The back of the classroom

Gordon Brown has done it again - he has spoken about literature. It looks like he didn't learn his lesson from the so-called Heathcliffgate. According to the Guardian Politics Blog,

I haven't read Joseph Conrad's Typhoon and so I didn't know what Gordon Brown was on about this morning when he said that his approach to the global economic crisis would emulate the stance of a famous Conrad character. But Andrew Marr has read everything and so he instantly recognised a reference to Captain MacWhirr.

For the record, according to the BBC transcript, this is what Brown said:

We're a team and we're facing difficult work conditions and facing them in a way that we ensure that people will come through this fairly. You know I think Joseph Conrad was the author, and when he said when you're facing a storm and it's an economic storm, an international storm, what do you do? The best way to deal with that storm is, he said, facing it, facing it. I think all the cabinet and all the government are of the same mind.

That sounds fine. But a quick check suggests that Brown could have named a more suitable literary role model.

MacWhirr is the captain of a ship who, when he encounters bad weather, stubbornly refuses to take avoiding action and instead sails straight into the eye of the storm. In the end the ship and its passengers survive, partly as a result of MacWhirr's solid leadership. But he's also described as "having just enough imagination to carry him through each successive day, and no more" and Conrad suggests that a more flexible captain would never have sailed into the storm in the first place.

Brown was mocked recently when he allowed an interviewer to let him identify himself with Heathcliff. I'm not sure the Labour party will find his latest literary hero any more reassuring. (Andrew Sparrow)

Neither do we. The man sure is well-read but he hasn't learnt to master similes yet.

The Financial Times, quite amazingly, has a 'dear book doctor' column. Today's advice is nice and quite to the point (Mr Brown, take this as an example of a well-accomplished simile):

Imagine if the great literary heroes of the past had stalled at the first omen of doom. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre would have crumbled when her friend Helen Burns died at Lowood Asylum and never made it to Thornfield Hall or met Mr Rochester - and even if she had, she certainly wouldn't have battled through the revelation of his mad wife in the attic to return to Thornfield at the end. (Rosie Blau)

Lowood Asylum sounds awful, though.

Michael Gove - Conservative MP for Surrey Heath - complains in The Times:

I find it sad that we think less and less of Shropshire ankles or Kincardineshire necks (all that sun at harvest) or Westmorland knees (rendered knobbly by the fells) and more and more of Brontë Country or the Borders or the M4 corridor or other manufactured locations.

Huh? There are degrees to that: we will accept that Brontë Country is quite just a tourist attraction for some, but it has a real-life basis and is a tribute to some of the best-loved English authors of all time. As far as we know, that is not the case with the M4 corridor. Please, Mr Gove, join Mr Brown at the back of the classroom.

Today must be the mention-the-Brontës day at the Ugandan newspaper Daily Monitor headquarters. First mention:

Even then, people like William Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, the Bronte sisters and Chinua Achebe still dominate our literature syllabuses – which begs the question why, when we have our own accomplished authors. (Dennis D. Muhumuza)

Second mention:

The classic is another kind of novel you must try, however afraid you might be of not understanding the themes or the English. I started with these rather early and the first author’s works I read in this category was Charlotte Bronte.
And I fell in love with her writing. Perhaps that’s why the favourites for me are her Wuthering Heights and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Romance written in a different way, the kind that stood pride and prejudice and heights of all kinds. (Carol Beyanga)

Ms Beyanga will be joining Mr Brown and Mr Gove at the back of the classroom. Despite the first mention complaint of the Brontë sisters appearing in the Ugandan syllabus and her claim to having fallen in love with Charlotte Brontë's writing she still states that it was Charlotte who wrote Wuthering Heights.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights