I’ve literally just finished reading Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams’s Tunnels and, far from proclaiming this the new Harry Potter, I find myself rather frustrated by the experience.

That’s not to say it’s a bad novel; it’s not. Oh, there are some clanky moments, such as the following image of an underground cavern:

It dwarfed any of the Colony’s caverns with its scale, and brought to Will’s mind the image of a gargantuan heart, its chambers criss-crossed by huge, heartstring-like columns. (352)

This isn’t great writing; though it’s not necessarily representative of the book as a whole, I wasn’t convinced by the fairly awkward combination of the metaphor and simile (and perhaps another metaphorical term: is “chambers” referring to the chambers of the heart or literally to the chambers within an underground cavern?). Nor is this the only instance where the prose clanked a little for me.

Nevertheless, I can see small boys responding eagerly to the book, the sequel that it seems to be leading towards, and the movie that is apparently slated for release in 2010.

But that’s part of my problem; the book is intensely . . . boy-focused, for want of a better term.

I’ve heard the arguments that young girls will read books with male protagonists, but that young boys won’t read books about girls.

I don’t buy it for a minute.

Oh, certainly I imagine that the number of young men who bought and read Meg Cabot’s rather funny—in the early stages, anyway—series The Princess Diaries would be significantly outweighed by their female counterparts: those books were clearly marketed for a prepubescent female readership, whoever else read them.

But I don’t believe that Garth Nix’s lovely Abhorsen series, or Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass, or many of Terry Pratchett’s recent books, including the Tiffany Aching series, weren’t read by boys because they had girl protagonists—or, going further back, that the same fate met fully half of Diana Wynne Jones’s oeuvre, or C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in which Lucy Pevensie is the stand-out character.

So I don’t accept that as a reason.

It may be that Gordon and Williams deliberately aimed this at a specifically male readership, as I’ve suggested that Cabot did with young girls. There’s nothing wrong with that approach.

But the focus is unmistakeable.

The novel has three significant female characters: there are other women—two of whom are given names but are entirely ineffectual from a plot perspective and another who is named but never actually present in the text—but the three primary ones are the only ones given any significant space within the text.

Of these, one is psychopathic. Literally.

Another is drugged into a stupor by an addiction to television that is maintained by two constantly active video recorders: although she nominally occupies the positions of wife and mother, she abandons these with no argument and no justification. When she does break away from the television stupor, it is only to enter an alternative stupor created by pharmaceuticals.

The third does rise to a moment of pathos but is also stupefied; in her case, it’s a combination of cigarettes, cheap vodka, and council housing. I can certainly believe that the conditions of council-housing life in a rough suburb of London would generate a desire to slide into forgetfulness, but I’m less sympathetic towards this character when she’s part of a pattern of ineffectual female characters.

But, just in case this seems nothing more than the futile protestations of a feminist reader, it’s not the only concern that the book raised.

In Tunnels, there are two worlds: one above ground and one below. I’m not giving much away with this information: a cursory glance at the cover and the blurb in conjunction will tell you that.

The above-ground world is ours, not an alternative Earth, so little needs to be said about that.

My other concern, then, is with the evocation of the below-ground world, which seems uneven.

I should perhaps state here that, as a reader, I’m rapidly turned off by a book if the world-building is inconsistent, implausible, or just plain silly.

None of those are the case here, but it is the case that the world-building is uneven.

We are given, for example, a great deal of information about the day-to-day life of the underground world, but no information at all on how it can operate as an economy, how such an authoritarian social structure can maintain itself—about, essentially, how this community can possibly be self-sustaining. In fact, we get hints that it’s not self-sustaining, which only add to the confusion.

The book also drops hints about how this community came about: once again, none of these points are addressed in the text, so the reader is left to wonder if the 260-year time frame we’re given is sufficient to create what we see.

I’m sure that some of these questions will be answered if the book runs to a sequel, or more than one sequel.

But they’re not presented in such a way in the text as to invite further thoughts about what the sequels might reveal. The questions that Tunnels raises are closed off; the reader simply isn’t encouraged to speculate, when the information presented is so scanty.

Since this novel has been talked about as “the new Harry Potter“, I feel justified in making the following point: even when Rowling withheld information, she made it quite clear that information was being withheld.

Whatever can be said about the quality of Rowling’s writing at the sentence level or about the tautness of her narratives—and I’m saying nothing about either point—she cleverly managed the blocking of future plot points, whether it was by the Agatha Christie method of “Hey, look what my other hand’s doing!” or by having a powerful character simply stop potential enquiries.

Tunnels doesn’t have the same feel of through-plotted development. It feels, rather, as though the authors themselves are slowly working their way forward.

It may be that the putative sequels, should they emerge, will make me rethink this position.

But for now, I’m sticking with my original point: this, ultimately, is a rather frustrating book.

I don’t know why I’m compelled to write this: it may be the mention of Kibbutznik in the last post but one, or a conversation I just had with my Mam.

(I’m also not sure why I’m compelled to post three times tonight, but that may be the fact that I haven’t done much else today, and I’m onto my second glass of wine.)

When we took the trip to Israel, we also visited a number of other countries, taking advantage of the fact that we were overseas anyway—which is a big advantage when you live on a giant island continent.

One place we stopped was Paris.

I can’t remember how long we stayed there: I was only nine years old.

I can’t remember much of Paris at all, actually, except for the following three things.

We used to breakfast on croissants in street cafes in the morning. The croissants were fresh from the oven, and every croissant I’ve ever had since has been a vague disappointment—but I eat them anyway, in some kind of futile quest. The cafes also had sugar in individually packaged cubes instead of granules. When you’re nine, that’s about as exotic as it gets.

We went to the Louvre one day, to see the Mona Lisa—among other things. But my parents hadn’t checked whether the Louvre was open on Tuesdays, and it wasn’t. We were flying out the next day, so I still haven’t seen the Mona Lisa: despite having read Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” I’m still not sure whether seeing it on tea towels counts.

On the last day that we were there, we came across an Algerian street trader—the fact that he was Algerian isn’t relevant in any way, just additional information.

He was selling six-foot-tall, cylindrical balloons patterned with pictures of The Smurfs.

To a nine-year-old girl, these were entirely irresistible.

(Now, of course, I can’t abide The Smurfs: smug little isolationists, with their improbable language—making one word work as a noun, and a verb, and an adjective, and an adverb, and a proper noun. I wasn’t particularly distressed when Unicef bombed their village and I wasn’t alone, if I remember the reaction to that advertisement correctly. But that’s beside the point.)

So he had these balloons, and I was enraptured. He knew it, too. He kept saying, “You want one of these?”

I’d say “Yes” just as my parents said, “No.”

We were flying out that night, and the balloon was six-feet tall.

Then a gendarme arrived.

Street trading was illegal, so the gendarme told the man to move along. But there I was, a blonde, blue-eyed, nine-year-old girl, with starry, Smurf-inspired eyes.

So the gendarme gallantly presented me with the one balloon that the man had inflated for display, while running the man off.

My parents resisted, but I accepted with alacrity.

So there we were, walking along a street in Paris: my parents thoroughly bewildered, me quite satisfied in my possession of the balloon.

Behind us ran the street trader, shouting “You owe me ten francs!”

Behind him ran the gendarme, shouting “You! Move along!”

I have no idea what the pedestrians—or should that be flaneurs, perhaps?—thought.

Of course, we came to the Metro eventually, and we couldn’t fit the balloon through the doors. So my father put a hole in it with a pair of nail scissors, deflated it, and folded it into a pocket.

My parents swore we could re-inflate it when we got home.

But we never could.

Is that shallow, for one’s best memory of Paris?

Recently, Nick—the Grand Master of extracting all available details about Doctor Who from the Internet or, in fact, any other available media—brought this to my attention: a blog post from James Moran, writer for Doctor Who and Torchwood.

Now, I was already predisposed to like James Moran, since he wrote “The Fires of Pompeii” for Doctor Who—which was the episode where I really warmed to Catherine Tate as Donna; I’d liked her before, but I really liked her here—and “Sleeper” for Torchwood, which was a gut-wrencher in a series that ended with me weeping uncontrollably in front of my television.

(Seriously, if you are a reader who doesn’t happen to know me, that really isn’t like me.)

(An aside:

NICK: He also wrote a movie called Severance, which is apparently really good if you like your horror bloody and British.
ME: Which I don’t.

I haven’t recovered yet from 28 Days Later, and still have a tendency to shout “They’re running from the infected!” at moments of high tension.

Ahem.)

Anyway, this particular blog post is about Moran’s contact with Harlan Ellison, whom he’d named as the living writer he’d most like to share a pint with in a magazine interview.

The article itself is a lovely invocation of the pleasures and pains of fandom. I’m not familiar with Ellison’s work myself—except in the Pierre Bayard sense that I know where it fits in the cultural library—but I did once, back in the M/C Reviews days, publish a fan’s response to Ellison that reminds me of Moran’s piece.

But then you read down to the comments thread, where one commentator has simply written “Ellison’s always struck me as a bit of an asshole, but this seemed very cool of him.”

If I were the blogger in this case, I think my response would be, “Oh no, no, no no no no no no.”

Except with more words that should probably be spelled out with asterisks in this time slot.

And then Harlan Ellison responds.

Actually, his response is rather marvellous, and the blogger deals with the situation with panache, but the whole situation does illustrate a point that I made before, in my piece on Steven Moffat.

You don’t know who might be reading on the Internet, so why insult them?

Today, I decided that I wasn’t going to start my marking, but instead give myself a long weekend after what has been an exhausting if thoroughly enjoyable semester.

I’m not even entirely sure what I did do today, except that it was very little: if you don’t count chatting to friends via Facebook, drinking coffee, listening to Elvis Costello, reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and enjoying the rain—and I don’t count those things.

But some time during the afternoon, I decided to play a spontaneously invented game called “Let’s see what interesting photographs I can take in my living room.” This is no doubt connected to my new passion for putting photographs on the blog. (And, really, who doesn’t like looking at photographs on the Internet?)

But then it turned out that the most interesting pictures were all the little inanimate faces that watch me every day from various perches around the room.

Most of these objects are connected to my childhood: old toys and so forth, now relegated (or elevated, depending on your attitude towards toys) to the status of ornaments. Not all of them are very ornamental, but I like having them around.

Take my Puggles, for instance:

(They’re very difficult to take a clear photograph of, the velvety little things. And yes, that is a Star Trek-branded magazine file behind them.)

Do people still remember Puggles? (People who visited back in the days when I used to store them on the back of the sofa probably remember them, since they’ve almost certainly been beaned in the head with them while blamelessly watching television—I know I have. Although they aren’t, strictly speaking, beanbags at all; they’re filled with crushed walnut shells, which is a fact that used to fascinate me as a child.)

Puggles were all the rage back when I was, I suppose, seven or eight? Maybe younger?

But they were toys that came with their own particular brand of nightmare.

Puggles arrived in little, velvet, drawstring bags; in fact, the bags were made out of the same material as the Puggles themselves, but I have never considered—until now—whether that meant that the bags were made out of the skins of other, less-fortunate Puggles.

That’s not the nightmarish part.

The bags had brass-encircled holes in the centre, for you to poke the Puggles’ noses out of. And you were sternly exhorted, in an accompanying pamphlet, to make sure you put the Puggles in the bag at night—otherwise, hunters would come along and grab them, to make them into Puggle pies.

And people think we’re destroying the current generation’s innocence.

I wonder sometimes how many hunters crept into my room at night, while I had the Puggles hanging off the posts of my bed, only to be foiled by the fact that the Puggles were in bags.

It boggles the mind.

Or what about Strawberry Shortcake?

Neither of these is Strawberry Shortcake, of course. The one on the left is Almond Tea. She normally wears overalls, but this particular doll was part of the “Party Pleaser” line; apparently, even tomboys have to wear skirts when they go to a party. More frightening still is the fact that these dolls were scented and, even though this one is well over twenty years old, she still smells.

(I would give the actual date, but I’ve forgotten. And, as a public service announcement, don’t try Googling “Strawberry Shortcake” and “Party Pleaser” unless you’ve got plans to bake a dessert.)

I’ve only just discovered from Wikipedia that Almond Tea is supposed to be Asian; well, Asian in a Strawberry Shortcake kind of way. Apparently, she’s from the country of “China Cup.” (Well, it was 1983 when she first appeared.)

I suppose that explains her pet, Marza Panda—alas, missing from my set, along with the doll’s plastic Mary Janes. Why are shoes always the first thing to go missing?

The other doll is Lemon Meringue; her pet, Frappe Frog, is also missing, but at least she never had shoes. She’s originally from a slumber-party range, which explains her terrifying eyes; they’re supposed to slide closed when she’s horizontal.

Now, one of them closes and the other sort of flickers for a while before settling half open. And we’re back to nightmares again.

But Mandy’s not nightmarish:

Mandy’s from a Fisher Price range called “My Friends,” from 1977. I think I must have been given her around about that time, because she was a gift from neighbours while we were still living in Scotland.

(She is a first-generation Mandy, because the cloth part of her body is pink-rosebud fabric, not the later yellow-rosebud fabric. See, wasn’t that an interesting fact?)

What I’ve always found interesting about Mandy is that I always assumed she’d come with that kicky little late-‘60s bob, but apparently she is supposed to have below-the-shoulder hair; I suppose her previous owner brought her up to date with contemporary fashions.

Mandy now lives next to Paddington Bear in the living room, which explains the “Please look after this bear” sign in the corner of the picture.

In the interests of parity, we have one of Nick’s childhood toys on Mandy’s other side:

Being as this robot is not mine, I have no fascinating information to impart and no anecdotes to tell. But he really does illustrate the title to this post: doesn’t he have the cutest face?

This doll, on the other hand, has a story:

(This isn’t a great photo—there are better ones—but I like the slight leaning to one side: she looks so nonchalant.)

This is a Kibbutznik, so-called because she was made and sold as a fund-raising exercise for one of the Israeli kibbutzes: Kibbutz Tzora, in this case.

(Interestingly, neither “kibbutz” or “kibbutznik” trigger off the spelling filter: the first I can understand; the second is stranger. I must do some more research on how broadly that term is applied now.)

The Kibbutznik was bought in Israel in 1986, when we were over there for a conference that my father was attending. I named her “Delilah,” because I was nine years old and it seemed like an appropriately biblical name.

She’s getting slightly shopworn, these days, but she’s still perhaps the most exotic doll on the shelf, even if she is being used as a book-end.

The final image isn’t a childhood toy but, given the title of the post, I couldn’t leave him out:

I love this dog’s little face beyond reason.

As best as I can tell, this is a modern Chinese or—more likely—Japanese knock-off of a well-known English model, probably a Staffordshire dog. (Staffordshire the potters, that is—not a Staffordshire bull terrier. I would link to a picture, but the only ones that I can find are from antiques dealers and will probably expire, causing irritating dead links.)

But what I love most is the fact that, at some point, someone stood back and thought, “You know what this dog needs? Eyebrows!”

Now it has a wickedly sardonic look that, combined with the slight backward tilt to the head, makes it seem as though it’s looking down on everything else in the living room.

This was a Christmas present from my parents, which meant it met two criteria: it was bought at auction well before Christmas and my mother displayed it in her living room for about six months, getting more and more attached to it in the process.

The end result was this conversation:

MUM: Mind, he looks good sitting next to the fireplace.
ME: No.
MUM: Oh, no, I know he’s yours.
ME: Damn skippy!
MUM: Oh, is that what you’re going to call him?

So Damn Skippy he is, the supercilious little hound.

I’ve already written a piece on my love of Agatha Christie novels, so I felt that this might make an appropriate companion piece.

I’ve been breaking my heart this weekend—again, fool that I am—over Busman’s Honeymoon, which never ceases to strike me as a tragedy, even with the later short stories about Lord Peter and Harriet’s married life, collected in Striding Folly.

It always seems a shame to me, after the events of Strong Poison, the underlying tension of Have His Carcase, and the partly frustrated yet oddly celebratory mood of Gaudy Night, that we should come to this: a honeymoon couple uncertain about whether the marriage can survive the exigencies of the very interests that brought the two of them together.

But then, I say that as a Sayers fan. I’ve always felt that the quality of her writing—but then, you have to stop there, don’t you? Because to say that “the quality of her writing is far higher than that of the average crime novel” leads into a morass of assumptions about what popular fiction is, where it fits on an entirely arbitrary scale of perceived literary value, and whether we can judge it against “proper novels.”

Take Julian Symons, for example. I understand him to be a leading exponent of British crime writing—according to the Wikipedia article to which I’ve just linked—but I’ve never read any of his books.

But, to go back to the Wikipedia article again, take this quote on Symons, which is apparently from the introduction to The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:

He turned to crime writing in a light–hearted way before the war and soon afterwards established himself as a leading exponent of it, though his use of irony to show the violence behind the respectable masks of society place many of his books on the level of the orthodox novel.

Many of his books are on a level with the “orthodox novel,” eh? Because they’re ironic?

Fair enough.

But why that entirely arbitrary dichotomy between “crime fiction” and “orthodox fiction”? Yes, I know I used the term “popular” to describe Conan Doyle as a writer in this post, but I stand by it. Compared to say, Thomas Hardy, he was a “popular writer”; I’ve never heard that people in their thousands were in a state of hysteria and high distress when Hardy killed off Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

But then, why bring Julian Symons into this debate at all?

Because Symons didn’t like Sayers.

When he published Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel—A History (Penguin, 1974), he made a point of emphasising that “[it] is from a point of view very short of idolatry that they [Sayers’s novels] are discussed here” (112). And by “very short” he doesn’t mean that he’s close to the idolatry end of the scale.

But why? What on earth does Symons have against Sayers?

He starts by outlining the ways in which she is to be lauded:

• she has a “clear and incisive” intellect and was widely read in crime fiction (112).
• she was the first writer to include five Poe stories in the canon of early crime fiction, rather than the usual three (113).
• similarly, she recognised Sheridan Le Fanu’s contribution to the development of the genre (113).
• “it is impossible not to admire the careful craftsmanship with which they [her stories] have been made” (113).
• she took great pains over the accuracy of her stories (113).

So why doesn’t he like her? Apparently—and there’s no padding here, no attempt to soften the verbiage—because “she was pompous and boring” (113).

Well, all right then. There’s not much I can say to that, is there? Especially since Symons emphasises that this is “the same evidence that admirers would cite in her favour” (113)—the style of her writing, as opposed the craftsmanship of her plotting.

And, oddly, it’s often the craftsmanship of her plots with which I take exception. I mentioned in a previous post that I tend not to re-read Have His Carcase, because it’s blatantly obvious to me that one of the primary characters was a haemophiliac, which knowledge spoils the slow development of the plot for me, and has since the first time I read the novel.

Similarly, the novel that Symons singles out, The Nine Tailors, is something of a dull murder mystery, because the nature of the victim, the cause of his death, and the identity of the perpetrator are quite obvious from relatively early on.

But, really, does one read The Nine Tailors solely for the murder mystery? Doesn’t much, perhaps the majority, of the joy that one obtains from that novel come from the evocation of a curiously English form of campanology: change ringing.

Consider, for example, the nine deep tolls that mark the passing of a man of the parish. Consider the twelve tolls at New Year’s midnight for the dead year.

And consider this:

The bells gave tongue: Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul, rioting and exulting high up in the dark tower, wide mouths rising and falling, brazen tongues clamouring, huge wheels turning to the dance of the leaping ropes. [. . .] Out over the flat, white wastes of fen, over the spear-straight, steel-dark dykes and the wind-bent, groaning poplar trees, bursting from the snow-choked louvres of the belfry, whirled away southward and westward in gusty blasts of clamour to the sleeping counties went the music of the bells — little Gaude, silver Sabaoth, strong John and Jericho, glad Jubilee, sweet Dimity, with great Tailor Paul bawling and striding like a giant in the midst of them. (34)

Really, what does the ready identity of the murderer mean, compared to that passage?

Or, on a smaller note, consider Harriet Vane’s memories of her undergraduate days in Oxford in Gaudy Night, when she recalls climbing Magdalen Tower with a friend and feeling “it swing beneath them with the swing of the reeling bells” (3).

What does it matter if, as Symons says, Lord Peter Wimsey is unbearably affected—I myself struggle at times with both his and Harriet’s automatic assumption that servants, excluding Bunter, need to be treated in a certain way—when the author can produce lines that read like something out of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem?

But, then, I am a fan, so according to Symons I have no choice but to eulogise Sayers’s writing style. From Symons’s approach to her novels, it seems that an appreciation for her prose prefigures an inability to critically appraise her work.

Perhaps that’s so—but I don’t think so.

I think, rather, that some of us don’t necessarily see “detective fiction” and “orthodox novels” as sharply divided categories in a “never the twain shall meet” sense.

Some of us just enjoy the prose, even while muttering “haemophiliac” under our breath.

I’ve said it before, but I’m going to say it again and again until people start parroting it in the streets. If they aren’t already.

I’ve always been a little cautious about what I say about real people on here—especially real people that I don’t actually know—because even though this little corner of the Internet is largely unexplored, I don’t want it to contain anything potentially offensive or derogatory (except where it concerns the movie adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).

But I don’t think there’s anything too offensive in this, so I’ll say it again: Steven Moffat is a god.

I’ve just seen “Silence in the Library”—and I’ll say no more.

Except I’m still shaking and exhilarated.

There’s nothing quite like seeing beautifully directed, cleverly written, absolutely terrifying real science fiction on your television.

But I’ll say no more.

Apparently, some parts of the fandom—if I can conceive of fandom as being, in this case, a corporeal state, like a kingdom—claim that Steven Moffat sacrifices emotional depth and development to a desire for clever narrative structures.

I don’t see that.

And, anyway, I’m a fan of clever narrative structures.

But I’ll say no more about it.

I mean it this time.

Most of you can wait for the next Doctor Who night, or perhaps the one after.

It’ll be worth the wait, I can promise that.

I have absolutely no idea how this will go—it was a throwaway line one night, when Nick and I were discussing the manifest aspects of Allan Moore’s genius and how we hadn’t been able to sit through the entire movie, despite loving the graphic novels (well, I loved them; I think Nick loved the first two and hasn’t finished the third one.)

I said, “Maybe I should live-blog the movie—that way we might sit through it.”

Nick thought this was a brilliant idea, and so here we are.

I’ve never live-blogged a movie—at least Eurovision had ad. breaks. But this time I suppose we have a pause button if need be.

Plus, I have coffee. There can’t be that much wrong in the world if one has coffee. (Vodka is now out of the live-blogging line up, after the aftermath of Eurovision semi-final 2: I had no idea how much vodka would be required.)

So here we are—and I’m not optimistic about the film. I’ve only seen 15 minutes of it before, after which I begged Nick to turn it off.

The 20th-Century Fox symbol is cool.

Hang on, writing. Bugger.

Right, policemen with whistles . . . and wolves? Or dogs? And a tank. What?

Seriously, what? I don’t even remember this from last time.

Oh, ew! Squished policeman.

Now the tank is in the bank of England. Why? (Seriously, Nick doesn’t remember this bit either. It’s certainly not in the books.) And would bank security guards in England in the late nineteenth century be armed?

Actually, I’m not sure when this is set—these seem to be Nazis. Are they Nazis?

Oh, I see—1899. So pre-World War Two German soldiers.

Damn—who is the villain? Doctor Doom?

I seriously don’t remember any of this—and now airships are exploding. Okay, there were airships in the original.

Ah, Kenya!

I do remember this bit—but I don’t recall any of the earlier material about World War One apparently starting fifteen years early after a poorly exposited attack on a German airship factory.

Ooh, the Reverend from the last Doctor Who story—and Allan Quartermain. Nah, that’s not Quartermain. Where’s Sean Connery? This guy is so dead, pretending to be Quartermain.

Ah, there’s Quartermain—and maybe that man won’t die, after all.

I don’t like this Quartermain, though—even if it is Sean Connery.

“Lead a team of unique men”? Dammit—Mina is the leader of this League! Allan Quartermain is a broken, opium-addicted shell of his former self at this point in the narrative. He gets better—damn, there’s that sexism again. Sure, stories of Quartermain have thrilled boys for decades—but girls, too. Like Mina, for example.

Oops, the fake Quartermain is dead.

Good thing the bad guys can’t shoot straight, once again. Or may Allan (Quartermain is too long to type) can just outrun machine-gun bullets.

Oh, dear—one of the bad guys appears to be caught in a coffee table. That must hurt—but not as much as what happened with that rhinoceros horn. Damn.

Bomb!

Actually, the rhinoceros reminds me of Deadwood—“He twelve-pointed Slippery Dan!” I guess a rhinoceros horn is one point.

See! I told you that ticking bag was a bomb, you fools.

Hang on, is that tombstone Allan’s son (who “pops up”, in a manner of speaking, in the later books) or his wife, or one of his wives, or did he fake his own death? I have no idea. I doubt it’s important.

Referencing Phileas Fogg? Don’t bother—you’ll never be able to match the subtlety and complexity of Moore’s references.

Ah, League headquarters.

NICK: Aw, I want a subterranean lair. With books.

Oh, it’s M. Who is M in the movie? Is it still going to be Professor Moriarty? (Spoiler!)

Ooh, Captain Nemo! I liked him in the books. Apparently in this he doesn’t like being called a pirate. I seem to recall he was very fond of the term in the novels.

Oh, don’t reference the Phantom of the Opera! That was an entirely different League, I seem to recall.

And there’s The Invisible Man—if he dies in this the way he dies in the novel, I’m out of here. Hang on, he’s not the original Invisible Man? Why not? Who’s Rodney Skinner?

I miss the original meeting with the Invisible Man—posing as the Holy Ghost while impregnating schoolgirls. That was grotesque.

Hang on, Mina is a minor League member? And she’s still Mina Harker—what happened to the divorce and her insistence on being Miss Murray?

Okay, “Call me Ishmael” made me laugh out loud—but I hope Broadarrow Jack is still a crew member on the Nautilus.

Skinner’s white face paint doesn’t make him look invisible, it just makes him look like an ordinary man wearing white face paint.

Now they’re referencing Jack the Ripper—and there’s Dorian Gray.

Rant coming: I know Dorian Gray was a member of an earlier League, but why oh why did they add him to this set? Sure, Stuart Townsend is rather pretty—although the character is insufferable.

(Hang on, Allan Quartermain is indestructable? Why now?)

(Also, another spoiler—Mina is the most rubbish vampire ever! Why one earth couldn’t she hear those gunmen coming?)

Back to the rant, while the villain does his boring monologue: Dorian Gray doesn’t add anything to this film—whereas Edward Hyde was a fascinating and complicated character, who came to a fascinating end.

Ah, it seems Tom Sawyer has joined the crew. Now this did irritate me. I understand he was added to attract American audiences. Well, I’m sorry but these are intensely British books—and I don’t believe that American audiences are necessarily that xenophobic. Look how well the Harry Potter films and Lord of the Rings trilogy did.

There’s a fight scene going on while I“m writing this, by the way, but it’s a bit dull. No real banter.

Okay, Townsend did do that line quite nicely:
MINION: What are you?
DORIAN: I’m . . . complicated.

Oh, Mina—you must have known that that man was there! Ah, now she reveals that she’s a vampire.

I still preferred the old Mina.

Hang on, apparently Dorian’s clothes are invulnerable to harm as well! All the bullet holes have healed up—how? Is he wearing those clothes in the portrait?

Ah—they actually are bringing Edward Hyde into the fold, after all. I’d forgotten that.

“Dracula—he was Transylvanian.” Hilarious: she may as well have said “He was one of the Shropshire Draculas.”

Oooh, the Nautilus. Is the Thames actually that deep at that point? How? She’s a lovely ship, though.

They’ve toned down Mina’s scars, I see—that’s a shame.

Right—slight cigarette break so I can get feeling back into my legs. Damn—we’re only half an hour through the film.

Hyde’s a bit unconvincing—but at least he’s carrying a cane. I hope we get to see him do the polka. But that would be the sequel, wouldn’t it?

I thought if you couldn’t do it in one bullet, not to do it at all, Allan. But Nick claims he’s choosing each shot.

NICK: Peta Wilson does a good Sean Connery, actually.

Ah, is Mina going to be the one who gets through to Hyde? That would be interesting. Oh, no—looks like Allan gets that role as well. What exactly is Mina going to do, apart from drink people’s blood?

Wow—the transformation into Jekyll looks insanely painful and noisy. How has he been able to get away with that all these years? Surely the neighbours would complain.

Damn—how big is the Nautilus? Ten stories? And why is it riding on the surface of the water?

Hang on, shouldn’t Mina be bursting into flames in the sun?

He looks a bit familiar, Tom Sawyer. I don’t think I’ve seen him before.

Oh, good—the Nautilus is finally going under water. It would be a bit of a waste of a submarine, otherwise.

The copy of The Strand Magazine is a nice touch—do you think Allan Quartermain read the Sherlock Holmes stories?

I’m assuming the fact that Skinner is walking around naked and invisible is prefiguring the fact that he’s a villain, but we’ll see.

I’m not sure that this “Phantom” is actually going to make an effective villain—he looks like Doctor Doom and is strangely ineffectual. I miss the Devil Doctor, who was an appropriately nineteenth-century villain—a racial stereotype, of course, but one used consciously and cleverly by authors exploiting the fictional tropes of the period about which they were writing. And he was well creepy.

Ah, the grave was Allan Quartermain Junior. That’s going to make following the later graphic novels harder—but then there’s been zero attempt in this film so far to follow the original graphic novel.

I haven’t actually tried to transcribe any of the dialogue yet—it’s beyond banal.

NICK: Ah, father-son bonding over an enormous rifle and—well, phallic symbol, really.

Nick doesn’t believe in mincing words.

Ooh, the interior decorating of the Nautilus is pretty; in a way, it looks oddly like a Queenslander.

I love it when characters see people watching them doing something private (like, for example, worshipping Kali) and then pointedly and angrily shut the door in their faces. I mean, if it’s that private and there were actually doors available in the first place, why didn’t you shut them before you began?

Ah, Dorian is describing his portrait—mate, it doesn’t just age instead of you. More to the point, it shows the effects of your dissipations. I’m not sure that the portrait was ever supposed to give unnatural long life—although it’s been a while since I read the novella. I think it just allowed him to stay young for the duration of his normal life. I think.

I’m not comfortable with the idea of Mina as an uncontrollably attractive femme fatale.

Hang on, someone’s taken one of the bottles of Hyde formula? Can other people use it?

Shit! How on earth is the Nautilus navigating the Venetian canals? Aren’t they something like 10 feet deep? I guess the Phantom doesn’t need to blow the foundations of Venice—apparently it doesn’t have any.

Ooh, Venetian Carnival! I assume it has another name, but I don’t know that it is. Looks fun, though.

Nick thinks they’ve taken fewer liberties with Nemo than with the other characters. He’s probably right—but given the liberties they’ve taken with Mina and Allan—and the addition of two other characters—that isn’t saying much.

Ah—so that’s the pay-off for the ridiculous limousine from earlier in the film—they’re going to use it to—out-run the chain of explosions from a series of bombs? O-kay then.

Right, remember when it said it looked like they were setting Skinner up to be a villain? Apparently there was no set-up; he just is a villain now, and is warning people of their approach, even though he’s been in a submarine all this time. Again, o-kay.

Hey, Mina can turn into an enormous quantity of bats! I’ve always wondered how that was possible, speaking practically. Useful trait, though.

What happened to Dorian? I wasn’t looking.

NICK: This is primo A-grade bullshit.

He then went on to say that he’s pretty sure 90% of Venice didn’t explode in 1899, but I did point out that this isn’t actually a documentary.

Okay, Tom Sawyer must be dead after that crash.

Nope—apparently not.

NEMO: He’s done it!
ME: Done what?
NICK: I don’t know—it didn’t make any sense.

ALLAN: Venice still stands.
ME: Bits of it!
NICK: If he’d just said “more or less” I would have forgiven him.

Wow, the Phantom really is a crappy villain.

Ah, there’s Dorian. I guess he is the bad guy, after all. In which case, where’s Skinner?

Oh, the Phantom is M! Hang on, does that mean M is Professor Moriarty? I’m confused. And poor old Ishmael is dead—that would never have happened if he’d had Broadarrow Jack by his side.

Hang on, Ishmael’s not dead. Oh, no, wait—he is now. Nick’s quite pleased he was clever enough to mention his attacker’s name first, until of leaving it until he’s almost dead, as people normally do.

Ooh, nice escape pod.

Really, the design of the Nautilus is the best thing about this film, hands down. But its escape pod is called the Nautiloid? Why?

I thought that was a gramophone record? Apparently it’s a film. With sound. In 1899. Still, I suppose it’s in an enormous submarine, so that’s something to consider.

“He’s stolen us! And we let him.” Yes, but that’s all right, mate—you probably weren’t paying that much attention to the plot. I know I wasn’t.

Bombs that operate via crystal sensors? Why on earth can’t super-villains just use ordinary bombs, like everyone else? Oh, and now they’re blowing up the Nautilus—the one thing I said I liked about this movie? That’s just bloody typical.

While I was typing this, by the way, M was reviewing his entire villainous strategy, on the grounds that the Nautilus was going to blow up anyway—it’s a good thing they weren’t still in harbour when they listened to the record, isn’t it?—but it wasn’t a very interesting strategy, so I’ve skipped over it.

More than that, I’ve completely forgotten it by now.

Hyde appears to be doing something now to drain the Nautilus, but I don’t know what it could be, since the ship was full fathoms five at the time. Surely anything that drained water would also let more water in?

Ah, what do I know—I know nothing of the Laws of Physics, except that they exist.

Skinner’s sending a secret Morse code message from within a very small ship occupied by the enemy, but instead of saying “Skinner,” he takes the trouble to tap out “Hello, my freaky darlings”?

NICK: See, now I want a TV series starring Captain Nemo and his amazing ship.

Wait, what—now they’re in the frozen lakes of Mongolia? Why?

As Nick has apparently only just realised, this bears no resemblance to the plot of either of the first two graphic novels or to any of the stories covered in the third volume.

Hey, that palace has flame throwers! I’m going to have flame throwers on my headquarters in Mongolia when I’m a supervillain.

Allan, you can’t find an invisible man by standing outside a supervillain’s palace in the snow and shouting his name. Ah, that’s all right—he’s back to his unconvincing face paint.

Are those robots? Why?

I still wouldn’t trust Skinner—even though Quartermain thinks he’s a hero. But then I may be thinking back to the novels, and that would be a mistake, apparently.

Another cigarette break, I think.

Right, so where we we? I think they were storming the fortress, while Dorian was figuring out that the wages of sin are death—ah, but so, as Terry Pratchett points out, is the salary of virtue. And anyway, isn’t this Dorian immortal?

Actually, I really need to check whether the portrait did make him immortal in the novella. I know it made him invulnerable (and vulnerable at the same time, hence his untimely end) but that’s not the same thing at all. And would he really have lived all this time by 1899, when he and his novella were very much products of the decadent 1890s?

If this had been made after the latest graphic novel came out, I would have said that they’d confused his character with that of Orlando, but I might be overthinking this a little too much, yes?

And on that note, when and how did Johnathan Harker die? Wouldn’t it have been easier to make Mina a divorcee after all?

What? Oh, the movie. Right.

Still storming the fortress. But Mina’s taken the time in the interim to curl her hair. Women, eh?

Oh, now they’re the Three Musketeers.

Where do supervillains get the money to run these enormous fortresses with round the clock guards on everyone? Seriously—he hasn’t actually started selling his weapons yet, has he? So where is the money coming from?

NICK: It’s not easy being nekkid and fighting crime.

He’s got that right. I don’t think, if I were the Invisible Man, I would have volunteered to do anything that would have required a blowtorch.

Ha! There’s actually man laughing hysterically while shooting everyone with a machine gun! I do like a man who takes his career seriously, but also enjoys himself.

Nick thinks the robots are actually men in battle suits.

Ha, I was right—M is Professor Moriarty. At least they kept that bit right.

Nick now totally has a boy crush on Captain Nemo.

Damn—what the hell is Mina wearing?

Ew—healing facial wounds. I guess Mina has claws? She’s very convincing as a fighter, Peta Wilson, even for someone who’s never seen La Femme Nikita.

Ew—“I hoped I’d get to nail you one last time”? Oh dear lord, that’s the worst banter I’ve ever heard.

And now Nick’s doing a Sean Connery impersonation—cool! Robotic man with a flamethrower. I’m also having those in my fortress—though they seem to be hard on the soft furnishings.

Come on, Hyde! Do the polka! Damn—drinking Hyde potion? Now we have two Hydes? Or maybe he’ll just explode—he did drink a lot.

Wait—now Mina’s hair isn’t curly any more? Why? When did that happen?

Ew—apparently just looking at the portrait is enough to kill Dorian. So, wait—he did all this to get the portrait back? But the portrait itself isn’t vulnerable—Mina didn’t need to stab it, or anything. So . . . it would actually have been in Dorian’s interests to let M—or anyone, really—keep the portrait, so he couldn’t see it accidentally?

That whole sub-plot makes less sense than the rest of the film, is that’s possible.

Sean Connery’s in a knife fight with Richard Roxborough—you don’t see that every day. Meanwhile, Hyde’s fighting a giant purple version of himself, and . . . no. I’m not going to assess the symbolism of that at all.

And now Allan has an axe—that’s no good. Hyde and Nemo seem done for.

More bombs!

Damn! Where did they get all those explosives from? Does the Nautilus just have an everlasting supply? And how do only the good guys survive these holocausts?

What’s going on with M’s accent? Wait, he can fly? How can he fly? Why am I even asking these questions any more?

Oh dear—I think Allan Quartermain just died.

Well, M’s been shot. He must have really loved that mask, since he took the trouble to rescue it from a burning fortress.

Oops, no—that was Allan Quartermain dying. Dammit! I liked the old Allan Quartermain better. And they took him back to Africa to bury him? Well, I suppose they had the Nautilus—and all that ice from the Mongolian lakes.

How is the Invisible Man still alive? I thought he was burnt to a crisp. Or was that the fake Invisible Man?

Oh, don’t tell me Allan’s going to rise from the grave! Oh, please no!

Well, I suppose technically he didn’t, but the intent was pretty clear. Had they moved on to a sequel, I assume Allan would have been in it.

Actually, now the credits are rolling, I wonder how this did do at the box office? Badly, I hope. I understand Allan Moore refused to have anything to do with it—and I don’t blame him. You could have made a rather lovely and clever action film out of the original graphic novel, if they’d tried. But they clearly didn’t care about the original source material.

Ha! I’ve just checked Rotten Tomatoes. 16%? That’s cold.

Nick claims he approved of Peta Wilson, by the end: I didn’t. I love Moore’s Mina, and that wasn’t her. And even if you want to change the characters around, which does happen, this new Mina was woefully underused.

Well, that’s another ridiculously long live-blogging post—this live-blogging lark’s quite a fun way to spend an evening, actually.

But I might go and see what I’ve actually written.

(I don’t really believe that, but it’s been a bit of a shock this semester teaching people who weren’t born until I entered high school. That, and attending a Cure concert last year with someone who was born the year I last saw The Cure in concert.)

Nick and I have been listening to CDs this evening, in the absence of anything to watch on television.

(Nick is obligated to spend at least one evening a week surfing the Internet on his iPhone in the living room rather than on his iMac in the study. This is what we call spending time together.)

I picked up an album from the very bottom of the stack, and said to Nick, “You know, it’s been twelve years since I listened to this.”

Then I realised that was actually, literally true.

I’m quite proud of myself for not going and pouring another drink on the spot.

I have so far failed abysmally in locating Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, but in my futile search I did come across another book that I bought months ago, read, put away carefully, decided to blog about, and completely failed to relocate: Elliot Engel’s A Dab of Dickens and a Touch of Twain.

This is a collection of biographical readings of authors ranging chronologically from Chaucer to Robert Frost. Despite the early debates about my Leavisite tendencies—and the fact that I found the book buried under fictionalised biographies of Lady Caroline Lamb and Byron’s other troublesome woman, Annabella Milbanke—this is not my usual reading material.

Certainly, I think biographical material is important to literary analysis—since I believe strongly that the conditions of production have a direct influence on the works produced—but I prefer to obtain this material from direct sources—letters, receipts, contracts, and so forth—as and when it is necessary to my work. When I read biographies, I want them to be about someone fun and unrelated to my research, such as courtesans. (Ah, Harriette Wilson—publish and be damned, indeed.)

But I picked this up at a secondhand store when I’d taken my car in to Woolloongabba at the crack of dawn for a service, and thought it would be as well to wait to collect it. (Note to self: that was a mistake.) I was bored and over-caffeinated, and thought this would do well to pass the time.

I know nothing of Elliott Engel, although I understand he works at an American university. More importantly from the perspective of this post, he give “popular” lectures on literature, from which these pieces were derived.

That word “popular” is always a problematic one when it’s applied in this type of context, and I have taken it directly from the blurbs in the front of the book: here, I think we can take it to mean simply “lectures given outside the academy.” I don’t propose to speculate about the types of audiences that such lectures would draw, because I don’t think it’s at all relevant—there is no reason why literary analysis should be deemed the sole province of the academy.

But it does mean that these pieces are almost entirely without referencing—barring an extremely short list of biographies at the end, which troubles me slightly, because I disagree with Engel’s contention that “one fine biography is all you’ll need for each author” (347). But then, as I say, these are not academic pieces: they’re narratives.

And Engel is, as he says, “a proud member of the school of biographical literary criticism and [has] always been truant from the Freudian, Marxist, deconstructionist, poststructuralist, and other literary schools that seem to concentrate on illuminating the supposed genius of the critic while all too often ignoring and distorting the real genius of the famous writer” (xii).

There’s much with which I could dispute in this passage, but I’ll settle for suggesting that working from a single biography might well lead to as many patterns of distortions as any poststructuralist or deconstructionist reading.

(It also seems to me a little disingenuous to apply these potentially exclusionary academic terms in a non-academic text, but that’s another point I don’t want to address in detail.)

From my own perspective, it also seems that biographical readings that ignore the perspectives offered by Marxist-based criticism run the risk of being readings divorced entirely from any awareness of the socio-economic climate in which the works were produced.

But then, this is a book that centres on the Western canon. It does include some women writers whose addition to the canon is more recent than, for example, that of Chaucer or Shakespeare, but even then the women are fairly conventional choices: Jane Austen, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, and Emily Dickinson. It makes a nod towards including more “popular” writers—to use that problematic term again—but even here it makes a conventional choice, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Generally, however, the authors are the names you would anticipate in this type of book: William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence.

And that’s fine and, really, the book’s fine—except that it gave me an odd feeling that behind the text was an exclusive and exclusionary method.

I couldn’t put my finger on why—until I came to the following passage in the section on Shakespeare, describing the behaviour of the relatively impoverished “groundlings” standing in the cheapest spaces at the foot of the stage:

But when the play would begin, the groundlings, an unsophisticated lot, would become so excited and so caught up in the action that their mouths would hang open; they would be gaping up at the actors, slack-jawed, watching the play unfold. This rapt attention was not what bothered the actors, but when the play became exciting and suspenseful, as in the early fight scenes in Romeo and Juliet, the groundlings would start to salivate. The saliva would drip down their chins and eventually fall onto the stage, where it made this little rivulet at the actors’ feet. (34)

This is a grotesque image.

It is also, Engel tells us, the origin of the term “break a leg,” which he translates, in the fictional voice of an imagined actor, as “Perform so the groundlings become so enthralled that they slobber on the stage; may you slip in it and break your leg” (34).

This seems an improbable and mean-spirited expression of good will, even for a more brutish age. It is also in direct contradiction to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which suggests—albeit via the speculative phrase “is said to relate”—that it arose as black humour after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and John Wilkes Booth’s subsequent breaking of his leg as he leapt onto the stage to escape.

Brewer’s version seems far more plausible to me.

Engel cites in support of his argument an anonymous actor’s diary—which, given his minimalist bibliography, is impossible for the reader to verify for themselves—which allegedly reads “I feared when it was time for me to give my soliloquy and step to the edge of the stage, I was in grave danger of slipping in the drool left by the groundlings” (34).

But I can’t be the only one who suspects that this anonymous actor was indulging in hyperbole, perhaps tempered by a distaste for the patrons occupying the cheap seats.

This image of drooling groundlings bothers me in ways that I can’t quite articulate. But first and foremost, it seems so improbable—even assuming that it is possible to “gape up” at the actors and yet drool to such an extent that the players’ limbs are at risk, without somehow drowning in the process.

These standing seats, Engel tells us, cost a penny, compared to four pennies for an actual seat. But a penny is a lot of money to the vast majority of the working population in Shakespearean England.

So Engel’s image has us imagining a large number of audience members willing to regularly pay a relatively high fee to see linguistically and artistically complicated plays that, apparently, they are too unsophisticated to comprehend. So unsophisticated, in fact, that they lose all control over their salivation.

If all they want is the unsophisticated violence of the fight scenes, surely they could obtain that at any nearby tavern—with a greater probability of gore—and get drunk at the same time?

And why assume that poverty automatically translates into a grotesque, slavering inability to interpret the primary form of entertainment of the times?

Elizabethan theatre is not my field, and I know no more about it than any other B.Arts graduate who enjoys reading Shakespeare for pleasure.

But this passage does suggest to me something concrete about the dangers of relying too uncritically on biographical material at the expense of an understanding of the socio-economic factors of the time, their influence on the modes of production of a text, and the ability of the common reader to interpret the texts presented for their amusement.

The answer, prior to an hour ago, was three.

The answer is now four.

Yes, once again, someone has driven through my front fence. Whenever it rains, now, Nick and I get intensely twitchy, just waiting for the highly recognisable crunching sound.

Actually, there was an accident on the other side of the road earlier tonight, and we both went leaping out onto the front verandah in stark terror. But that was a false alarm.

And we should have realised it was a false alarm, because when the actual crunching sound came an hour later, it was instantly recognisable: this time, as we went leaping out onto the front verandah, we were both shouting “Oh, no! Oh, bloody hell, no, not again!”

Last time this happened, we contacted the Council, suggesting that three cars through the fence was, really, three too many, and perhaps there was something they could do to ameliorate the dangers of that corner?

But, no: apparently we’re a statistical anomaly and, apart from our fence, there are no more accidents in this area than in any other, so no further measures need to be taken.

I’m wondering if four almost identical accidents would qualify us as a black spot.

This actually isn’t too bad, compared to the last incident, which wiped out a stop sign, our fence, one steel-reinforced gate, a brick wall, my car—foolishly parked in the driveway—and the garage door. This one just knocked a fence pole out of the ground and smashed some palings.

This also has less amusement value. Last time, at least I held the following conversation with some extremely intoxicated young men at 2.30 a. m.:

ME: Guys, it’s 2.30 in the morning.
THEM: Just tell us what happened!
ME: Someone drove through my fence.
THEM: Aw, shit, man; that’s really bad.
ME: I know.
THEM: It’s a real fucking mess down here.
ME: I know.
THEM: Got a beer, love?
ME: No, sorry.
THEM: Got any water?
ME: Guys, it’s 2.30 a. m.
THEM: Oh, yeah. Well, sweet dreams, love.

(Incidentally, the lead intoxicated young man woke me up a month later at, ironically, 2.30 a. m., loudly describing the accident to a companion. But he was very apologetic on that occasion when I eventually bored of their conversation and leant out the window to ask pointedly, “May I help you?”)

There was also some amusement to be derived from the fact that they didn’t tow my car for a full twenty-four hours after they removed the cause of the problem, so that for the entire day people would walk past, do a double-take, and then once they were five metres down the road loudly ask their companion, “Did you see where that person drove through their own fence?”

Tonight, the only potential amusement was from the over-the-road neighbours, who were hanging off their verandah cheering—but they fled when I pointedly asked if they wanted to help and, anyway, that was more annoying than amusing.

Everyone who’s driven through the fence has actually been a nice, cheerful person, with whom I’ve chatted over bracing cups of tea while we wait for the police to arrive.

But this isn’t doing anything for my nerves.

And I’m starting to worry a little about how the real-estate agent will react this time.

Example Two: If your girlfriend is also a geek, be aware of this trap.

Should your girlfriend ask you to do something, and you reply, “I’ll try,” chances are the response will be “Do or do not—there is no try!”

I don’t have a particular problem with message T-shirts, but I can’t be having with the smug ones.

While grocery shopping this morning—during which I completely forgot to buy milk, even though that was my main purpose in going out: to get milk for coffee—I passed a women’s leisurewear shop that had in its window display a T-shirt reading “I Earn My Chocolate One Step At A Time.”

I now desperately want a T-shirt that reads “Really? I Guess My Chocolate Just Loves Me Unconditionally.”

Where do most people keep their copies of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf?

Because I’ve completely lost track of mine, and I wanted to blog about it.

It’s not where I suspected it would be—which was, logically enough, under a pile of P. D. James novels that I’ll never read again because Adam Dalgleish induces near-homicidal levels of frustration in me.

And I’ve pulled books off all available shelves—finding, in the process, forgotten novels by Mark Rutherford, Victoria Glendenning, and Anthony Trollope, and my copy of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood—and I still haven’t found it.

So I’m stumped.

First person to make a suggestion that leads to that elusive book wins my trademark prize: a shiny but completely invisible and intangible trophy.

I have, over the years, developed a tendency to say “Does that make sense?” to my classes when I mean “Have I explained that adequately and clearly, or would you like me to clarify the subject further?”

Partly it’s a form of shorthand; otherwise, I’d be saying “Have I explained that adequately and clearly, or would you like me to clarify the subject further?” every ten minutes, and would run out of time for covering my actual lecture or tutorial material.

But mostly it arose from working at a coaching college many years ago, where I largely taught primary-school children.

“Does that make sense?” was necessary, because eleven-year-old boys—and girls, but especially boys at that age—will not tell you if they don’t understand something; I don’t know if it’s bravura or sheer lack of interest, but they’ll just let a misunderstanding slide until eventually none of the class have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.

“Does that make sense?” was also age appropriate for those teaching situations; it was better not to throw in words such as “clarification” when you were asking if clarification was necessary.

But then it became habitual, and while this habit is unlikely to result in me smacking myself in the head with a hardback French-to-English dictionary, it does cause me some slight concern.

Because while it was appropriate for eleven year olds, I worry that it has started to sound a little patronising since I moved into exclusively teaching at a university. And while a lot of my students are straight out of school—to the extent that some still call me “Miss”—they are moving into a phase of self-directed learning, and shouldn’t be patronised.

So I make a point of stating, after an early use of the term, that it is habitual, that it means I am giving them an opportunity to seek clarification, and that if they find it patronising, they should let me know so that I can find an alternative mode of expression.

This alleviated my concerns somewhat, since no one ever said that they felt patronised.

Then Pierre Bourdieu came along and spoiled everything.

Well, Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron.

Thanks to a colleague, I was made aware of the introduction, by Bourdieu and Passeron, to a book called Academic Discourse (Ed. Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron, and Monique de Saint Martin. Cambridge: Polity, 1994).

The introduction—subtitled “Language and Relationship to Language in the Teaching Situation”—places great emphasis on the question of artificiality, making the point that “[a]cademic language is a dead language [. . .] and is no one’s mother tongue” (8), which is a point I’m certainly not inclined to dispute.

But the point that concerned me was the following:

The chair from which a lecture emanates takes over the tone, the diction, the delivery and the oratorical action of whoever occupies it, whatever his personal wishes. [. . .] So rigorously does the physical situation govern the behaviour of both students and lecturers that attempts to establish dialogue between them quickly degenerate into fiction or farce. Questions to the audience are often mere rhetorical gestures, belonging to the exposition, rather than interrupting it (except for a pause for breath). The lecturer can call on students to get involved or voice objections, but there is really no risk of this ever happening. As one student put it, ‘Lecturers have a way of asking, “Is that clear?”, which actually rules out any question that it might not be clear.’ Destined above all to play the part of the faithful at a church service, students must answer with ritual responses. (11)

This makes my concern that asking “Does that make sense?” might strike my students as patronising seem petty, overshadowed as it now is by the greater concern that the enquiry is meaningless however I phrase it.

I want to establish a dialogue with my students; I want them to be able to query me—in a pedagogical rather than a personal sense—because if they don’t learn to query the material that I am presenting when it makes no sense to them, how will they ever learn to efficiently and incisively query the texts that they study?

But if the problem with the student/lecturer interaction is not how I phrase my question but the fact that the very act of questioning is moribund within the environs of the lecture hall, then how can that dialogue exist as anything but a vestigial habit of speech?

I have no answers to those questions.

But they do suggest that I was right to be concerned about that habitual aspect of my pedagogical practice—but that I might not have been concerned for the right reasons.

I’ve seen a couple of instances recently where it looks as though people are attempting to comment, but nothing’s coming through on the site.

Of course, it could be the site doing something funky on its own initiative. But we have had problems with the commenting function in the past and, of course, I’m a little concerned that this makes it look as though I’m failing to moderate comments—the comments are, in fact, one of my favourite aspects of having a blog.

I’m looking to set up a means of contacting me through the site if the commenting function throws another hissy fit, but in the meantime all I can recommend is to make sure that you hit “submit” when you comment, and not just “preview.”