Book report
Aug. 14th, 2007 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakMore England aquisitions.
Steven Saylor: Roma. Aka Saylor does a James Michener and covers a Millennium of history via two families. In this case, 100 BC until the early reign of Augustus. It's well written, but feels like an anthology of short stories rather than a novel. Because of the many characters, there isn't the intensity his Roma Sub Rosa series has in each volume, but the research and ability to convey mentality is as good as ever. All in all, diverting, but not a must.
Alan Bennet: The History Boys. Here I got the audio version of the play, i.e. the radio version as done by the BBC. Haven't seen it on stage or seen the film, but I saw the radio version has the same casting. It's excellent, witty, as A.B. invariably is, with a lot of layered emotional text and subtext going on, but two things left me dissatisfied and/or annoyed. In this play, you have the juxtaposition of Hector (old lovable excentric teacher, played by Richard Griffiths, the one in love with knowledge) and Irwin (young, glib, goes for the punchline rather than depth, in short, New Labour as a teacher); it's to Bennet's credit that Irwin isn't the villain and has his own emotional life going on behind the clever "find a new angle" facade, and that Hector isn't a saint. Hector has the hobby of giving his students a lift on his motorbike and using the opportunity of fondling their genitals. And here's my problem: all the students see this as another harmless excentricity of Hectors and rather amusedly put up with it because they like him so much and he never tries anything else. And I get the impression the play is written in a way that means us to regard this as a harmless weakness of Hector's, too. Granted, there is a memorable pithy retort when Hector goes on about the pedagic eros, by Mrs. Lintott, another teacher: "Hector, darling, much as I adore you, a grope isn't a benediction. A grope is a grope." But still, the way the play seems to indicate we're meant to dislike the headmaster for forcing Hector to retire once he finds out, and the remark of Mrs. Lintott aside, see it as entirely pathetic and harmless. As I said, all the boys - who are last years, about to go off to university, so they're above the British age of consent - treat it that way. And that just strains my suspension of disbelief too much. Two or three, I could buy. But not all. I'm not a man, I'm a woman, granted, but still, I can't imagine not strongly objecting as a girl if one of my teachers had groped me, no matter how likeable he was otherwise. But if there had been even one student who was shown objecting, it would have pointed towards the power imbalance, which is why sexual teacher/student relationship are so objectionable to begin with, and I couldn't help feeling Bennet didn't want to face that and hence cheated by making this attitude among the students uniform.
(The subplot about mostly straight student Dakin flirting relentlessly with Irwin until Irwin, after the examination, when Dakin isn't his student anymore, gives in and agrees to a drink, otoh, struck me as written without such artificial manipulation of audience sympathy, because here the problem of the scenario is constantly part of the situation and not treated as harmless.)
The other thing that annoyed me about The History Boys was that Mrs. Lintott, who is a fabulous character and gets a memorable rant about male privilege, is otherwise a minor character and comic relief. The rant ("teaching history means teaching centuries of male incompetence and women cleaning up after it") points out among other things that gosh, the boys might be examined by a woman when trying to get into Oxford or Cambridge, who might not be either into the Hector or the Irwin approach of things. But that scene aside, the whole academic world as shown and talked about in this play seems to be entirely male, and I got the impression Mrs. Lintott the character exists mainly so we have a nod towards that fact that schools and university aren't all male, all the time anymore, because otherwise you could be excused for wondering whether the play is meant to be set in the 1950s (with only the talk about Stalin and Hitler and WWI preventing it from being set pre-WWI).
It's just that Bennet can do better, you know. Before leaving for London, I listened to his one act play about Guy Burgess meeting Carol Browne, An Englishman Abroad, and there is none of that - well, coyness, in lack of a better term, and prettification of the issues - there.
Steven Saylor: Roma. Aka Saylor does a James Michener and covers a Millennium of history via two families. In this case, 100 BC until the early reign of Augustus. It's well written, but feels like an anthology of short stories rather than a novel. Because of the many characters, there isn't the intensity his Roma Sub Rosa series has in each volume, but the research and ability to convey mentality is as good as ever. All in all, diverting, but not a must.
Alan Bennet: The History Boys. Here I got the audio version of the play, i.e. the radio version as done by the BBC. Haven't seen it on stage or seen the film, but I saw the radio version has the same casting. It's excellent, witty, as A.B. invariably is, with a lot of layered emotional text and subtext going on, but two things left me dissatisfied and/or annoyed. In this play, you have the juxtaposition of Hector (old lovable excentric teacher, played by Richard Griffiths, the one in love with knowledge) and Irwin (young, glib, goes for the punchline rather than depth, in short, New Labour as a teacher); it's to Bennet's credit that Irwin isn't the villain and has his own emotional life going on behind the clever "find a new angle" facade, and that Hector isn't a saint. Hector has the hobby of giving his students a lift on his motorbike and using the opportunity of fondling their genitals. And here's my problem: all the students see this as another harmless excentricity of Hectors and rather amusedly put up with it because they like him so much and he never tries anything else. And I get the impression the play is written in a way that means us to regard this as a harmless weakness of Hector's, too. Granted, there is a memorable pithy retort when Hector goes on about the pedagic eros, by Mrs. Lintott, another teacher: "Hector, darling, much as I adore you, a grope isn't a benediction. A grope is a grope." But still, the way the play seems to indicate we're meant to dislike the headmaster for forcing Hector to retire once he finds out, and the remark of Mrs. Lintott aside, see it as entirely pathetic and harmless. As I said, all the boys - who are last years, about to go off to university, so they're above the British age of consent - treat it that way. And that just strains my suspension of disbelief too much. Two or three, I could buy. But not all. I'm not a man, I'm a woman, granted, but still, I can't imagine not strongly objecting as a girl if one of my teachers had groped me, no matter how likeable he was otherwise. But if there had been even one student who was shown objecting, it would have pointed towards the power imbalance, which is why sexual teacher/student relationship are so objectionable to begin with, and I couldn't help feeling Bennet didn't want to face that and hence cheated by making this attitude among the students uniform.
(The subplot about mostly straight student Dakin flirting relentlessly with Irwin until Irwin, after the examination, when Dakin isn't his student anymore, gives in and agrees to a drink, otoh, struck me as written without such artificial manipulation of audience sympathy, because here the problem of the scenario is constantly part of the situation and not treated as harmless.)
The other thing that annoyed me about The History Boys was that Mrs. Lintott, who is a fabulous character and gets a memorable rant about male privilege, is otherwise a minor character and comic relief. The rant ("teaching history means teaching centuries of male incompetence and women cleaning up after it") points out among other things that gosh, the boys might be examined by a woman when trying to get into Oxford or Cambridge, who might not be either into the Hector or the Irwin approach of things. But that scene aside, the whole academic world as shown and talked about in this play seems to be entirely male, and I got the impression Mrs. Lintott the character exists mainly so we have a nod towards that fact that schools and university aren't all male, all the time anymore, because otherwise you could be excused for wondering whether the play is meant to be set in the 1950s (with only the talk about Stalin and Hitler and WWI preventing it from being set pre-WWI).
It's just that Bennet can do better, you know. Before leaving for London, I listened to his one act play about Guy Burgess meeting Carol Browne, An Englishman Abroad, and there is none of that - well, coyness, in lack of a better term, and prettification of the issues - there.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 05:31 pm (UTC)I don't see the power imbalance as being quite as black and white, because the students are manipulative, too. Many of them vie to be the one he rides home, in order to be the favorite. They exchange being clumsily groped for their own sort of power.
Incidentally, Mrs. Lintott has a much larger role in the film.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 05:39 pm (UTC)I don't see the power imbalance as being quite as black and white, because the students are manipulative, too. Many of them vie to be the one he rides home, in order to be the favorite. They exchange being clumsily groped for their own sort of power.
But that's just my problem, this presentation. Which I wouldn't have if there had been at least one single student who thought the whole thing was gross, and didn't want it. As I said, I can buy into some of the students treating the gropes this way (as trades for power and/or something they don't mind). But not every single one of them, and I feel A.B. after giving Hector this flaw prettifies it by avoiding examanination of the darker consequences - not to Hector, but to the students. It's, well, to repeat myself, cheating.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-15 04:00 am (UTC)Posner as Hector, Mark II: you're right, that's disturbing, too.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-15 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 04:47 pm (UTC)Heh! I did!
I saw the movie version of this, and I agree with your analysis. I thought the characters were quite interesting, but I struggled with the idea that we were supposed to think the headmaster a beast for dismissing Hector and that the whole thing seemed vaguely anachronistic.
Good performances all around, though. I found the Dakin character quite unsettling.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 04:53 pm (UTC)I struggled with the idea that we were supposed to think the headmaster a beast for dismissing Hector
Especially when considering that each and every time you read about a teacher-sexually-molesting-pupils scandal in the papers, you find it infuriating that often the authorities knew and didn't do anything about it, only transfering the guy to another school, if anything at all.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 05:37 pm (UTC)