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Feb. 15th, 2007 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_elyanWhat apleasure it is to be back once again in the endless summer of Arthur ransome's lakeside imaginings c 1930, al terrific adventures and jolly chums together.
The world of the Swallows and Amazons books feels utterly fantastical to us now, and I daresay was a little so even then (I imagine the Lakes had more than a handful of tourists even in the Thirties), but it is a seductive fantasy. What I love is the sense that the whole world waits only for a mind (usually Titty's) to weave it into the story the characters are telling that day - that access to the imagination is something becoming rarer these days, and given the glorious pleasure an active imagination can provide you with, that is saddening.
The active, adult and cynical imagination, of course, also has a lot to play with through the S&A books. Quite apart from characters called Titty, Nancy, and Roger the Ship's Boy (no, really), there is enough intensity in tents and working up of muck sweats to fire the imaginations of a thousand bedroom scribblers. I would be very surprised if there isn't a healthy (?) trade in Swallows and Amazons slash, as there is certainly the opportunity, and there is the faintest suggestion sometimes that the Ransome kids might not be quite so wholesome as the lashings-of-ginger-beer mob over the way at Blyton Rock.
In fact, come to think of it, I do have a paragraph along those very lines somehwre in a wonderful book called "Never Rub Bottoms With A Porcupine", which only one person on my friendslist is ever likely to have heard of... Now, where is it...
The world of the Swallows and Amazons books feels utterly fantastical to us now, and I daresay was a little so even then (I imagine the Lakes had more than a handful of tourists even in the Thirties), but it is a seductive fantasy. What I love is the sense that the whole world waits only for a mind (usually Titty's) to weave it into the story the characters are telling that day - that access to the imagination is something becoming rarer these days, and given the glorious pleasure an active imagination can provide you with, that is saddening.
The active, adult and cynical imagination, of course, also has a lot to play with through the S&A books. Quite apart from characters called Titty, Nancy, and Roger the Ship's Boy (no, really), there is enough intensity in tents and working up of muck sweats to fire the imaginations of a thousand bedroom scribblers. I would be very surprised if there isn't a healthy (?) trade in Swallows and Amazons slash, as there is certainly the opportunity, and there is the faintest suggestion sometimes that the Ransome kids might not be quite so wholesome as the lashings-of-ginger-beer mob over the way at Blyton Rock.
In fact, come to think of it, I do have a paragraph along those very lines somehwre in a wonderful book called "Never Rub Bottoms With A Porcupine", which only one person on my friendslist is ever likely to have heard of... Now, where is it...
