© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 143
I’m busy reading Enid Blyton’s ‘The Faraway Tree’ once again. According to UNESCO’s Index Translationum, she is the fifth most translated author after Walt Disney, Agatha Christie, Jules Verne and Vladimir Lenin. According to the same source, she is one place ahead of Shakespeare. She must be good. I have read more of her works than Shakespeare. But then I have actually read Shakespeare, and she is a lot easier to follow.
For those of you who are clueless at this point, Enid Blyton is also the woman who wrote the Noddy series, the stories about the relentlessly cheerful taxi driver in Toy Town, who hangs out with an old hippy called Big Ears. Lovely stuff if you don’t have a suspicious mind.
You can’t easily find the Noddy books in their original format anymore. Perhaps kids, like their parents, aren’t entirely comfy with more than 30 words on a page nowadays. But you can see her squiggly signature on the covers of what remain of her stories and you can catch Noddy on television in the very early hours of Saturdays and Sundays, when toddlers just don’t understand that adults need to sleep. My suggestion: strong coffee makes it more manageable, just not for the kids.
Why am I reading ‘The Faraway Tree’ when I should be making my way through some corporate documentation or teasing out pop cultural significance in the pages of a Spiderman comic or a tabloid magazine? Mainly as bedtime reading for my daughter, who listens in spite of the fact that it is not Barbie, but also because Enid Blyton rocks.
There has been a lot of criticism of her stories. Apparently her language is too simple, and her attitudes are dated. But in the process of whittling down her works, many of the class distinctions that were common in the first half of the last century have been removed. And none of the bannings have had a lasting impact.
The negatives aside, Enid Blyton lived in a world which nowadays would be called naïve, and might even induce shudders and a vague sense of horror. Eggs fried in butter and sandwiches made with butter were a common feature of her world. Electricity, television sets and other gadgets didn’t exist. I can’t remember any reference to an electric stove. People travelled on trains, and cars were exciting. And there was the countryside, which apparently was free of litter and sociopaths looking for unsuspecting joggers. Even the fairies weren’t suspected of being part of a New Age plot.
Barring the prejudices, Enid Blyton’s world was perfect for children. At least Noddy survives on television.
Enid Blyton shaped my expectations at a young age, along with Spiderman, Tolkein and Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill movies. Bad was bad, and the good guys always won. Unfortunately, with the advent of psychology and sociology, bad guys are breaking the mould. Apparently, if you don’t know better, torching the local old folks home is bad, but understandable.
In her world, being poor was not something to be pitied. To a large degree, it was a mark of honour, a sign of resourcefulness and being able to do with less. And these are attitudes with which I still live.
In the black and white world of her pages, there are no grey areas hiding between the lines, where the truth is variable. Even in the new, updated Noddy stories and shows, this still emerges clearly.
Is it good? Probably. If the grey areas become too large, then the absolutes lose their definition. Too many grey areas lead to too many loopholes, and sooner or later the dodgy Enron management won’t be the only smart guys in the room.
As author’s go, Enid Blyton is one of the great writers. She never won a major literary award, but she did have a very positive impact on many people. Proof of the pudding lies in the numbers. Years after her death, between 8 and 10 million of her books sell annually.
I’m not a great one for looking back, but as long as her more positive attitudes still shine through, in the form of wide-eyed children, there should always be something to look forward to.
