tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post3020470529959276534..comments2024-03-25T09:56:16.164+00:00Comments on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure: Belated Witness - Cathy ButlerUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-79940435357543292552015-02-19T13:59:24.132+00:002015-02-19T13:59:24.132+00:00:) Oh all right, the Aeneid, then!:) Oh all right, the Aeneid, then!Catherine Butlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17693526864905868829noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-60917684848044794122015-02-18T12:45:52.669+00:002015-02-18T12:45:52.669+00:00"Sarah Wells said...
Another advantage of poe..."Sarah Wells said...<br />Another advantage of poetry over prose - you don't need as much paper.<br />11 January 2015 at 13:12<br /> Catherine Butler said...<br />That's true! Unless you write a really long war poem, like, say, the Iliad....<br />11 January 2015 at 13:13"<br /><br />(belated comment!) Of course, as oral poetry in origin, no-one actually needed paper to compose the Iliad :-)Pollyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03549786492684417557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-42976129002999263492015-01-13T21:34:28.042+00:002015-01-13T21:34:28.042+00:00More recent disasters too - I'm just starting ...More recent disasters too - I'm just starting to notice bombing of world trade centre appearing in fiction, and I think it's going to be a while before it makes it into children's comics.Hunninghamnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-41439321476597990982015-01-11T17:53:21.773+00:002015-01-11T17:53:21.773+00:00That's a plausible point. Of course, it's ...That's a plausible point. Of course, it's a chicken-and-egg question to an extent.<br /><br />If I had the time (and a grant!) I might look into whether there's always a ten-year lag for fiction, a kind of no-man's-land between the contemporary and the historical novel, where both publishers and readers feel a bit of genre-queasiness.Catherine Butlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17693526864905868829noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-71760505526549640962015-01-11T17:47:41.822+00:002015-01-11T17:47:41.822+00:00You've focused on the motivations of the write...You've focused on the motivations of the writers - but some of it might also be about the preferences of the audience.<br /><br />I've read that many people were suffering "war fatigue" (understandably!) and very much wanted to move on, rather than look back. I believe adult memoirs and writings about the Holocaust, for example, did not attract much interest from either publishers or readers until quite a long after the war - and the same for popular history also.<br />Emma Barneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02718171070716804800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-12599491112703170192015-01-11T13:13:45.418+00:002015-01-11T13:13:45.418+00:00That's true! Unless you write a really long wa...That's true! Unless you write a really long war poem, like, say, the Iliad....Catherine Butlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17693526864905868829noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-21130290099742882262015-01-11T13:12:05.627+00:002015-01-11T13:12:05.627+00:00Another advantage of poetry over prose - you don&#...Another advantage of poetry over prose - you don't need as much paper. Sarah Wellsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-66905624622615245852015-01-11T12:07:58.498+00:002015-01-11T12:07:58.498+00:00I think if you're in the middle of war you can...I think if you're in the middle of war you can't get a big picture, you can't sort out what's happening and where it is all going and what it all means - it's too immediate and confusing and changing all the time. Truth gets lost and there's no tomorrow in wartime, and don't novels especially children's novels) need a tomorrow? <br /><br />I guess poetry is more fitted for capturing moment and emotion (not for a second suggesting that poetry is not deep...!). I can imagine a novella written during wartime but I think a true novel, to be meaningful and to last, needs distance for the author to be able to process events.<br /><br /> Lilyhttp://www.lilyhyde.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-68718771187357184722015-01-11T11:00:04.198+00:002015-01-11T11:00:04.198+00:00Off the top of my head, there's We Couldn'...Off the top of my head, there's We Couldn't Leave Dinah by Mary Treadgold, published in 1941, set in the Channel Islands during an attempted Nazi invasion. And apparently written in the air raid shelter. :-)Sue Bursztynskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09362273418897882971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-1930197293381270552015-01-11T08:58:08.357+00:002015-01-11T08:58:08.357+00:00Isn't it partly simply the practical question ...Isn't it partly simply the practical question of having time? Poetry could be thought about during the long times of high tension boredom that war provides, then written down fast, whilst fiction requires a bigger, more relaxed, head space as well as opportunity for the writing task? Another fascinating post, thanks, Cathy.Pippa Goodharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17709422048047155208noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-66802866611487864212015-01-11T08:30:55.488+00:002015-01-11T08:30:55.488+00:00It was a flourishing time for historical fiction g...It was a flourishing time for historical fiction generally. The Roman invasion of Britain was especially popular, which may allude in a remote way to WWII, though I think it's more complicated than that (for one thing, most of those books think the success of that invasion was a jolly good thing). <br /><br />You could also see in books like <i>The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe</i> (nominally a war book) a shifting of the battle into a fantasy world - and of course a lot of later fantasies by people like Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, etc. were heavily influenced by the War (or so I've argued elsewhere).<br /><br />I'm curious though as to why poetry apparently doesn't need that period of osmosis, at least for some.Catherine Butlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17693526864905868829noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-13141199924274026152015-01-11T08:24:27.995+00:002015-01-11T08:24:27.995+00:00" the fact that such cataclysmic events appar..." the fact that such cataclysmic events apparently cannot be turned immediately into fiction " I'm not sure that this ought to be surprising. Most writers think events need some time to osmose in their minds, and in fact if you do react immediately, before you have any emotional distance, you often produce bad writing. What does often happen is that writers who want to react to such material set it in the past, in some similar time - eg Euripides allegedly writing about the Trojan War when in fact he has the Peloponnesian in mind. I'd be interested to look at what hist fic children's writers were doing at the time; were they writing about WW2 indirectly and under the guise of past wars?Sheenagh Pughhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02735299981866333316noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-15004282842183357842015-01-11T08:08:24.443+00:002015-01-11T08:08:24.443+00:00True - usually because of illness, parents working...True - usually because of illness, parents working abroad, etc.Catherine Butlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17693526864905868829noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7780182174577095197.post-36191775708102841182015-01-11T07:58:14.533+00:002015-01-11T07:58:14.533+00:00What there is in the immediate aftermath is an awf...What there is in the immediate aftermath is an awful lot of children displaced for one reason or another. The meme of the child being sent away is very post WW2.Farah Mendlesohnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01951321462450109434noreply@blogger.com