Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

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So on Thursday we literally just watched the movie adaptation of Cold Comfort Farm, and today I managed to sidetrack my prof into a history lesson for around 45 minutes. And after that? We talked a little bit about the names of the characters in CCF, and then we watched part of a PBS documentary on Aimee Semple McPherson (she shows up in out next book, The Loved One).

This class is turning out to be way easier than I first thought it’d be. Yay!

I didn’t take many notes, but I did want to talk a bit about the names Stella Gibbons chose for her characters. My prof said she was influenced by Dickens and all those other authors who gave their characters names that matched up somehow to their personality or role in the book. When you see a name like “Ada Doom,” for instance, you pretty much know that character is going to be gloomy and soul-sucking and so on. “Agony Beetle” is also pretty straightforward, and so is “Urk.” But what about a name like “Amos Starkadder?”

Ian McKellen as Amos Starkadder

If you’re not familiar with Biblical names, a lot of Gibbons’ characters names won’t mean anything unless you Google around, as I had to. Amos, for instance, is the name of a prophet who did a lot of gloom-and-doom sort of prophecies. Amos Starkadder is a gloom-and-doom sort of preacher– and so you can see the connection, right? Let me tell you, Google and my prof have uncovered a whole new layer of the book for me.

The other Biblical names– Judith, Seth, etc– are still somewhat murky in meaning, but I assume they follow along the same lines as Amos and Ada Doom. On the more positive side of things, “Flora Poste” is a wonderful name, full of meaning. “Flora,” meaning flowers and growth and change! “Poste,” like Emily Post and her insistence on adhering to manners and etiquette! How perfectly that fits Flora Poste’s character and personality!

I like it when a character’s name matched their personality somehow. On the other hand, names of the like that tend to show up in paranormal romances (or any romance, really) tend to annoy me. “Bella Swan?” Please. Either have a sense of humor about it (naming a cow Feckless, for instance, is very humorous) or go deep into a somewhat obscure meaning– don’t half-ass it and name your character ugly-duckling-that-really-isn’t.

What’s your favorite character names? Do you like it when a name matches a personality?

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Can I just say right off the bat that I LOVED Cold Comfort Farm? The beginning is a little rough but soon enough it becomes WONDERFUL and I can’t wait to actually write my review instead of just thinking about it and wishing I had enough energy to write more than one post a day. I saw something nasty in the woodshed! Ahem.

In today’s class we did a somewhat roundabout introduction to Stella Gibbons and Cold Comfort Farm. Roundabout as in we went off on several tangents about other authors and there was decidedly less of actual Stella Gibbons content than I had hoped for. But I’ll try to put something together for you all–

Stella Gibbons

Stella Gibbons came from a dysfunctional family (my prof called them “weird”); he father was an alcoholic, opium addicted drama queen who spent all the family’s money and didn’t make Stella or her mother’s life easy. Luckily, I suppose, he dies pretty early on in Stella’s life, soon after her mother died. Stella was left an orphan, something that shows up in CCF.
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Today’s class was slightly better; I don’t know if I was just in a better mood after a delightfully relaxing weekend or if it actually was more interesting, but I do know that I took more notes and so have something to write about here.

We spoke more about Wodehouse and the techniques he used in his books. They’re very structured books, isolated in their own little lighthearted world and populated by very similar people. The unfortunate thing about humor books, especially ones of a series, is that the characters tend to be very flat. There’s no character growth in Wodehouse’s books: Bertie keeps making the same mistakes he’s made before, and Jeeves will always get him out of it. My prof explained the lack of character depth in humor books is that a humorous character is constrained to respond to a situation through the lens of whatever humor they’re representing. So Jeeves will always respond to some situation with droll wit, Bertie will say something pun-y and silly, etc. This makes them consistent characters, but it also makes them somewhat boring after so many books (just my personal opinion).

The pacing of Wodehouse’s books is very quick, and according to my prof it’s because Wodehouse, like many other humor writers during that time, took inspiration from vaudeville, where the acts would come one right after another. Think of a Marx brothers movie: the jokes come out like rapid fire, almost without giving you time to laugh. Now think of a Wodehouse book, or one of the adaptations for television: it’s very much the same thing, with quick movement from one scene to another and no long, contemplative pauses anywhere.

One interesting aspect of Wodehouse’s books that lifts them out of the dullness of characters is the power structure between the aristocratic class (Bertie, Lord Emsworth) and the working class (Jeeves, Lord Emsworth’s gardner). Normally you’d think the aristocrats would be in charge of their staff, but in Wodehouse’s books it’s more the other way around. Jeeves may take orders from Bertie, but he does it in a way that says “I’m only doing this because it’d be improper to refuse”– that is, if he doesn’t try to get out of it by suggesting another course of action instead of whatever Bertie’s decided to do.

My favorite Jeeves & Wooster

The aristocrat/working class dichotomy is somewhat similar to the dichotomy between the traditional Victorian characters like Aunt Agatha and the new flapper-ish characters like Bertie and everyone at the Drones Club. While Aunt Agatha thinks Bertie should settle down and get married already, start a family and get a job, just like all Victorian gentlemen did (I suppose), the new flapper mindset is that one should have as much fun as possible and that marriage is death– hence why Bertie so refuses to actually succumb to what Aunt Agatha wants (with help from Jeeves, of course). Jeeves, meanwhile, is an interesting character because while he embodies all the old generational values of the Victorians and Edwardians, he also understands the flappers and wants to help kept them afloat, so to speak: so he helps Bertie out when he can.

Of course, he’s probably also looking out for his own interests, but that’s something we’re going over tomorrow, I think.