Notes In The Margin

I hate Stuart McLean.  I hate him in an envious way.  I keep discovering that he’s written about people, places, things that I could have covered and now, if I tried, it would feel like plagiarism.  He’s a thief.

Take Enid Blyton for instance.  She wrote a short piece about children’s adventures, the kind where a smart and self-reliant group of pre-pubescent kids sail off to foil the evil schemes of some nasty, bumbling adults intent on fairly straightforward crimes like robbery, kidnapping or spying or such.  The other adults who populate the background are benign figures there to drive the vehicles, fly the planes and provide just enough authority to justify the children’s actions.  But McLean staked out the territory in a piece called “The Island of No Adults”.  

How can I write about that collection of Blyton Adventure Books that I’ve treasured since childhood?  How can I rehash something that meant so much to me then, and begs to be revisited now that I have a perspective of 50 years, without paraphrasing his article?

Perhaps I need to abandon the Vinyl Café and look for a more foreign country to explore.

I hate Stuart McLean   

Lesson #23 – I hate Stuart McLean

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