Book: The child that books built

[liv]

Author: Francis Spufford

Details: (c) Francis Spufford 2002; Pub Faber and Faber 2003; ISBN 0-571-21467-3

Verdict: The child that books built is readable and erudite but left a bad taste.

Reasons for reading it: papersky recommended it strongly. Lots of people in my circles find Spufford charming and I liked the idea of a memoir of childhood reading.

How it came into my hands: jack lent it to me.

In some ways The child that books built met my expectations. It's both personal and scholarly, and Spufford imprinted on many of the same books that I did (though he's a good 15 years older). I enjoyed the way that Spufford weaves in secondary sources and just general stuff he finds interesting about the world, along with his own personal recollections of his reading. I can see why lots of geeks love him, he has a lovely discursive style. But a lot of the time I felt like he was trying too hard to be charming.

Very early on in the book you get a long rant about how much he hates the learning-disabled. I mean, seriously, several paragraphs like this is a perfectly normal thing to chat about, no sense of shame, the same tone he takes when he describes how he felt about Narnia with the expectation that he's putting well-crafted words to a response that the reader will share. This massively disrupted my ability to find him charming and witty, I have to say. And completely destroyed any chance I might have at sympathizing with how hard it was for him growing up with a sister who had a life-limiting genetic disease. If he had simply told me that he retreated into reading because real life with all his sister's medical problems was too scary, I wouldn't have found that charming but I might have seen it as understandable, and you can't really expect a young child to prioritize his sister's experiences over their effects on him. But when he presented his sister's illness as logically leading to his hatred of people with learning disabilities (not a justification, he seems to think this is a normal way to feel and doesn't need any justifying), he completely lost me.

The final chapter is basically a variation of a rant I've seen lots of times, about how as an adolescent he hated women because they evoked sexual desire and he didn't know how to handle this. At least he's somewhat ashamed of his misogynistic impulses, but again, my response was not to find him charmingly honest but rather he comes across as repulsive. My sympathy for his difficulties in coming to terms with his sexuality is very limited if he's asking me to feel sorry for how haaaaaaaard it was for him to have to suffer a negative self-image because of his hatred, anger and violent impulses towards women.

In between the unpromising introduction and the unpromising conclusion, there's some interesting material. I think Spufford does have some insight into why some books work the way they do, and some cogent critical analysis of some of what he read, and of the links between children's books and SF. However much he pissed me off I can certainly relate to his description of the experience of being an avid, voracious reader. There were several paragraphs I wanted to copy out, because it's not untrue that Spufford is a good stylist (even if sometimes he is too conscious that he's a good stylist). It's also endearing to me that his parents were academics at Keele so much of the setting for the book is the campus and local area where I now work.

I'm actually surprised that papersky admires Spufford, because she is a much better writer about exactly the things that Spufford does best. Any one of her Tor.com columns is better than even the high points of The child that books built.

Comments

[oursin]

I was taught as an undergraduate by his father

[liv]

Heh, small world :-)

[wild_irises]

I haven't read this, and you're not making me want to. However, I loved Red Plenty, and I appreciated I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, especially after the first couple of chapters.

And elisem is a huge fan of Unapologetic and has read me very tempting bits.

All of which is a way of saying you might not want to throw all of Spufford out with the bath water. Or, then again, you might.

[liv]

I definitely agree that all his books seem like the kind of books I would really enjoy. I went into tCtBB with a clear expectation of enjoying it, and I can certainly see why Spufford has so many passionate and loyal fans. It may well be that his erudition and skill with language and anecdote work better when he's not glibly telling you how obnoxious he personally is. Thanks for the recs, in any case.

[ceb]

I found Red Plenty ... OK. It's definitely a very smooth read, but I found it a bit superficial. Also I found that while the individual scenes are well-written, they just didn't tie together for me as well as they might have. I think e.g. Jon Ronson is much better at synthesising lots of disparate things into a coherent whole. (That said, I would probably give another Spufford a go. I may just be the wrong audience for this book, being entirely prepared to lap up endless complex post-war politics.)

[wild_irises]

Tell me about Jon Ronson?

[ceb]

He's a British journalist, very interested in conspiracies and the like, and writes a very similar style of book to Spufford (non-fic but lightly fictionalised and very readable). I think his best is _The Men Who Stare At Goats_, which is about the US Army's attempts to use the paranormal. (I think this got filmed? I don't know if the film's any good.)

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks! The Men Who Stare at Goats did get filmed, with George Clooney, and got good reviews, but I never saw it.

[khalinche]

Unfortunately the film is terrible. It is so terrible that it is not even redeemed by having Ewan Macgregor in it. I would quite like to read the book.

[forestofglory]

Oh, I remember thinking this book sounded interesting when papersky wrote about it. But given your review as woman with a learning disability I won't be reading it.

Also what does mean by learning disability? Technically the term refers to things like dyslexia where a person is at least normally intelligent but lacks the ability to do certain tasks, such as reading. Its about a discrepancy in one connotative area. A life-limiting genetic disease is not really the same thing.

[liv]

It's not at all clear to me that he understands the difference between a learning disability and an intellectual disability. His actual words are It's the slow people, the learning-disabled, the much-euphemised-fucked-of-wit I find unbearable. He finds it surprising that the people he hates are unlike his cognitively normal but metabolically ill sister, but he doesn't seem to find it surprising that his experiences with the sister should have lead to him randomly hating people.

[forestofglory]

Oh argh! That's terrible. I feel silly being annoyed at his terminology, when there is just so much else wrong with that statement. I mean yes there is a difference between learning disabilities and intellectual disabilities but that doesn't mean it is ok to hate either group!

[liv]

Isn't it horrible? He actually uses the word hate repeatedly, that's not just my unfair summary of the rant.

[metaphortunate]

but again, my response was not to find him charmingly honest but rather he comes across as repulsive.

Ah yes, I know that guy! I do not wish to spend any more time whatsoever with that guy, not even fictionally.

[liv]

Indeed. I get that adolescence is tough, and sexuality is tough, and I know what it's like to be attracted to people who find the very idea of your having sexual feelings revolting. But seriously, telling me how much you hate my entire gender is not the way to win my sympathy!

[ephemera]

hmm - this is sitting on my to-read shelf, but it's just dropped a long way down the list, because I' don't think I need that kind of infuriation in my limited leisure reading!

[liv]

There's a reasonably high ratio of cool stuff to infuriating stuff, but the infuriating bits are really really infuriating!

[blue_mai]

I was expecting this to be Italo Calvino, because in my head is book "Why Read the Classics" had its title swopped. not sure how that happened... anyway, I have a copy of that, that I never really got into because none of the references meant anything to me, but it might make more sense to you.

[liv]

A book by Calvino about reading sounds interesting, I shall look out for it. It might be too erudite for me too, but it can't hurt to try.