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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Some Other Thoughts

12/5/2016

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I am sometimes appalled to hear educators declare that teaching the classics of English literature in our schools  should be abandoned because they hold no relevance for modern children.  I firmly believe that anyone who truly wishes to understand the development of language and writing needs  to possess a firm grasp of of our literary heritage.  The famous quotation from Sir Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke acknowledging his indebtedness to others, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” can be applied to any discipline just as easily as science. There would be no detective/thriller genre if Wilkie Collins hadn’t created books like The Woman in White and The Moonstone (just imagine what prime-time TV would ever have done then, even more reality and game shows perhaps?), without H Rider Haggard there would be no Lost World genre (Tarzan would still be apeing about in the jungle and there would be no Jurassic Park!). If John Polidori’s The Vampyre hadn’t influenced Bram Stoker, then there may never have been a Dracula, and Stephen King wouldn’t have written Salem’s Lot. The whole Fantasy genre basically stems from the pen of one man, J R R Tolkien, who had himself been inspired by the Norse myths. On a personal note, I most definitely couldn’t have written Niedermayer & Hart or Roadrage without  following the bright trails that lead back to their many rich sources.  Anyone who claims total originality is I think deluding themselves. However, there is a big difference between following themes or traditions and direct, deliberate plagiarism.

I’ve just read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus, for the first time (published 1818 - and acknowledging its debt to Greek mythology in the title). It is of course the original mad scientist scenario that has since become a stalwart of just about every form of popular culture.  The story, then not a hundred years old, first made it to the cinema screens as far back as 1910 - we just love to be horrified! The book might be loosely classified as science fiction too, and its influence on art and literature has been incredibly far-reaching. As a novel it most certainly deserves its classic status.  The book’s basic premise of man taking on the role of God has cross-bred with other genres: combine a mad scientist and lost world theme and you get Jurassic Park, mix mad science that creates computers who themselves create horrific human-like machines and you have the Terminator series, perhaps even Tolkien had something of the book in mind when he has Saruman create the Uruk-Hai.

Mary Shelley was born Mary Godwin in 1797, the daughter of  the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and writer and journalist William Godwin. Her mother died soon after she was born, and Mary received no formal education and doesn’t seem to have taken very well to her step-mother. She began an affair with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when still a teenager and eloped with him to the (then war-torn) Continent.  She began writing Frankenstein in 1816 whilst holidaying on Lake Geneva ; by this time she had lost her first baby and had given birth to a son (sadly not to survive either). They were assailed by weeks of rain, and their chum Lord Byron suggested to the group of friends present, that they each compose a horror story to pass the time. The rest is, as they say, history.

The story is well written and has withstood the test of time. The monster of her tale undertakes to do many cruel and vindictive acts in revenge upon his creator Frankenstein; yet it is the monster who is given the last word in the novel by Shelley, and it is for him that we feel the deepest sympathy. Frankenstein never acknowledges his responsibility as creator, and simply abandons his creation which he finds too abhorrent to even gaze upon. The monster subsequently wanders the world like a lost child receiving only cruelty, unkindness and hatred from mankind who he yearns in his heart to join. Is the monster in this story the creature, or the human ego?

We stand at a point in time where such matters are no longer far-fetched. Whilst our governments can attempt to reassure us that any genetic experiments are only carried out with the utmost care and with every attention paid to what is both morally and ethically right ... we know too that once the genie is out of the bottle ...

I wrote a blog some time back that was based on the National Theatre’s production of Frankenstein.

And on a lighter note - one of my favourite comedy films, Young Frankenstein.

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Musical Weekend

3/5/2016

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My wife is currently reading the autobiography of Helen Keller, who, from a very early age, lost both her sight and hearing. I simply can’t imagine what that must be like - a very different kind of life I guess, though, certainly in Keller’s case, not without joy and a sense of fulfilment . It’s hard for anyone born (especially since the invention of broadcast sound) to conceive of a life without music; it’s all around us a lot of the time. Just step into the garden a moment: hear the radio blaring from the guys working on the loft conversion in the next street, the pounding bass of a passing car as it drives by, or the sound of a child practising piano scales.

A running theme of our past Bank Holiday weekend seems to have been popular music - not intentionally planned though, things simply fell out that way.  We’d booked several months back to see Eric Bibb in concert at the Assembly Hall in Tunbridge Wells. We possess several of his albums and have always enjoyed listening to these, so it was very satisfying to get an opportunity to catch him live. He is a highly accomplished blues performer, a beautiful songwriter with a distinctive and very pleasing voice. On Sunday evening he had a band of excellent musicians and backing vocalists accompanying him. His daughter Yana Bibb,  a skilled jazz vocalist, provided the support for the first part of the evening.  The Bibb family are something of a musical dynasty: Eric Bibb’s father Leon was very active in the New York folk music scene of the 60’s, his godfather was the legendary Paul Robeson and his uncle was the jazz pianist and composer John Lewis. You get the feeling that the musical luminaries of the sixties like Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Odetta  etc regularly dropped by the Bibb family home like my mother’s neighbours in the valleys of South Wales used to pop round to borrow a cup of sugar. Eric Bibb himself moved to Sweden in the Seventies and now lives in Finland. I see one of the dates he has for his current tour is Porthcawl in South Wales - a favoured holiday destination of my family’s when I was a child. I’d love to see him again if I had the opportunity and excuse to pay a visit to Wales at the end of the month! He’s playing at a number of locations all over the UK - so I hope you take the opportunity to see him. Check out Eric Bibb's website for details.

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​The reason why I said our weekend had a musical theme was because we also watched the George Harrison documentary, Living in the Material World, directed by Martin Scorsese.  This is a film in two parts, beautifully realised through hundreds of clips and interviews with those who knew George. If you grew up in the Sixties as I did, The Beatles were inescapably part of your life. And George, the youngest of the four, was in many ways the most fascinating and complex character, often upstaged by Paul and John in the song-writing stakes, he too created some wonderful songs including Something, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, My Sweet Lord and dozens more. If you haven’t seen this film (I’d caught about half of the second part on TV a few years back)and if you’re interested in The Beatles, The Sixties, George Harrison, or all three, this is an excellent film which I can highly recommend.

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    Available in paperback and ebook:
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    Available in paperback and ebook:
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