I was going to be a follower. Only a follower. But, in a moment of questionable judgment, Limelite asked me to join and be a blogadmin for the Readers and Book Lovers Group and, in a moment of weakness, I said yes. When someone like Limelite is putting in so much effort to create such a great Group, how can anyone refuse to help when asked? And, since I had made clear that I don't really write diaries, I knew all that would be expected of me was back-office help: keeping an eye out for likely Diaries to be republished; minding the queue; making occasional encouraging comments. Covering times when Limelite and cfk and the other admins aren't around to do all those back-office type things.
But then Limelite said my first assignment was to write a diary telling R&BLers what my role is and outlining what corner of R&BL will be my special interest, which didn't have to be a genre. It could be personal.
Yikes. Diaries. Nothing like just jumping into the deep end of the pool. Which, by the way, is over the fold.
First, I don't expect to Diary very often and when I do I expect that I'll show up later at night and on no particular time schedule. Don't expect some 12 part erudite series on the works of Proust. Or a weekly genre spot. Or an analysis of the latest political tome. I'm not an expert reader, I'm just someone who likes to read and never seems to have enough time in her life to read as much as she'd like. But I'm happy to help out and if anyone has any questions or requests that I can help them with as an admin for the group, feel free to message me or any of the others.
Last year I subscribed to The Guardian Book Podcasts and have been working my way through older podcasts. There is an occasional series there that I really like called The Books That Made Me. The interviewer visits an author and he/she pulls out books from his/her library that have been important in their lives. I've really enjoyed listening to authors talk about the odd book here and there that have influenced their lives.
So I am stealing the idea. I'll pull out books from my library that have influenced me and write about them for some late night book blogging now and then. Hopefully people in the comments will chime in on books that have influenced them too. Since this is my first night and I didn't have much time to prepare, I'm going to republish parts of something I wrote for another venue. I want to talk about a work of fiction that deeply influenced my expectations for works of fiction. Winnie the Pooh.
Caution: Spoilers ahead.
The first Winnie-the-Pooh book shaped my expectations of what a good work of fiction should be. Winnie-the-Pooh was more than a story book. Oh, sure, there were stories. In Chapter One Winnie-the-Pooh decides to try to steal some honey from the bees he discovers living in a tree. He comes up with a plan that involves floating up in the air under a balloon so that he can reach the honey. He enlists the help of his friend, Christopher Robin, who is doubtful about the plan but helps out anyway. In the end the plan fails. This may have been my first encounter with a non-happy ending. Not a tragic ending, but not your typical American ending where everyone gets what they want.
But Milne also did something that was a revelation to me as a child. In Chapter One he told two stories simultaneously.
The main story is the story of Pooh Bear and the honey bees, but the Bee Story is a story within a story. It is wrapped within a story of a man telling his little boy a goodnight story. There is an “outer story” and an “inner story”. The little boy, Christopher Robin, comes downstairs, dragging his bear behind him, and says “What about a story?” The father, AA Milne, complies and tells a story about Christopher Robin’s bear in which a further fictionalized Christopher Robin makes an appearance.
This is something that parents do all the time, tell stories to their children in which the children are characters. Children love that. What I loved as a child and as an adult about Chapter One of Winnie-the-Pooh is that AA Milne told both stories at a level that children could understand even though he used two “voices” and the “audience” for the two stories is different. The inner story-within-a story is directed at a “you'” who is the Christopher Robin of the outer story. The “you” to whom the outer story is directed is the reader. As a child I completely understood this. As an adult I marvel that AA Milne could make children understand this. Here, he is talking to the “you” who is the reader.
When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, “But I thought he was a boy?”
“So did I,” said Christopher Robin.
“Then you can’t call him Winnie?”
“I don’t.”
“But you said –“
“He’s Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don’t you know what “ther” means?”
“Ah, yes, now I do,” I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it is all the explanation you are going to get.
In AA Milne’s world, readers (even childish readers) live on the adult side and are talked to as adults. Adults either must know everything or must pretend to know everything. The inner story-within-a story is told to a child and children are not barred from asking the obvious questions, even if the adults have to make up the answer:
Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders.
(“What does ‘under the name’ mean? asked Christopher Robin.
“It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived under it.”
“Winnie-the-Pooh wasn’t quite sure,” said Christopher Robin.
“Now I am,” said a growly voice.
“Then I will go on,” said I.”)
The Christopher Robin in the outer story is presented to the reader as just a little boy. Here AA Milne has reached a point in the inner story in which Winnie-the-Pooh has fallen into a gorse-bush:
He crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose, and began to think again. And the first person he thought of was Christopher Robin.
(“Was that me?” said Christopher Robin in an awed voice, hardly daring to believe it.
“That was you.”
Christopher Robin said nothing, but his eyes got larger and larger, and his face got pinker and pinker.”)
The Christopher Robin in the inner story is still a boy but is invested with much more sophistication than the real Christopher Robin, as befits a character in a story. Here Winnie-the-Pooh has put his plan into action and has rolled himself in mud in the hope of looking like a small, black cloud in a blue sky. He has then floated upward holding onto the balloon:
“Hooray!” you shouted.
“Isn’t that fine?” shouted Winnie-the-Pooh down to you. “What do I look like?”
“You look like a Bear holding on to a balloon,” you said.
“Not—“ said Pooh anxiously,”—not like a small black cloud in a blue sky?”
“Not very much.”
And of course the more sophisticated Christopher Robin would not have gone for a walk in the English woods without taking his gun with him (in the pictures it is a hunting type of gun with a pop cork on a string hanging from it) which comes in handy when he has to shoot the balloon so that Winnie-the-Pooh can get down. Of course he misses the first time and grazes Pooh Bear. The more sophisticated Christopher Robin just simply says “I’m so sorry” but the child Christopher Robin of the outer story is troubled by this:
Christopher Robin gave a deep sigh, picked his Bear up by the leg, and walked off to the door, trailing Pooh behind him. At the door he turned and said, “Coming to see me have my bath?”
I might,” I said.
“I didn’t hurt him when I shot him, did I?”
“Not a bit.”
He nodded and went out, and in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh – bump – bump – bump - going up the stairs behind him.
This is a sophisticated structure for a children’s story. It’s a sophisticated structure to pull off in an adult short story. As a child I didn’t overtly wonder why AA Milne chose to tell the story this way. I understood that he was accomplishing something by doing it this way but I never thought to ask myself what he had hoped to accomplish. But it made me take sophisticated structures for granted. To this day, I’m never completely satisfied with a novel or a short story that just wants to tell a tale or give me well-drawn characters. I can enjoy them, but I’m never really satisfied.
I’m only satisfied if there is a good tale with well drawn characters and a complicated structure. Then I’m in heaven. And I blame AA Milne for that.