I got an A in A-level English, but I had to do French A-level because it fitted with English and History.
French Literature was great but I was a very modest Language student, to the extent the BO'K, who you will know Salts, wrote "A direct route to instant failure. E- " on one of my efforts. I did pass but an A was a distant dream, very distant. But I loved old BO'K's comment. I like him better now he's dead.
Embarking on A-level we were told John Keats was our modern poet. Snoots would have legged it at that point.
Doing A-level there were two very separate elements. One was learning to jump through fairly pointless hoops. The other was obtaining any joy. The best part was EM Forster's Howards End. I've loved it ever since and Vanessa Redgrave was as good as Antony Hopkins was ordinary in the film.
Shakespeare, now why can't teachers present interesting, controversial and readable crits? Why can't they show exciting re-workings? Why aren't their students up on their feet, declaiming and even laughing at their own mistakes, instead of being left to feel disabled by and ashamed of their own efforts?
Oxfam bookshops divide their stock between literature and fiction. Stephen King is fiction, so are David Mitchell and Kurt Vonnegut: Trollope, Hardy and Henry James are literature. FCku that! Stephen King is literature as much as anyone else. Literature is elitism polluting and claiming a joy that should be available to every man.
When I was 5 or 6 I was reading the Racing pages in the paper because my dad loved horse racing. A man he worked with saw me and asked my dad if it didn't worry him. It was the only time I remember dad bragging about me. He said, "My lad can read every word, he can tell you about all the horses, he reads the tipster's column. Do you know any lads his age could do that? He's reading and enjoying it, I don't care what it is!" He'd have been a wonderful teacher my dad, he seemed to know everything but he'd left school at 13! And now I can't tip a winner to save my life!
I just finished, for the second time, a novel by an American writer called Sandra Newman, The Country of Ice Cream Star. It is wonderfully poetic. It is difficult, but if I wanted to set the creative juices running of a class of mostly black students, I'd teach them that.
French Literature was great but I was a very modest Language student, to the extent the BO'K, who you will know Salts, wrote "A direct route to instant failure. E- " on one of my efforts. I did pass but an A was a distant dream, very distant. But I loved old BO'K's comment. I like him better now he's dead.
Embarking on A-level we were told John Keats was our modern poet. Snoots would have legged it at that point.
Doing A-level there were two very separate elements. One was learning to jump through fairly pointless hoops. The other was obtaining any joy. The best part was EM Forster's Howards End. I've loved it ever since and Vanessa Redgrave was as good as Antony Hopkins was ordinary in the film.
Shakespeare, now why can't teachers present interesting, controversial and readable crits? Why can't they show exciting re-workings? Why aren't their students up on their feet, declaiming and even laughing at their own mistakes, instead of being left to feel disabled by and ashamed of their own efforts?
Oxfam bookshops divide their stock between literature and fiction. Stephen King is fiction, so are David Mitchell and Kurt Vonnegut: Trollope, Hardy and Henry James are literature. FCku that! Stephen King is literature as much as anyone else. Literature is elitism polluting and claiming a joy that should be available to every man.
When I was 5 or 6 I was reading the Racing pages in the paper because my dad loved horse racing. A man he worked with saw me and asked my dad if it didn't worry him. It was the only time I remember dad bragging about me. He said, "My lad can read every word, he can tell you about all the horses, he reads the tipster's column. Do you know any lads his age could do that? He's reading and enjoying it, I don't care what it is!" He'd have been a wonderful teacher my dad, he seemed to know everything but he'd left school at 13! And now I can't tip a winner to save my life!
I just finished, for the second time, a novel by an American writer called Sandra Newman, The Country of Ice Cream Star. It is wonderfully poetic. It is difficult, but if I wanted to set the creative juices running of a class of mostly black students, I'd teach them that.