Our new text comes from BritLit. Beryl Bainbridge's black comedy takes as its setting a noisy, argumentative working class family in Liverpool, getting ready to see a pantomime based on Peter Pan.
     A disquieting story about how we see reality and fantasy and how far each of them can go...
    
     To download the text and supplementary material, please visit BritLit _ Clap hands, here comes Charlie
    
     Looking forward to hearing your comments.
     Cheers - Chris

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear Chris,
    
     Thanks for choosing another story for us. But another depressing story about a rubbish life. I've a strong sense of being in the theatre sitting in the same seat as the protagonist and of being half into the play and half somewhere else.
    
     Have we more penance to do first or can we read a story that doesn't privilege low mimetic realism over romanticism?
    
     Porlock

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear Chris,
    
     I appreciate your sending us a new, enlightening, literary jewel. I just have a query: Why do contemporary writers unflailingly NEED to have chaos, any kind of chaotic situation, in order to write creative and imaginatively?
    
     I will send more impressions in the coming days; meanwhile have a good day,
    
     Roberto Vicetti

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear Chris,
    
     Sorry for being a bit out of sorts before. But do you think that literature that's about death should make us feel the value of the life that's lost? When we use the term 'black comedy', I suppose we mean that the writer disassociates herself from the rubbishness of the lives portrayed through her tone. It's 'black' because unlike, say, Shakespearean comedy it doesn't celebrate (re)birth, regeneration, and things getting better. It's as though things go on the same anyway, or get worse, and yet the writer makes it 'comic' by a tone that mocks its content.
    
     We've read a few stories in which the death of an individual (and in one case of a whole society) feels like a demonstration of the rubbishness of life rather than an opportunity to reflect on its special value that its loss reminds us of. Is this sort of writing a 'slow and secret poison' (to echo Gibbon) that threatens to bring about the end of civilization? It's rather like going to an art gallery and finding the pictures have been replaced by an installation made out of society's detritus (which is an all too familiar experience in the country I live in). I don't think literature's for this myself. If art and literature can't rise above the desperation of everyday life, what hope is there? Are we to become a people whose visions are forever interrupted by persons on business from Porlock, until eventually there are no visions?
    
     To change tack very slightly, do you think Angela Hisson with her slightly exotic name is a writer who gives tips to the likes of us, the Mrs Hendersons who make up the reading public and don't even get a first name? And the ways in which the theatre-goers respond are an analogy for reader responses: there's (smart) Alec Henderson, there's the hamster-dangler who for a moment is moved to uncharacteristic tears, there's the cleaner who's persuaded to believe in fairies and never-never land, and so on? Perhaps this is hopeful - even if they fail to pay attention to a dying man whose only value to others is that he's a breadwinner?
    
     Porlock

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear Porlock & everyone
    
     Let me try to address some of the points you raised here. I’m not sure if literature about death makes us feel the value of life – I think death does it. You said yourself that most beautiful poems in the English language are not about love, but about death and I couldn’t agree more. It seems to me that we write about death as a cathartic process – it’s a sort of desperate way to try to cope with it, understand and perhaps even tame it.
    
     I’m not very impressed by labels such as *black comedy*. I’ve chosen to read the story in a different key. Call me naïve you if want, but I prefer to see Beryl Bainbridge’s story as an attempt to show us not the meaningless of life but how important it is, even when we don’t pay attention to the living beings that are near us. It’s not a demonstration of the rubbishness of life, but of its value in spite of its unfulfilled potential. It’s the tale of the ‘temporary perch’ and the star.
    
     I totally agree with your views on art and literature, especially when you say that literature and art should rise 'above the desperation of everyday life.' Unfortunately, Mrs. Henderson wasn’t able to connect art and life at a crucial moment, but we don’t really know what happens after Charlie passes away. We can choose to believe that all was just a sordid business or we can choose to believe Mrs. Henderson was able to learn the lessons from the play and clapped her hands for her husband as well. I’ll stay with the second option and clap my hands for the story. I’m an optimist.
    
     Looking forward to everyone’s comments.
     Cheers - Chris

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Hi Chris!
     I think thaty the story is not about death but of the living dead, of the ones that act just as passers-by, the actual death is the outcome of someone whose voice is not heard, his living voice is suppressed by a hush: the " shut up Charlie" means a lot.

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Hi everyone
    
     I would like to post here a couple of questions about the text in the hope they can help us to approach the story from other perspectives.
    
     - Are there parallels between Peter Pan's story and Beryl Bainbridge's one? If so, where in her text can we find them?
    
     - Is it possible to find more instances in the text, apart from the ending, where characters misread the others' motivations and intentions?
    
     - How effectivelly does the text uses the following: irony, colloquial language, intertextuality?
    
     Looking forward to reading your comments.
     Cheers - Chris

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

hi Chris an all!
     I believe there are more un-parallels than parallels, these are based on misreadings on the part of Charlie. The irony that is most shocking to me is: lack of understanding in spite of torrents of words : Talking to no-one, all the characters talk but they do not speak to each other. The parallel -unparallel between the story an Peter Pan may be in "To die will be an awfully big adventure." and Charlie´s actual death that bears no resemblance at all with ADVENTURE.

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Hi Chris and all,
    
     My name's Algaude and I'm from Lithuania. I'm a teacher of English and I've been following your discussions once in a while. This time I'm tempted to add something about 'Clap hands...' I think this story is classic in a way it reminds me of Chekhov's stories about 'little people' - unimportant, invisible people. (I had to read them back in Soviet times in Russian at school, though my mothertongue is Lithuanian:)). But think, if not Chekhov in Russia or Beryl Bainbridge in Liverpool, we'd never see their world or follow their thought on such great issues as death...or love...

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Hi Chris and all,
     Thoroughly enjoyed reading the complete clap hands story and analysis . The link was excellent. I am a Teacher educator and am already planning of ways to introduce it to my trainee teachers. Thanx a million.those of you who haven't looked at it please do worth spending some time on...

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear Algaude
    
     I couldn't agree more with your last comment. Indeed, I also feel that it is through the eyes of the common folk that great stories are told. I suppose it's because they are people like us.
    
     Welcome to the group and I hope we can count on your comments more and more from now on.
     Cheers - Chris

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear Jayshri
     Welcome to the group and thanks a lot for your comments and also the poem on the other thread. Really touching!
     Cheers - Chris

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear Chris,
    
     Thank you for your encouraging message and also thank you for sharing the lesson on R.Frost's "The Road..." I copied it to my resources and I will use it with my brighter students. Cheers. Algaude

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

As Bainbridge is a Liverpool word-worker, I'm wondering if there's a connection between Bainbridge's Hendersons and the Hendersons in Sergeant Pepper. Or is it just a coincidence?
    
     In Sergeant Pepper, the 'Hendersons will all be there', as they are in 'Here comes charlie' (a charlie?). In the Beatles' song, Mr Henderson has already declined from a circus star to a musical evocation of a lost time.
    
     In Bainbridge's story, the Hendersons have declined further and now only watch the performance, until Mr Henderson is finally killed off. I haven't read enough of Bainbridge to know if there are other echoes of the Beatles.

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator