QUOTE OF THE WEEK 2011-25 ... 13 YEARS & STILL READING

First line:

‘Today, I lost the battle for Christabel’. (Forster, 2004, p.1).

On women:

‘I suspect that my strength has been my weakness, as it is with many women.’ (Forster, 2004, p.3).

On education:

‘She wasn’t clever. Reading, reading anything, even comics, was hard for her, yet she wasn’t unintelligent. The Blakes had her tested … and she came out average. She hated reading, that was all. Curiously, she did better at writing, had no problems with that. In fact, not only did she have good, clear handwriting she also had a fairly fluent style. That was what got her by. She trailed along near the bottom of every class during the year but then at examination time she managed to pass most subjects that depended on being able to string words together.’ (Forster, 2004, p.6).

‘She wasn’t stupid, so why the difficulty? She couldn’t, or wouldn’t concentrate, that was the problem. She said her mind wandered.’ (Forster, 2004, p.23).

On literacy:

‘ … it struck me that that Maureen is virtually illiterate. Truly. It is not just that the language of officialdom is clumsy, but that she don’t know how to put a sentence together. Her punctuation is awful, not a ghost of an idea about where to put a full stop, and her vocabulary impoverished. She is incapable of describing anything, flounders around using cliches culled from - well, from where? From social-work text-books? American-style psychology papers? Where did all this rubbish about being “in touch with one’s feelings” and “making a commitment” and so forth come from? Quite simple statements are wrapped up in mumbo-jumbo, nothing is ever put down in plain, ordinary language. And yet Maureen, as a senior social worker, must have a degree, mustn’t she? She must have O-level English, at any rate. You wouldn’t think it from reading her reports.’ (Forster, 2004, p.7).

REFERENCE

Forster, M. (2004 [1991] ) ‘The battle for Christabel’. London: Vintage.