Book: The child that books built

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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

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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.