As you may or may not have guessed I love the English language. I think it's wonderfully diverse, elegant and musical. I genuinely believe it's the most wonderful way of expressing oneself and communicating (albeit that my usage is often somewhat clumsy!)
Given my previous post about bookshops it's also no great shocker to say that I love reading and encountering new forms of the language. Another way of interaction that I enjoyed, especially when I was younger, was talking books. They were a great way of interacting with literature that was more advanced than my reading age. By my early teens I had gotten to grips with Bram Stoker and several of Dickens' best works this way. Listening to Sir John Gielguid and Sir Ralph Richardson acting out the Sherlock Holmes stories was another highlight and even now, years later, I still remember them well.
It therefore shames me to admit that there's one British writer who reliably leaves me at best cold and at worst in a cold sweat. This writer is William Shakespeare. Ever since I first encountered his work at school I have had a visceral dislike of it. It would be easy to blame this dislike on a bad experience at school and this, to an extent, is true. Reading a play out round a class in dull, dispassionate monotones is hardly a baseline to inspire awe and passion; especially when nobody really had a clue what the bloody hell was going on. I didn't just quit there though; I persevered through the remainder of school via different teachers with a usually unparalleled ability to capture the interest of pupils but still I could not engage with the material. Still every time the Shakespeare came out I was overcome with the desire to chew my arm off while injecting cyanide into my eyeballs.
Now I understand that the majority of Shakespeare's best work is in the form of plays (said works were read out in class after all) and the only way to interact with a play is to see it performed. So off to the theatre I went, suitably primed with a rough idea of what was about to happen. And still I was left cold, bored and irritated at how much of my life I had wasted. At this point I will point out I did go into all of the plays I saw with a consciously open mind. I wanted to like it but I just couldn't. In fact, about the only form of Shakespeare's work I actually enjoyed was the film version of Romeo and Juliet from the '60s. This was not down to the story it was down to the fact that a) I am a huge fan of Franco Zephereli as a director and b) I was massively attracted to Olivia Hussey who played Juliet (until I found out that she was at school with my dad).
Another form of English that I cannot seem to interact with or engage with is poetry. Now here I will admit I haven't encountered all that much and poetry is probably like whisky; nobody genuinely doesn't like it, they just haven't encountered the right example. At school we studied almost exclusively Scottish poetry (fair enough given we've produced our fair share of good poets). The only problem was, in my school, we were lumbered with some turgid crap that was forced upon us seemingly exclusively because the poet lived just down the road. Genuinely as far as I can tell, it was entirely devoid of artistic merit. I have since tried to engage with the poetry, particularly Burns, but unfortunately - because I spent school poetry lessons in my mental happy place as a form of self-preservation - I am really unsure and lacking confidence in how to interact with the material.
Again, I'm not particularly proud of this trait. I don't really enjoy being a bit of a philistine but at the moment, I'm not really sure how to go about changing it. I don't know if there is an 'Idiot's guide to poetry' on the market. If there is, let me know.
JR
Given my previous post about bookshops it's also no great shocker to say that I love reading and encountering new forms of the language. Another way of interaction that I enjoyed, especially when I was younger, was talking books. They were a great way of interacting with literature that was more advanced than my reading age. By my early teens I had gotten to grips with Bram Stoker and several of Dickens' best works this way. Listening to Sir John Gielguid and Sir Ralph Richardson acting out the Sherlock Holmes stories was another highlight and even now, years later, I still remember them well.
It therefore shames me to admit that there's one British writer who reliably leaves me at best cold and at worst in a cold sweat. This writer is William Shakespeare. Ever since I first encountered his work at school I have had a visceral dislike of it. It would be easy to blame this dislike on a bad experience at school and this, to an extent, is true. Reading a play out round a class in dull, dispassionate monotones is hardly a baseline to inspire awe and passion; especially when nobody really had a clue what the bloody hell was going on. I didn't just quit there though; I persevered through the remainder of school via different teachers with a usually unparalleled ability to capture the interest of pupils but still I could not engage with the material. Still every time the Shakespeare came out I was overcome with the desire to chew my arm off while injecting cyanide into my eyeballs.
Now I understand that the majority of Shakespeare's best work is in the form of plays (said works were read out in class after all) and the only way to interact with a play is to see it performed. So off to the theatre I went, suitably primed with a rough idea of what was about to happen. And still I was left cold, bored and irritated at how much of my life I had wasted. At this point I will point out I did go into all of the plays I saw with a consciously open mind. I wanted to like it but I just couldn't. In fact, about the only form of Shakespeare's work I actually enjoyed was the film version of Romeo and Juliet from the '60s. This was not down to the story it was down to the fact that a) I am a huge fan of Franco Zephereli as a director and b) I was massively attracted to Olivia Hussey who played Juliet (until I found out that she was at school with my dad).
Another form of English that I cannot seem to interact with or engage with is poetry. Now here I will admit I haven't encountered all that much and poetry is probably like whisky; nobody genuinely doesn't like it, they just haven't encountered the right example. At school we studied almost exclusively Scottish poetry (fair enough given we've produced our fair share of good poets). The only problem was, in my school, we were lumbered with some turgid crap that was forced upon us seemingly exclusively because the poet lived just down the road. Genuinely as far as I can tell, it was entirely devoid of artistic merit. I have since tried to engage with the poetry, particularly Burns, but unfortunately - because I spent school poetry lessons in my mental happy place as a form of self-preservation - I am really unsure and lacking confidence in how to interact with the material.
Again, I'm not particularly proud of this trait. I don't really enjoy being a bit of a philistine but at the moment, I'm not really sure how to go about changing it. I don't know if there is an 'Idiot's guide to poetry' on the market. If there is, let me know.
JR
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