[ilds] Chains of memory

[slighcl]

On 5/29/2008 7:04 AM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote:

>
> LD Meets the British Military and discovers they are not not so boorish 
> afterall. Experience remembered and embellished, a story told.
>
>   
What about this discovery, David?  I think the discovery of Gideon's 
intelligence and sympathetic humanity are there, certainly.  But how can 
we trace and determine in any precise way what Durrell's thoughts and 
feelings were toward the British military?

Anglo-Indian sensibilities would have to be reckoned up as somewhere 
behind much of Durrell's thoughts and feelings about the servants of 
empire, I am betting.  Also important would be how Durrell was thinking 
about his relation to other British writers who had written about the 
imperial holdings.  Where is Kipling's Colonel Creighton (from /Kim/) in 
all of this?  Like Creighton, Gideon is certainly no "everyman" standing 
in for the rank and file or for an enlightened officer corps found 
everywhere in abundance.  Instead, he is a singularity troubled by his 
difference and the professional costs of his idiosyncrasies.  The 
Brigadier reminds him of this.

And then I am flashing forward to /Bitter Lemons/, where the officers 
and the administrative class attempt to live in a separate canton, a 
place echoing the sleepy comforts of home.

Charles

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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