ENID BLYTON REVIVAL?

Much is happening on the Enid Blyton front these days. Here is a summary of
a few of the developments (a limited company, a pub, a biography and a
Society) followed by a brief attempt to try and account for this resurgence
of interest:

1) CHORION. The intellectual property development company has been very
active in the last few years, making the Famous Five and Noddy into brands
that are recognised world-wide. A new Famous Five animation, featuring the
children of the original Famous Five, is in production with Walt Disney and
will be screened on TV in the UK from May 2007. A new TV dramatisation
involving the original Famous Five grown up to be adults is in the early
stages of development with a British TV company.

2) THE RED LION. This newly refurbished pub re-opened on November 14 with a room dedicated to Enid Blyton. The pub is located in Beaconsfield very close to the site of Green Hedges, the house where Enid Blyton wrote like a train for thirty years but which was demolished shortly after her death. There has been nothing much to acknowledge her presence in the town (or anywhere else) since. The room has prints from Enid Blyton stories on the walls, information on Enid Blyton's life and career and a growing display of
donated Blyton books. Local reaction to the place has been amazing, according to the landlady.

3) LOOKING FOR ENID by Duncan McLaren. Published by Portobello Books. This biography of Enid Blyton starts by juxtaposing her with Proust and ends up suggesting she's up there with Isaac Newton. Some critics have wondered if the writer¹s being serious, while the reviewer in the Mail has suggested that throughout the work 'irony dances pixie-like on every page'. Patricia Craig in The Independent suggests that one of the things the author is out to subvert is society¹s underestimation of Blyton. She describes the book as being a blend of biography and recollection, diary, tribute, travelogue, psychoanalysis, literary detection, wild assumption, crochet and pastiche. 'The effect of Looking For Enid's abundant idiosyncracies,' she suggests, 'is disorientating, illuminating and entertainingŠaffording a way into all manner of mysteries, enchantments and secrets.' In other words, the book's written by someone who's come under the spell of, for example, David Lynch, Green Wing and Gormenghast, following his early absorption in Blyton.

4) THE ENID BLYTON SOCIETY. The associated website (enidblytonsociety.co.uk) was set up by Tony Summerfield three years ago and is now growing into an incredible Blyton resource. Here's how:

    a) Book Listing:
184 novels, 221 character books, 673 short story collections. All by Enid
Blyton. Pick a single book from, say, the novels, say, Five on a Treasure
Island:
- There is a review of the book provided by a member of the Society.
- Colour images have been posted of the covers of the various editions (16
so far).
- Scans of the end-papers and all the Eilleen Soper images from within the
original 1942 edition.

    b) Forums:
Packed full of vibrant discussions of all things Blytonesque:
- In the Author section, there have been 88 replies so far posted to the
topic 'mystery of the odd anagram' which concerns the new Blyton biography
Looking For Enid. These incorporate links to the many long and passionate
reviews of the book that have appeared in the national press.
- In the Games section there is a thread concerning 'Write a Story'. Here
six individuals (Ming, a 13-year-old Bangladeshi girl who travelled on her
own to last year¹s Enid Blyton Society Day; 'Lenoir' from South Africa;
'Moonraker' from Salisbury; 'Lucky Star' from Surrey, 'Daisy' from
whereabouts unknown; and 'Green Hedges', a 50-year-old from Scotland) have
been putting together 'The Mystery of the Empty House', starring Fatty, the
rest of the Find-Outers and PC Goon. In so doing the writers are zeroing in
on the fictional space of Blyton's Mystery series, Peterswood. Some of the
on-line writers know this is actually Bourne End, Bucks, where Blyton lived
for nine years with her first husband. All of them know and love the
original scenario and characters.

    c) Journal:
This is getting bigger and the contributors seem to be gaining in
intellectual confidence. It remains a blend of nostalgia, analysis and
period reproduction, but the space given to literary analysis is burgeoning,

So why is Enid on the up and up? Here are a few suggestions:

1) Paul Norman, editor of Gateway MMonthly, has made Looking For Enid the
on-line magazine¹s non-fiction choice for November, while December's issue
is to be an Enid Blyton special. He suggests Blyton may be in for a revival
now that J.K. Rowling has brought her sequence of Harry Potter books to a
conclusion. Can Enid Blyton's oeuvre fill the gap created by the lack of
more Potter product? Well, yes, that could happen, various Blyton series
have never gone away, there are plenty of Malory Towers, Magic Faraway Tree, Famous Five, Noddy, Secret Seven and Mystery books packed onto bookshop shelves already. If, in some ways, Enid Blyton's extraordinary career paved the way for J.K Rowling's. (Blyton has still sold more books than Rowling.) The latter's rise to superstar status could help bring about a major uplift in her predecessor's profile.

2) Definitions of creativity have changed dramatically in the last forty
years. When Blyton died in 1968, and when the official biography written by
Barbara Stoney appeared in 1974, visual artists were either painters or
sculptors. Since then, Damien Hirst, Louise Bourgeois, the Turner Prize and
other developments in contemporary art have transformed the way we assess and accept creativity. It shouldn't come as a surprise that such a turn around in perception encourages radical reassessment of the achievement of historical figures in the various arts, including literature.

3) We are all getting increasingly sophisticated as consumers of cultural
artefacts (thank-you Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Tracey Emin et al). It is now
much more common for middle-aged people to keep intact within them their
10-year-old selves. For example, Patricia Craig writes of the author of
Looking For Enid: 'McLaren keeps his childhood delight in the story, while
giving free rein to an adult investigation of its sources. Sources and
forces ­ erotic, therapeutic, but never too serious ­ are what animate his
book, as he goes about getting to the bottom of Blyton with charm and
ingenuity.' Those who aren't getting more sophisticated - the po-faced
critics and the political correctness brigade - increasingly look like
dinosaurs. Flexibility is not all, but it is a lot in these postmodern days.
The flexible mind reads a book by Blyton and recognises that he or she is
engaging with a vivid imagination, rhythmic, dynamic prose and a sure
control of plot. The switched-on reader comes to realise just how quickly
Blyton wrote stories and just how many of her incredibly varied books are
out there. Finally - and not before time - the contemporary reader rejoices
in the creative phenomenon that went by the name of Enid Blyton.

4) Think Dr Who. This was a trail blazing program back in the Sixties, then
became at best nostalgia viewing for decades, as standards of acting,
writing and direction went down. Come the Twenty-First century and the BBC decided to invest in the brand. The scripts had to be fast and funny and
ultra-modern, the acting had to have charisma and class, the special effects
had to be all that the digital era could come up with.  Overnight, the
audience was there again, lapping it up as at the program's inception. What
a difference there is between going through the motions and giving it your
best shot! Shakespeare and Dickens have been visited by the revitalised
Doctor, if only because the new producer and writers are interested in the
creative act of writing. Agatha Christie is going to be given a visit soon.
It can only be a matter of time until the wheeze of the TARDIS is heard
outside Green Hedges. And when that day comes, it will be in no small part
thanks to Chorion Ltd, enidblytonsociety.co.uk and Duncan McLaren. I can see the Doctor and his sparky assistant climbing the Faraway Tree. Which of
Enid's world's will they find when they get to the top - Kirrin Island?
Peterswood? Toyland? - I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile,
there are the books. Hundreds of 'em. Enjoy.