So, I resolved to try to take the book seriously. He also argues convincingly that the fairly arresting antisemitism in the opening chapter isn’t Buchan’s, but that of a character who is debunked later in the book. It was written as a ‘shocker’, but had a serious intent as it was published when Britain was at war. The reputation of The Thirty-Nine Steps as the epitome of English boy’s own adventure, with a stiff-upper-lip hero ranged against a dastardly enemy, is undermined by the fact that neither author nor hero are English. The critic Stuart Kelly in the introduction to this edition makes a fair attempt to give the novel depth: ‘the finest piece of propaganda of its era transcends being mere propaganda’. I think John Buchan has a similar problem to Enid Blyton: It is difficult to read them without being influenced by decades of comic reinterpretations of their work as shallow, jingoistic gung-ho nonsense. First published in the UK 1915, Hodder & Stoughton
0 kommentar(er)
