with the idea of an affair was actually quite safe all along?) Very, very skilful stuff. One of the reasons I particularly love and admire Barbara Pym is connected with what I was trying to get at on the 'People unlike us' thread. Not being a woman myself I am as endlessly mystified and intrigued as I assume most men are with what it might be like. I have just come to trust Barbara Pym to do that (in relation to particular women in particular circumstances at a particular time, obviously, but it's a start!). She is alarmingly and wince-makingly good at knowing some of what goes on in my head; a good reason, I reckon, for trusting her as a worthwhile guide into the uncharted territory of other people's minds. I do admire writers who are much, much finer and tougher than they appear to be. And I have a particular soft spot for novels in which absolutely nothing happens. I think I can understand though why some people absolutely loathe her and everything she stands for. I can't quite see Ian P (sorry, Ian  ) settling down with An Unsuitable Attachment but you never know. |
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« Last Edit: 12:35:01, 20-03-2008 by George Garnett »
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increpatio
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« Reply #149 on: 13:26:33, 20-03-2008 » |
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One of the reasons I particularly love and admire Barbara Pym is connected with what I was trying to get at on the 'People unlike us' thread. Not being a woman myself I am as endlessly mystified and intrigued as I assume most men are with what it might be like. I have just come to trust Barbara Pym to do that (in relation to particular women in particular circumstances at a particular time, obviously, but it's a start!). She is alarmingly and wince-makingly good at knowing some of what goes on in my head; a good reason, I reckon, for trusting her as a worthwhile guide into the uncharted territory of other people's minds. I haven't read anything by Pym myself, but I found that Updike has fulfilled a very similar role for me. |
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