TDIR, Eddings, gifted children

[Tabouli]

Ah, yes, The Dark is Rising series.  My father bought me the first one of this series when I was 9 or so.  I read it, and borrowed the next few from the library, but I must confess I never really read them.  Not because I thought they were particularly bad, but because I found them absolutely terrifying!  My imagination, always vivid and dominating, started taking me over with frightening visions of horned gods and familiar people turned evil: the cover of Greenwitch was enough to give me nightmares!  I hid it under my bed for a week or so and then rushed the lot back to the school library.

Now that I'm all brave and mature and grown up (?), perhaps I should try again...

Never tried Pullman, despite numerous recommendations, but I can offer some other recommendations in the same vague genre as HP.  "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norman Juster is a one-off masterpiece so masterly that I chopped quotes out of it to put in my Honours essay (!), and Michael Ende's "Momo" is in my opinion vastly superior to his more-feted "Neverending Story".  Beautiful cautionary fairy tale.  I also loved Jostein Gaarder's "The Solitaire Mystery".  As for David Eddings, I read him on two levels.  I don my bulletproof vest and grin sheepishly at John before launching my attack.... (Note that I am basing my comments on the Belgariad and the Malloreon, as I gave up on his other stuff very fast after seeing him reproduce the same quest-for-magic-blue-stone plot in a new dress for the third time).

The first level, on which I first read him at 13 or so, sees him as great fun, with amusing characters, witty dialogue, an interesting fantasy world, and a rollicking, lively pace.  On the second level, I can't help but wince at his cartoon-like simplicity.  It's like Rambo or something: the good guys slaughter bad guys by the hundred for fun and everyone applauds and the narrator approves, but let one good guy get slain and they all shriek EVIL and swear vengeance for all eternity.  Practically all of the female characters seem to be beautiful (or at least, if not, defined by their lack thereof).  The east-west good-evil Cold War-ish allegory is breathtaking in its black and whiteness.  Sex is handled with dainty, prudish white gloves, and Bible belt morality is applied, even by hardened, streetwise characters for whom this seems highly unlikely (e.g. why would Polgara be embarrassed about sex after 4000 years of delivering babies and setting up marriages and curing infertility?).

(Tabouli fingers her bulletproof vest nervously...)

John:
> You could also try Narnia (but make sure you don't get the silly new ones
without all that squishy Lewis Christian allegory -- though I'm not a
Christian I do certainly enjoy the themes).

Have they actually published some silly new ones, eh?  I thought they were just contemplating it, to the horror of all and sundry CSL fans.  What are they like?

Parker:
>>I would too, but in my experience, most gifted children *know* 
they're gifted--or at the very least "different" from their peers. I 
knew I was smart and talented, but my parents didn't let it become 
the focus of my life.  They always told me I could be anything I 
wanted to be--"as long as you're happy doing it."  So, I had 
absolutely no pressure to be a super-everything.

 I spent my school years bored to tears in classes.  How I wish I'd 
had somewhere to go where I wasn't considered a freak because I was 
exceptionally smart. <<

>>I spent my school years dreading each day I had to be caged in a 
place that didn't know what to do with me (as well as peers who 
thought I was a freak).  Part of my problem was that I *didn't* & 
*couldn't* relate to people my own age--they were too busy worrying 
about what to wear & who would be their date for Friday night, while 
I was busy worrying over whether my dad would get sloshed *again* 
when he got home from work.  This led to a suicide attempt at 14.  <<

Oh, Parker, Parker.  This is both terrible and familiar to me.  Here we have another magnificent example of the Overdog syndrome: being gifted, like being beautiful, can be as much a curse as a blessing because of the reactions of other people.  Gifted people are overdogs, and therefore deserve persecution.  I know so many people (Australians being the tall poppy choppers that they are) that refer to the "gifted" as if they are somehow traitors and imposters... "I don't agree with any of this gifted education stuff: if they're so damn smart, they should find ways to stimulate themselves instead of expecting special treatment which would be better going to the struggling students".

What exactly *is* gifted, anyway?  People bandy the term around all the time, but usually avoid giving an exact definition.  IQ scores?  Marks at school?  Ability to understand new concepts and solve problems??

I have certainly always felt very different from my peers (I wrote a poem at 15 which began "I sometimes like to think/I'm on a wavelength of my own" and ended "But how it can get lonely/ When no-one's ever there to tune in/ And listen"), but I don't know that this is to do with being "gifted".  More likely it was due to me being a sensitive child growing up in a troubled family with a serious cultural, religious and temperamental divide between the parents and intense pressure on me to be their performing seal, giving me all sorts of insecurities and strange behaviours which my peers just could not understand or tolerate, especially considering that I was also Not White Enough.

No drinking issues, just a Berlin Wall with my father and me on one side (the intellectual side) and my mother and brother on the other, pouncing on me every time my father wasn't around to punish me for his favoritism (to this day most of my extended family sees me as the over-indulged apple of his eye).  Getting used as a marital counsellor at the age of 7.  Bearing the brunt of my mother's culture shock and anger at my father because I was His Favorite and got all the attention she wanted, and because she was too scared to take it out on him.  Being under intense pressure from my class jumper father to keep on churning out brilliant results and achievements to prove his worth in the middle class world he felt so ill-at-ease in himself.  He sang (and still sings) my praises and recited my achievements to everyone behind my back, but, unbeknownst to those who want (and still want) to take the spoilt daughter down as many pegs as possible, was always extremely critical to my face, nothing was ever good enough, why wasn't I tidier and more organised and setting the world on fire with my genius yet?  (example: at 12, he thrust an article at me about some child prodigy who'd published a novel at 11 and ranted furiously at me for being too lazy and disorganised to have done so... see what you could have done by now if you'd applied yourself?  No hope for you, is there?)

When I started high school I was shuffled into a Gifted Children class, where I was so disorganised and scattered and desperately know-it-all (cross between Hermione and Neville), losing things, forgetting things, handing work in late, incredibly self-conscious and fearful of being bad at anything from maths to dodgem car driving, that my form teacher sent me to the school counsellor in concern.  At 11 I didn't pick it up, but remembering the counsellor's questions now I suspect she was trying to figure out if I was getting abused at home.

Yeuch.  Thank god for the onset of adulthood.

Tabouli.


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