Apparently it's World Book Day. It's raining, so I've been reading a book (Surfacing, by Kathleen Jamie, as it happens). Does that count? Obviously, this is something I might do most days, and I confess I feel no compulsion to dress up as my favourite character, which seems to be the main activity associated with the day (hey, why sell kids books when you can sell them costumes?). Besides, if I want to dress up as Kathleen Jamie that's a private matter.
It's a curious enough idea in itself, though, having a favourite fictional character. It's probably something only a ten-year-old (or a semi-literate retail manager) could contemplate. I mean, Monday might be a Jack Reacher day (grr!), Tuesday a Bertie Wooster day (top hole!), and Wednesday mainly haunted by shifting blends of Josef K. and Tristram Shandy (help!). After more than half a century of reading, anyone's assembled team photograph of most memorable characters should resemble the Sgt. Pepper album cover, or a sizeable symphony orchestra.
Although, having said that, I do have an enduring affection for Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Every humble but aspirational mechanical deserves a night of hallucinatory abandon with Titania – sweet confusion under the moonlight – followed by a triumphant appearance in the public eye.
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called Bottom’s Dream because it hath no bottom.
I haven't seen any Bottom costumes in Tesco, but maybe next year...
7 comments:
I wasn't really World-Book-Day-aware, but visiting some friends who have a six-year-old at the weekend, they told me she would be going to school dressed as Emily Pankhurst this week.
That story where she jumped in front of the horse was brilliant, wasn't it? Such imagination! Or was that a different character? Obviously, I haven't read it myself as it's a girls' book.
Zouk,
I think that was Emily Davison, heroine of "Feisty Women" by Louisa May Alcott, which I also haven't read.
It's a ridiculous tradition that has grown in schools on the back of what is meant to be a charity event putting books into the hands of kids who don't have any (and most households are book-free these days, it seems). Competitive parenting at its worst... See this NewsThump item:
https://newsthump.com/2020/03/05/parents-left-exhausted-and-traumatised-after-spending-hours-sorting-costumes-for-world-book-day/
Mike
Why don't they just call it "Harry Potter Day" and have done with it?
I was in W H Smith's this morning getting a paper when a whole class full of kids trooped in with their teachers, care assistants, zookeepers etc all clutching their £1 free book voucher. So, as they were all having to get a free book published for the occasion or getting a pound off of the purchase of a normally priced one, that did actually make me smile. Oh no, that was the fact I'd got in there before the queue started. I used to use the vouchers myself when I was a teacher as most kids didn't want them and I didn't want to have to pick the litter up after class.
However, commercialism has certainly spoilt what was a great idea (many households have been book-free for a long long time, Zouk) and the cheap nylon/plastic costumes are far more profitable for the Supermarkets it seems. Perhaps next year instead of giving out vouchers they could give out abridged versions of Greta's latest tome. Just a thought.
By the way, this was the i's take on it: https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/world-book-day-2020-when-costumes-reading-education-2053861
Cheers,
Dave
Dave,
I'd like to see the day when a kid walks in to a classroom dressed as Leopold Bloom, clutching a bag of kidneys, *and* hangs around to pick up the free tokens...
N.B. don't invoke Zouk, or he'll be back, more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
Mike
When we used to still have librarians at school, some of them attempted to engage student interest by employing such tactics as a quiz as to match the teacher to a favourite book. I'm pretty sure my choice would never have influenced any of them to turn up dressed as Steerpike or, god help us, Prunesquallor.
Point taken, btw.
Dave
I recognised the "more powerful" quote but couldn't place it at first. Of course the best bit of that story is the spine-chilling moment when Darth Vader tells Luke Skywalker "I knew your father".
Zouk,
It is a source of wonder to me that anyone over the age of 15 can take "Star Wars" seriously (hope my kids are not reading this), but it seems its tropes and quotes have entered the culture as permanently as "Hamlet" ("I have a bad feeling about this..."). "Battleship Galactica", on the other hand, is a genuine sustained work of art...
Mike
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