During the middle of the 20th century Canadian author, playwright & journalist Roberston Davies wrote regular editorials for the Peterborough Examiner, a local paper for the small city in North East Toronto. He wrote under the pseudonym 'Samuel Marchbanks' and as with anything Roberston Davies wrote I strongly recommend him.
Below is a diary entry for summer 1945 and relates Samuel's thought on learning about the election of Clement Attlee (or, more precisely, the 'ejection' of Winston Churchill)
Below is a diary entry for summer 1945 and relates Samuel's thought on learning about the election of Clement Attlee (or, more precisely, the 'ejection' of Winston Churchill)
"Hullabaloo today about the results of the British General Election, which is interpreted in some circles as a mighty triumph for the Common Man. I suppose it is, for it has turned out of office Winston Churchill, who certainly ranked high among Uncommon Men of our times. I confess that I find the modern enthusiasm for the Common Man hard to follow. I know a lot of Common Men myself and, as works of God they are admittedly wonderful; their hearts beat, their digestions turn pie and beef into blood and bone and they defy gravity by walking upright instead of going on all fours: these are marvels in themselves, but I have not found they imply an genius for government or any wisdom which is not given to Uncommon Men... In fact, I suspect that the talk about the Common Man is popular cant; in order to get anywhere or be anything a man must still possess some qualities above the ordinary. But talk about the Common Man gives the yahoo element of the population a mighty conceit of itself, which may or may not be a good thing for democracy which, by the way, was the result of some uncommon thinking by some very uncommon men."And lest anyone mistake my quoting this remark some sort of slight on Clement Attlee it's not - I just liked it and thought his final observation about democracy needing some sort of meritocracy to arrive in the first particularly nice....
1 Comments:
I have read quite a few Robertson Davies Books and they are good fun but also exceedingly artful and very explicitly conscious of the influence of Trollope , Jane Austen George Elliot , Henry James and the antique female tradition of English novelist. Writing in that tradition he also tries to escape it by subverting the form (yawn) with shards of the grotesque and emphatically modern .he can never be taken at face value It is all the manipulation if self consciously antique literary ideas. Lawrence , Hardy Joyce Woolf are contrasting in their various ways with this type This is solid middle brow fare as well , Flashman for the precious if I was going to be cruel. I liked them, but they are playful and profound in oblique ways if at all.. This strikes me as a game not a Delphic pronouncement , I hope so anyway because the cult of great men is one I loathe and do not believe in in the effete sense conveyed here . Winston was not a great man except that he understood the common man . He was a great writer ( which he was ) by understanding the vernacular tongue and the “common ” heritage . His greatness comes from his connectedness the common man and his ability to express personify and lead that man . This is quite different to the Nietzschean great man , the ubermensch , the aristocrat the patrician. The man who sees beyond the rabble
The use of a comic inversion is obviously Wilde and the character I would guess is commenting from the point of view of a Libertine, reducing the worthy to the mere subject of a passing game .It is fun to pick apart but it is also a fascist and grotesque remark intended for discussion not digestion. An interesting point here is the relation of cultural cringe between the New World and the Old reaching its end about this time.
I’m guessing by the way but all in all tempting I may well read them…..
I do not go off the beaten track much (or on it much anymore) but for funny books off the top of my head. Damon Runyon all/any, Diary Of A Nobody, The Golf Stories (Wodehouse), Heart of a Goof Stephen Potters One Upmanship, Saki (essential),Three men In A Boat, Brigadier Gerard. There are load of laughs in Dickens Austin , Henry Fielding . I have always thought that being funny and being serious were not mutually exclusive . In fact it is my Albatross …..(sense of self and personal drama turned up to eleven)
Been lovely pontificating at you..
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