1812 reprised

Back in the late forties, the teachers at my infant school in Somerset used a series of books called the Beacon Readers to teach us to read. Appropriately for a rural community, the books were about the various animals living on a farm, and for years I had fond memories of those vividly written texts which introduced me to the magical world of fiction.
   When I was in my mid-twenties I went to visit some relatives in Frome. To  my astonished delight I saw the distinctive covers of a Beacon Reader on their bookshelves: their son was at primary school and, getting on for twenty years after I'd left infant school, Somerset County Council was still using the same reading scheme. I eagerly opened the book to reacquaint myself with those characters from my childhood - Orwell's Boxer and Napoleon were mere cardboard cut-outs in comparison. And I read:

'Mr Grumps is a goat. Mr Grumps ate an apple. Mr Grumps has a pain.' 

It was then that I realised the truth of Iser and the Reader-Response theorists' fundamental tenet: a text is a transaction between author and reader. Such is the power of a small child's imagination that he can transmute the base metal of the lamest words into narrative gold, scatter fairy-dust on plodding pedagogical prose, make

… plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Alas, as we get older our imaginations wither and we need detailed descriptions of places and people to make a story come alive. And maybe the gods have decided that at my advanced age even more help is required. As predicted in a previous post I have at last got round to reading War and Peace, and am thoroughly enjoying it. I only wish I still had the imagination of a five year old: I'd have been spared Steve Jobs - newly arrived in Valhalla - persuading the gods to turn Tolstoy's novel into an Enhanced Reality app. For the past fortnight - apart from one day - it has snowed continuously; we are running dangerously low on oil to heat water; when the electricity fails, as it did yesterday evening, the pump doesn't work so we have no central heating and we have to stumble around the freezing house by candlelight; and, worst of all, our attempt to retreat from Moscow Montefalcone to our native land for Quinn's birthday is not just hampered by General Winter but has been made impossible.

  If only I'd decided to read Our Man in Havana instead!