Contrary views

Preoccupations: Literature

Tegenstrijdige visie over The History Boys:

Contrary views

Two provocative pieces from the Telegraph this week: Rupert Christiansen explains why Allen Bennett's The History Boys is bunk and A N Wilson why Auden had no right to talk of suffering. Curiously, they form a linked pair:

"Maybe Auden has it right," says Hector in Alan Bennett's The History Boys. "That's a change," replies Mrs Lintott, his sensible colleague. Hector: "Let each child that's in your care ..." Mrs Lintott: "I know, '... have as much neurosis as the child can bear'. And how many children had Auden, pray?"

Since I sat entranced through The History Boys, Mrs Lintott has been my heroine. She reminds me here of the many moments, when reading Auden, when I have been irritated. Take one of his most-quoted anthology pieces, the 'Musée des Beaux Arts', written in December 1938 of all dates ...

Meanwhile, Rupert Christiansen concludes:

It's meant to be a comedy, you might retort. But because I found it so implausible, I couldn't laugh. Although there are a few smart lines (Mrs Lintott's "history is women following behind, with a bucket" has undeniable force), I was dismayed at the frequency with which Bennett resorted to the crudest method of épatant les bourgeois - using respectable adults to explete the lower order of swear words. ... This isn't funny, it's just cheap, and all too typical of the opportunism with which Bennett has composed the play.

If you want to understand the impact of a charismatic teacher, read Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; if you want to contemplate the feverish intensity of male adolescents, there's Lindsay Anderson's If…; if you want to explore the problems of teaching and interpreting the past, turn to Raphael Samuel's Theatres of Memory. Just don't bother with The History Boys.