Favourite Children's Authors: Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl (1916-1990)

There's a strange dossier of factoids about Roald Dahl at the back of the later editions of his children's books - the ones illustrated by Quentin Blake, after the two first began to collaborate in 1976.

The contents vary from book to book, but it generally includes a page of Weird and Wonderful Facts about Roald Dahl (including such gems as "He was a terrible speller, but he liked playing scrabble" and "His nickname at home was the Apple, because he was the apple of his mother's eye").

At the back of The Twits, we learn further that "Roald Dahl hated beards":

He never grew one and couldn't see why a man would want to hide his face behind a beard. He came to the conclusion that beards were grown to conceal something dreadful in a person's personality. He thought that beards were disgusting and dirty and that they always had food caught up in them. Mr Twit was one of the foulest and smelliest characters in all of Roald's books - and what did he have stuck to his face? A bristly, nailbrushy beard, of course.

On one of the following pages, under the title Roald Dahl says, we're informed that:

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else. If you're kind, that's it.

There's clearly no need to extend it to people with beards, mind you, since they're already dead in the water so far as he's concerned.

There's more, much more: an exciting tour of Roald Dahl's Writing Hut (now preserved for posterity at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre); a copy of his Puffin Passport ("My most frightening moment: "In a Hurricane, 1941, RAF"; My funniest moment: "Being born" ..."); a somewhat hagiographic account of Roald Dahl's Family; a vocabulary of Gobblefunk (the language he invented for The BFG); A Day in the Life of Roald Dahl ("lunch ... a gin and tonic followed by Norwegian prawns with mayonnnaise and lettuce. At the end of every meal, Roald and his family had a chocolate bar chosen from a red plastic box"); a thrilling account of Roald Dahl's Adventures (which included once being forced to carry a heavy pack during a hike in Newfoundland, as well as the experience of having to beg for money for his fare back from France after making an impromptu daytrip across the channel at the age of 16); Roald Dahl Dates (very useful for the researcher); Roald Dahl's School Reports ("This boy is an indolent and illiterate member of the class"); Roald Dahl's Favourite Things (including a bottle of shavings from Roald's spine, as well as a ball of silver foil: "every day, during his time working in London, Roald squashed the wrappers of his Cadbury's Dairy Milk bar and gradually formed this ball; it weighs 310 grams"). Oh, and I mustn't forget: there's even a couple of pages entitled Meet Quentin Blake, where Dahl's favourite illustrator gets to share his experiences of working with the great man.

I suppose this kind of thing is harmless enough. Building up a cult of personality around your star author can pay big dividends - especially in the field of children's writing. Take all the fuss over J. K. Rowling's alleged preference for writing at a table in a café, for instance: even when it entails constructing a bespoke café along one wall of your stately home ...

The roalddahl.com website to which we're directed at the end of each of his books is, however, forced to start off now with a rather unfortunate disclaimer:

Roald Dahl's Antisemitism

During his lifetime Roald Dahl made a number of antisemitic comments. While we can appreciate and celebrate his creativity, we must also confront the harmful views he held.

The Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC) apologises unreservedly for the lasting and understandable hurt that these antisemitic remarks have caused and the impact they have had. We condemn anti-Jewish racism and all forms of racism and prejudice.

Since our original apology in 2020 which was made in conjunction with the Roald Dahl family, RDSC has engaged in listening and learning from experts in tackling antisemitism, including the Antisemitism Policy Trust, which has supported us with advice and ongoing staff training to help us better understand antisemitism.

Whatever else he was, Roald Dahl was clearly a complex man - and unfortunately a long way from the kindly, even heroic, figure presented by these pages of data carefully curated for his legions of child readers.

Here's Kingsley Amis's account of his first (and only) meeting with Roald Dahl:

Kingsley Amis: Memoirs (1991)

I have only once met this renowned children's author. It was at a party in the 1970s given by Tom Stoppard at his house in Iver, Bucks.
... Dahl was invited and duly arrived, late, after everybody else was there, and by helicopter. ... At some stage, not by my choice, I found myself closeted alone with him.
First declaring himself a great fan of mine, he asked, ‘What are you working on at the moment, Kingsley?’
I started to make some reply, but he cut me short. ‘That sounds marvellous,' he said, 'but do you expect to make a lot of money out of it however well you do it?’
‘I don’t know about a lot,' I said. 'Enough, I hope. The sort of money I usually make.’
'So you've no financial problems.'
'I wouldn't say that either exactly, but I seem to be able to ...'
Dahl was shaking his head slowly. ‘I hate to think of a chap of your distinction having to worry about money at your time of life. Tell me, how old are you now?’ I told him ... 'Yes. You might be able to write better, I mean even better, if you were financially secure.'
... I must have mumbled something about only knowing how to write in the way I always had. Never mind - what had he got on the -
He was shaking his head again. 'What you want to do,' he said, 'is write a children’s book. That’s where the money is today, believe me.’ ...
'I wouldn't know how to set about it.'
'Do you know what my advance was on my last one?' When he found I did not, in fact had no idea, he told me. It certainly sounded like a large sum.
‘I couldn’t do it,' I told him again. 'I don't think I enjoyed children's books much when I was a child myself. I’ve got no feeling for that kind of thing.'
‘Never mind, the little bastards’d swallow it.’
Many times in these pages I have put in people's mouths approximations to what they said, what they might well have said, what they said at another time, and a few almost-outright inventions, but that last remark is verbatim.
'Well, I suppose you'd know,' I replied, 'but I can't help feeling they'd see through me. Children are supposed to be good at detecting insincerity and such, aren't they? Again, you're the man who understands about all that.'
... At length he roused himself.
'Well, it's up to you. Either you will or you won't. Write a children's book, I mean. But if you do decide to have a crack, let me give you one word of warning. Unless you put everything you've got into it, unless you write it from the heart, the kids'll have no use for it. They'll see you're having them on. And just let me tell you from experience that there's nothing kids hate more than that. They won't give you a second chance either. You'll have had it for good as far as they're concerned. Just you bear that in mind as a word of friendly advice. Now, if you'll excuse me, I rather think I'll go in search of another drink.'
And, with a stiff nod and an air of having asserted his integrity by rejecting some outrageous and repulsive suggestion, the man who put everything into the books he wrote for the kids left me to my thoughts. I felt rather as if I had been looking at one of those pictures by Escher in which the eye is led up a flight of stairs only to find itself at the same level as it started at.
I watched the television news that night, but there was no report of a famous children's author being killed in a helicopter crash."

- Kingsley Amis, "Roald Dahl." Memoirs (1991): 305-7.

No doubt this much-quoted anecdote doesn't give the whole truth about Roald Dahl. Amis was, after all, a novelist, and no stranger to embellishing a story. It does, though, give some sense of how Dahl's massive egotism could strike a complete stranger.

Roald Dahl: Tales of the Unexpected (1979-1988)

Further information can be gleaned from Craig Brown's 2022 Daily Mail article "Why Roald Dahl was a spiteful BFG (big fibbing giant) (the title may give you some clue to the tenor of the piece):

‘He was a plagiarist, a racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and overbearingly rude,’ noted one reviewer last Sunday of a new biography of Dahl.
To this list, one might also add ‘malicious liar’. When Dahl came to write his autobiography, Boy, he chose to turn on his old headmaster, Geoffrey Fisher — later to become the Archbishop of Canterbury — accusing him of delivering ‘the most vicious beatings to the boys under his care’. He described one beating in detail. ‘The victim was told to wash away the blood before pulling up his trousers.’
But Dahl knew full well that he was pointing the finger at the wrong man. At the time those beatings had taken place, someone else was headmaster.
In fact, Dahl had always enjoyed a good relationship with Geoffrey Fisher, describing him as ‘frightfully nice’ in a letter home, and continuing to visit him as an adult.
As a successful author, Dahl had even sent Fisher a copy of one of his books, signing it: ‘With gratitude and affection.’ Moreover, when Dahl’s seven-year-old daughter Olivia died suddenly, it was to Fisher he had turned for consolation. Soon after Fisher’s death, he praised him in a speech as ‘thoroughly good’.
Why did Roald Dahl make these false accusations against someone he knew was innocent? The only possible explanation is that Dahl thought it would make a better, more commercial, story to pretend that his sadistic headmaster was the same man who had later been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
For all his talent and charisma, there was, it must be said, something a little creepy about Roald Dahl. A friend of mine, who was once a regular visitor to his house, was surprised at how often he would bump into Gary Glitter there.
During Gary Glitter’s 1992 appearance on This Is Your Life, Dahl’s daughter Tessa was a guest. ‘Gary actually came to live in my house when he was between jobs ...’ she said.
‘When I was absolutely broke!’ laughed Glitter.
'My sister Lucy turned it into quite a successful venture because she used to pack the train full of her adolescent school friends in school uniform and then skive school ...’
At this point, you can see Gary Glitter putting his forefinger to his lips and miming: ‘Shhh!’
Who knows? If ever a TV company wishes to revive Dahl’s Tales Of The Unexpected, this might make the perfect episode.

Roald Dahl: Tales of the Unexpected (1979-1988)

Tales of the Unexpected was, in fact, where I first made acquaintance with Roald Dahl's work. I enjoyed a lot of the stories, which seemed cleverly constructed - if a little exaggeratedly cruel and dark. But if (like me) you have an unrepentant taste for tales of terror and the macabre, that's more of a recommendation than anything else.

Nor did there seem anything unusual about his choosing to front each episode himself. It was Alfred Hitchcock who began that trend - and by the mid-70s it had become so common that even poor old P. G. Wodehouse was persuaded to film some introductions to Wodehouse Playhouse (1974-78) shortly before his death.

But I always felt a certain curiosity about those "other" books of Dahl's - the ones I was clearly far too old and grizzled to enjoy - until, that is, they started to appear as films.

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Mel Stuart, dir.: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

I'd seen Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, of course. Who hasn't? The one which really surprised me, though, was the original, 1990 version of The Witches, starring Anjelica Huston:

Nicolas Roeg, dir.: The Witches (1990)

The real star turn there, I'd have to say, came from veteran Swedish actress Mai Zetterling, who played the grandmother. But Nic Roeg did a brilliant job of reproducing the cartoony exuberance of the plot, and doing justice to its darker twists and turns.

I missed Jeremy Irons in Danny, the Champion of the World (1989), and I can't claim to have been too impressed by Matilda (1996), but I did enjoy Johhny Depp's take on Willy Wonka in the 2005 remake:

Tim Burton, dir.: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

Now that I've finally cranked around to read the bulk of Dahl's opus for children, I can see what Wes Anderson was getting at in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), but I fear that - for me, at least - the charm of the original was largely submerged by Anderson's self-indulgent whimsy.

Steven Spielberg, dir.: The BFG (2016)

The BFG, by contrast, seems a little undercooked. It's pretty faithful to the book, though, which I guess is a plus.

But what strikes me most about these films as a group is how extraordinarily fortunate Dahl was in his directors: talk about A-listers only! Nicolas Roeg, Tim Burton. Wes Anderson, Steven Spielberg, and now Robert Zemeckis in the recent remake of The Witches!

John Hay, dir.: To Olivia (2021)

The effort to portray Dahl himself in a favourable light on screen has met with rather less success. To Olivia, which tries to reproduce something of the atmosphere of the C. S. Lewis bio-pic Shadowlands, was found unconvincing by the majority of critics. Accused of being "burdened with clichés and guilty of glossing over troublesome aspects of its fact-based story, To Olivia," they concluded, "can't quite capture the grief it seeks to dramatize."

Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent clarified her own verdict as follows:

It struggles to reconcile the palpable image of a sensitive family man laid low by depression with the more complicated reality that ran alongside it – that of a sometimes-tyrant with a great capacity for manipulation.

The situation portrayed in the film is also complicated by the fact that "In 1983, following Dahl's 11-year affair with Felicity D'Abreu, a set designer he met when she worked with [his wife, Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal] on a Maxim Coffee advertisement, Neal's marriage ended in divorce." That was, admittedly, after Dahl had nursed her through a debilitating stroke, so you'd have to be a Solomon to try and apportion blame in the midst of such a concatenation of tragedies.

Another attempt to rehabilitate Dahl's image was made in Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse, the would-be whimsical account of an (allegedly) real meeting between the six-year-old Roald and his idol Beatrix Potter.

Dawn French plays the latter as so capricious and erratic a domestic tyrant that the young Roald comes off as almost normal by comparison. Despite a few laudatory reviews by sentimental journalists, it can hardly be said to have satisfied fans of either writer.

David Kerr, dir. Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse (2020)

But enough of all that. What of the books themselves?

It's probably too late for me to develop a genuine taste for them. I would have had to have been brought up on them, as so many children - it would appear - continue to be.

But they are, nevertheless, very readable, even for a querulous old curmudgeon such as myself. I haven't read them all, but I've read most of them - in a very short period of time, too. I'd rate them as follows, purely on grounds of personal predilection:

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Roald Dahl: Matilda (1988)


1. Matilda (1988)

I guess I have to put this one first, as its heroine, a bookish child, is such a contrast to the obnoxious brat of the film adaptation. What a pleasant surprise!


Roald Dahl: The Magic Finger (1966)


2. The Magic Finger (1966)

An elegant fable, with an excellent moral about the cruelty of hunting.


Roald Dahl: Fantastic Mr Fox (1970)


3. Fantastic Mr Fox (1970)

Again - so much better than the film! A fine, Kenneth Grahame-like fantasy about furry animals in their underground city.


Roald Dahl: The Witches (1983)


4. The Witches (1983)

A great piece of storytelling: strikingly original in its treatment of the age-old witch theme. Perhaps the only one of his stories that works as well as a film as it does as a book.


Roald Dahl: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)


5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

A polished and interesting piece of children's fiction - so familiar now from its movie incarnations that it's hard to read it without seeing them in your mind's eye.


Roald Dahl: The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me (1985)


6. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me (1985)

Charming - if slight. Ideal for its intended audience of younger children, I'd say.


Roald Dahl: George's Marvellous Medicine (1981)


7. George's Marvellous Medicine (1981)

Very inventive, if a little over-dependent on ideas borrowed from H. G. Wells' The Food of the Gods (1904).


Roald Dahl: James and the Giant Peach (1961)


8. James and the Giant Peach (1961)

Probably the strangest of all of his books. There's little explanation of the setting and circumstances, but an undeniable magic in the basic concept.


Roald Dahl: The BFG (1982)


9. The BFG (1982)

I have to give it points for originality and narrative drive, though I fear it's all sounds a bit contrived to me. Certainly much better than the Spielberg-ised version.


Roald Dahl: Esio Trot (1990)


10. Esio Trot (1990)

Slight, but fun. I do find the basic concept rather cruel in its callous disregard for the rights of tortoises to basic comfort and dignity, but I suppose it's all in fun.


Roald Dahl: The Twits (1980)


11. The Twits (1980)

A nasty book about nasty people. The ethical level of some of his plots is a bit too carnivalesque for me: pratfalls and slaps in the face in front of a roaring crowd.


Roald Dahl: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)


12. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)

This one is just plain silly. He'd have been better off leaving the original book alone.


Roald Dahl: Danny, the Champion of the World (1975)


13. Danny, the Champion of the World (1975)

Danny's father seems a most reprehensible individual, and the basic poaching plot is quite abhorrent. It's hard to believe that the author of The Magic Finger could also have come up with this.

•

I haven't yet read any of the following, I'm afraid (though I'd certainly be curious to do so):

Roald Dahl: The Gremlins (1943)


1. The Gremlins. New York: Random House, 1943.

Roald Dahl: Some Time Never (1948)


2. Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948.

Roald Dahl: The Enormous Crocodile (1978)


3. The Enormous Crocodile. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.

Roald Dahl: My Uncle Oswald (1979)


4. My Uncle Oswald. London: Michael Joseph, 1979.

Roald Dahl: The Vicar of Nibbleswicke (1991)


5. The Vicar of Nibbleswicke. London: Century, 1991)

Roald Dahl: The Minpins (1991)


6. The Minpins. London: Jonathan Cape, 1991.

It seems unlikely that any of them would be likely to alter significantly my overall opinions about Dahl, however.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by the books. There are some excellent plots there, and while the characterisation consists almost entirely of sorting the personnel of each story into goodies and baddies, that's scarcely unusual in children's fiction.

Donald Sturrock, in his monumental (authorised) biography of Dahl, does his best to put a positive spin on every detail of his life. Whether or not the result is entirely convincing must depend on each reader to decide.

Perhaps the most significant facts about Roald Dahl are that he can still provoke headlines more than three decades after his death, and that the appeal of his work shows no signs of abating. What writer would refuse such a legacy?

Jan Baldwin: Roald Dahl in his writing shed (1990)

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Roald Dahl (1954)

Roald Dahl
(1916-1990)

Novels:


1. The Gremlins (1943)
2. Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen (1948)
3. James and the Giant Peach (1961)
   • James and the Giant Peach. 1961. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1995. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
   • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Illustrated by Faith Jaques. 1964. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
   • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 1964. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1995. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
5. The Magic Finger (1966)
   • The Magic Finger. 1966. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1995. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
6. Fantastic Mr Fox (1970)
   • Fantastic Mr Fox. Illustrated by Jill Bennett. 1970. A Young Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
   • Fantastic Mr Fox. 1970. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1996. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
7. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)
   • Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Illustrated by Faith Jaques. 1973. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
   • Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. 1973. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1995. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 2013.
8. Danny, the Champion of the World (1975)
   • Danny The Champion of the World. Illustrated by Jill Bennett. 1975. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
   • Danny The Champion of the World. 1975. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1994. A Puffin Book. London: Penguin, 1984.
9. The Enormous Crocodile (1978)
10. My Uncle Oswald (1979)
11. The Twits (1980)
    • The Twits. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1980. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2001.
12. George's Marvellous Medicine (1981)
    • George's Marvellous Medicine. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1981. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2001.
    • George's Marvellous Medicine. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1981. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
13. The BFG (1982)
    • The BFG. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1982. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
14. The Witches (1983)
    • The Witches. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1983. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
15. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me (1985)
    • The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1985. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
16. Matilda (1988)
    • Matilda. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1988. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
17. Esio Trot (1990)
    • Esio Trot. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. 1990. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
18. The Vicar of Nibbleswicke (1991)
19. The Minpins (1991)

Short Story Collections:


20. Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying (1946) [OTY]
    1. An African Story
    2. Only This
    3. Katina
    4. Beware of the Dog
    5. They Shall Not Grow Old
    6. Someone Like You
    7. Death of an Old Old Man
    8. Madame Rosette
    9. A Piece of Cake
    10. Yesterday Was Beautiful
    • Included in: The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume. London: BCA, 1991.
21. Someone Like You (1953) [SLY]
    1. Taste
    2. Lamb to the Slaughter
    3. Man from the South
    4. The Soldier
    5. My Lady Love, My Dove
    6. Dip in the Pool
    7. Galloping Foxley
    8. Skin
    9. Poison
    10. The Wish
    11. Neck
    12. The Sound Machine
    13. Nunc Dimittis
    14. The Great Automatic Grammatizator
    15. Claude's Dog
        1. The Ratcatcher
        2. Rummins
        3. Mr. Feasey
        4. Mr. Hoddy
    • Included in: The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume. London: BCA, 1991.
22. Kiss Kiss (1960) [KK]
    1. The Landlady
    2. William and Mary
    3. The Way Up to Heaven
    4. Parson's Pleasure
    5. Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat
    6. Royal Jelly
    7. Georgy Porgy
    8. Genesis and Catastrophe: A True Story
    9. Edward the Conqueror
    10. Pig
    11. The Champion of the World
    • Included in: The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume. London: BCA, 1991.
23. Twenty-Nine Kisses from Roald Dahl ["Someone Like You", 1953 & "Kiss Kiss", 1960] (1969)
24. Switch Bitch (1974) [SB]
    1. The Visitor
    2. The Great Switcheroo
    3. The Last Act
    4. Bitch
    • Included in: The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume. London: BCA, 1991.
25. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1977) [HS]
    1. The Boy Who Talked with Animals
    2. The Hitch-Hiker
    3. The Mildenhall Treasure
    4. The Swan
    5. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
    6. Lucky Break
    7. A Piece of Cake
26. The Best of Roald Dahl: Stories from Over to You, Someone Like You, Kiss Kiss, Switch Bitch (1978) [Best]
27. Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
28. More Tales of the Unexpected (1980) [MTU]
    1. Genesis and Catastrophe
    2. Georgy Porgy
    3. Mr. Botibol
    4. Poison
    5. The Butler
    6. The Hitch-Hiker
    7. The Sound Machine
    8. The Umbrella Man
    9. Vengeance is Mine Inc.
29. A Roald Dahl Selection: Nine Short Stories (1980)
30. Two Fables (1986)
31. The Roald Dahl Omnibus (1986)
32. Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life: The Country Stories of Roald Dahl (1989) [SM]
33. The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl (1991)
    1. An African Story [OTY]
    2. Only This [OTY]
    3. Katina [OTY]
    4. Beware of the Dog [OTY]
    5. They Shall Not Grow Old [OTY]
    6. Someone Like You [OTY]
    7. Death of an Old Old Man [OTY]
    8. Madame Rosette [OTY]
    9. A Piece of Cake [OTY]
    10. Yesterday was Beautiful [OTY]
    11. Taste [SLY]
    12. Lamb to the Slaughter [SLY]
    13. Man From the South [SLY]
    14. The Soldier [SLY]
    15. My Lady Love, My Dove [SLY]
    16. Dip in the Pool [SLY]
    17. Galloping Foxley [SLY]
    18. Skin [SLY]
    19. Poison [SLY]
    20. The Wish [SLY]
    21. Neck [SLY]
    22. The Sound Machine [SLY]
    23. Nunc Dimittis [SLY]
    24. The Great Automatic Grammatizator [SLY]
    25. The Ratcatcher [SLY]
    26. Rummins [SLY]
    27. Mr. Feasey [SLY]
    28. Mr. Hoddy [SLY]
    29. The Landlady [KK]
    30. William and Mary [KK]
    31. The Way Up to Heaven [KK]
    32. Parson’s Pleasure [KK]
    33. Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat [KK]
    34. Royal Jelly [KK]
    35. Georgy Porgy [KK]
    36. Genesis and Catastrophe [KK]
    37. Edward the Conqueror [KK]
    38. Pig [KK]
    39. The Champion of the World [KK]
    40. The Visitor [SB]
    41. The Great Switcheroo [SB]
    42. The Last Act [SB]
    43. Bitch [SB]
    44. The Hitchhiker [HS]
    45. The Butler [MTU]
    46. The Umbrella Man [MTU]
    47. Vengeance is Mine, Inc. [MTU]
    48. Mr. Botibol [MTU]
    49. The Bookseller [Best]
    50. The Surgeon [Skin]
    51. Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life [SM]
    • The Collected Short Stories: An Omnibus Volume Containing: Kiss, Kiss, Over To You, Switch Bitch, Someone Like You and eight further tales of the unexpected. 1960, 1946, 1974, 1954. London: BCA, 1991.
34. The Roald Dahl Treasury (1997)
35. The great automatic grammatizator and other stories (2001)
36. Skin and Other Stories (2002) [Skin]
37. The Complete Short Stories: Volume One (1944–1953) (2013)
    1. Katina (1944)
    2. Only This (1944)
    3. Beware of the Dog (1944)
    4. An African Story (1946)
    5. Yesterday was Beautiful (1946)
    6. A Piece of Cake (1942)
    7. They Shall Not Grow Old (1945)
    8. Madame Rosette (1945)
    9. Death of an Old Old Man (1945)
    10. Someone Like You (1945)
    11. The Mildenhall Treasure (1947)
    12. Man From the South (1948)
    13. The Sound Machine (1949)
    14. Poison (1950)
    15. Taste (1951)
    16. Dip in the Pool (1952)
    17. Skin (1952)
    18. My Lady Love, My Dove (1952)
    19. Lamb to the Slaughter (1953)
    20. Nunc Dimittis (1953)
    21. Edward the Conqueror (1953)
    22. Galloping Foxley (1953)
    23. Neck (1953)
    24. The Wish (1953)
    25. The Soldier (1953)
    26. The Great Automatic Grammatizator (1953)
    27. The Ratcatcher (1953)
    28. Rummins (1953)
    29. Mr. Hoddy (1953)
    30. Mr. Feasey (1953)
38. The Complete Short Stories: Volume Two (1954–1988) (2013)
    1. The Way Up to Heaven (1954)
    2. Parson’s Pleasure (1958)
    3. The Champion of the World (1959)
    4. The Landlady (1959)
    5. Genesis and Catastrophe (1959)
    6. Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat (1959)
    7. Pig (1960)
    8. Royal Jelly (1960)
    9. William and Mary (1960)
    10. Georgy Porgy (1960)
    11. The Visitor (1965)
    12. The Last Act (1966)
    13. The Great Switcheroo (1974)
    14. The Butler (1974)
    15. Bitch (1974)
    16. Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (1974)
    17. The Hitchhiker (1977)
    18. The Swan (1977)
    19. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (1977)
    20. The Boy Who Talked with Animals (1977)
    21. Lucky Break (1977)
    22. The Umbrella Man (1980)
    23. Vengeance is Mine, Inc. (1980)
    24. Mr. Botibol (1980)
    25. The Princess and the Poacher (1986)
    26. Princess Mammalia (1986)
    27. The Bookseller (1987)
    28. The Surgeon (1988)

Scripts:


39. The Honeys [Stage] (1955)
40. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Lamb to the Slaughter" [TV] (1958)
41. Way Out: "William and Mary" [TV] (1961)
42. [with Jack Bloom] You Only Live Twice [Film] (1967)
43. [with Ken Hughes] Chitty Chitty Bang Bang [Film] (1968)
44. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory [Film] (1971)
45. The Night Digger [Film] (1971) – Film script )
46. The BFG: Plays for Children [Stage] (1976)
47. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: A Play [Stage] (1976)
48. James and the Giant Peach: A Play [Stage] (1982)
49. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: A Play [Stage] (1984)
50. Fantastic Mr Fox: A Play [Stage] (1987)

Poetry:


51. Revolting Rhymes (1982)
52. Dirty Beasts (1983)
53. Rhyme Stew (1989)
54. Songs and Verse (2005)
55. Vile Verses (2005)

Edited:


56. Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (1983)

Non-fiction:


57. Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984)
    • Boy: Tales of Childhood. 1984. Illustrations by Quentin Blake. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
58. Going Solo (1986)
    • Going Solo. 1986. Cover Illustrations by Quentin Blake. Puffin Books. London: Penguin, 2013.
59. Measles, a Dangerous Illness (1988)
60. [with Felicity Dahl] Memories with Food at Gipsy House [aka "Roald Dahl's Cookbook", 1996] (1991)
61. Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety (1991)
62. The Dahl Diary 1992 (1991)
63. My Year (1993)
64. The Roald Dahl Diary 1997 (1996)
65. The Mildenhall Treasure (1999)

Secondary:


66. Sturrock, Donald. Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl. Harper Press. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.

Donald Sturrock. Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl (2011)

•

Sin City Tow

Sin City Tow (2024)

If you roll the dice and park your car illegally in Sin City, odds are you're going to lose that bet.

That's the motto for the new US Reality TV series Sin City Tow, set in Las Vegas, and starring a variety of tow-truck drivers, gamblers, and other eccentrics of every stripe.

"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas; sometimes that means your car," quips the owner of one of the two competing businesses, Ashley's Towing, at the heart of the story - such as it is.

This is the latest reality show to audition for a place in my affections since the unfortunate demise of Ice Road Truckers (11 series: 2007-17) after the tragic death of series regular Darrell Ward. I followed that one up with the Canadian show Heavy Rescue: 401 (7 series: 2016-23) which plumbed not dissimilar territory: the adventures - and misadventures - of hardworking truckers in North America's frozen wastes.

Heavy Rescue: 401 (2016-23)

Alas, much though I'm enjoying Sin City Tow, I'm not sure that it will ever reach a second series, given the largely negative commentary it's been getting online - mainly from disgruntled car-owners who've had their vehicles towed, I suspect. Still, 85% of viewers are listed as having "enjoyed" it on Google, so there's some hope left.

I guess what I like most about it is what various of the other commentators dislike: the melodramatic heightening of fairly trivial events, and the narrative shaping that all this raw footage has undergone. The drivers themselves are not really a particularly likeable crew, but then, a dose of that good old Repo Man spirit is no doubt a sine qua non in their profession:

Repo Man (1984)

"See, an ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense situations. A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations."

Let's look at a few of those IMDb User Reviews, then:

... With reality TV shows, there is always the question of possible staging. I must say I do not believe Sin City Tow is guilty of this.

The reason being in the considered opinion of a person who has watched many and varied such series (me) is the following. The people in the confrontations are usually blanked out, their faces that is. With staged scenes, the "actors" are in on it, being paid for their performances, ergo no blanking out. So this is why I believe things are on the up and up.

... There is something to give pause. Are the towing companies seizing vehicles for the sake of making a buck rather than keeping parking in Vegas orderly and under control? Sometimes this does seem that this might be the case ...

The contention that the towing companies might simply be out to make a profit rather than nobly crusading to clean up the unruly streets of Las Vegas is a disturbing one. Next they'll be claiming that the casinos don't stay open simply to redistribute wealth to the starving masses, but rather to pile up profits for their corporate owners!

The point about the blanked-out faces is interesting. Given we see so many cameramen hovering around randomly in most of the scenes, I must confess it hadn''t occurred to me that anyone might have gone to the trouble of staging it that way. Hand-held camera blurring and shakiness is one thing, but surely any kind of fakery would come out looking a bit more polished?

The next commentator clearly doesn't agree, though (given the title of their review):

Dime a dozen fake reality TV show.

Have a friend that is a tow operator, so I caught some episodes of this while at their place.

Immediately obvious that this is another one of those "reality" shows which grew in popularity in the early-mid 2000's. And by reality I mean a show in which they stage a bunch of unbelievable scenarios for the tow truck drivers and employees, most of which consist of the drivers and agitators taking turns on upping each other's poor acting skills.

Other than the poor acting, there are also endless laughable confrontations and "Only in Vegas!" moments throughout. How laughable you ask? On their Halloween themed episode a driver stumbles upon an allegedly real Satanic ritual site, with a dead pig strung up and mutilated.

I won't claim there's 0 entertainment to be found in shows like this, but please do yourself a favor and don't recommend them to friends, unless you want them snickering behind your back because you believe that they're real.

That last paragraph sounds like a real cri-de-coeur to me. I fear that this writer has had the experience of recommending such a show to friends, only to hear them chortling behind his back. I feel his pain. I've heard more than a few such snorting noises myself from people who refuse to believe that a self-styled uppity intellectual such as myself could actually be serious about my passion for Ice Road Truckers (and its ilk).

Lisa Kelly (2011)

In fact, when we were playing one of those silly "who-would-you-most-like-to-have-lunch-with" games, it took me quite a while to explain why Ice Road trucker Lisa Kelly would be my ideal choice. There'd be so much to talk about!

Shawn (2024)

Please don't give these scammers any recognition. I can't speak for the practices of all the tow truck companies, but Ashley's Towing, run by Shawn Davis, is wreaking havoc on the local residents of Las Vegas. It might be entertaining when it's a drunk guy on the strip, but when they illegally tow private home owners' and apartment renters' vehicles from right in front of their homes, it's not funny at all. No one calls these in, the tow trucks prowl the subdivisions and complexes at night for easy prey. They then extort these innocent victims for hundreds of dollars to release their vehicles from the private impound lots. After contacting the police and attorneys, it becomes evident that the scam Ashley's Towing is running is minor enough to fly under the radar of both our criminal and civil justice systems. Even though if you add up all the victims and hundreds of dollars, it's grounds for a class action lawsuit.

Before you support this nonsensical show, think about the honest people who rely on their cars either for work or to get to work, walking out their front door to realize their vehicle is gone. Then imagine them realizing they might lose their job if they don't have their vehicle. Or imagine the folks who can't afford to pay the several-hundred-dollar impound fee but need their vehicle to support their family.

I got my car towed once. I had a date in the centre of town with the lady who would eventually become my wife, and I couldn't find a park anywhere. I eventually took a chance on some reserved spaces outside an apartment complex, hoping that I'd get back before the tenants did. Alas, I miscalculated. Much of the rest of the night was spent ringing the police, then a taxi, then paying an exorbitant fee at a tow yard. I gambled and lost, and was appropriately punished.

If you live in an apartment anywhere - not just Las Vegas - and fail to pay the prescribed fee for your parking, or to display the parking permit correctly, you'll probably get towed. It's hard to see this as grounds for a "class action lawsuit", as the commentator above threatens. Good luck with that, is all I can say.

•

     All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts

- Shakespeare, As You Like It, II: vii.

Here are a few of the principal actors in the comedy:

Jeremy

I'd have to concede that there is something a little disconcerting about the glee with which drivers such as Jeremy (above) pounce on their victims. But then, he did spend most of his formative years pouring concrete for a living, so I imagine he feels that this new lifestyle of his is something of a rest cure. He's unabashedly out for the cash.

"Pineapple"

The rather unfortunately nicknamed "Pineapple", from American Samoa, is more of a dispassionate technician. He tows away big rigs which have outstayed their welcome at truck stops, which requires a great deal of skill and expertise. He's not interested in confrontation, but - given he towers above most of the drivers who take him on - he won't back away from it either.

NB: It was he who, in their Halloween themed episode "stumbled upon an allegedly real Satanic ritual site, with a dead pig strung up and mutilated" in the back of a truck, as one of the commentators above mentioned. I'd like to think it was staged by the producers for a gag, but given the things they find in some of the other cars they tow, it's hard to be sure.

Elmer

Elmer, by contrast, is rather more of a tragic figure. Things never quite go his way. He finds a rich crop of cars, and then is forced to abandon them by an order from home base. He's deputed to shepherd through cars at the weekly auction of abandoned vehicles - an unpaid gig - instead of being out on the streets collecting towing fees. The cars he does tow end up getting damaged, or have to be left behind for one reason or another. He attracts bad luck, despite all his desperate efforts to get ahead.

And yes, there's more than a hint of the commedia dell'arte about the exaggerated clashes of temperament and style in these various knights of the road - and when you throw in the excessive and disproportionate rage displayed by some of the punters coming to the yard to pick up their cars, you begin to verge on Jacobean Revenge Tragedy. "You have to get off sometime," as one woman mouths to the receptionist asking to see the ID and registration she's failed to bring with her. "I'll be waiting."

One thing all of them have in common is a terror of the cops. The mere threat of calling the police is enough to make the most belligerent hoodlum back off from threatening the driver who's just impounded their car. I gather that there's a policy in the US that every call-out of this kind must conclude with an arrest - it's just a question of who ends up in handcuffs. And then there's the added fillip of possibly getting shot if you show any signs of reaching for a weapon (or even looking as if that might be on your mind).

Elvis gets towed

The obvious reading of this programme, then, is as a barometer of American life at its most grotesque and self-parodic. And certainly, in times such as these, it's hard to avoid the feeling that things have deteriorated considerably since Hunter S. Thompson made his own journey to the heart of darkness of the American Dream in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972).

Ralph Steadman: Cover of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972)

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid ot the pain of being a man."

- Dr. Johnson

Thompson's existential despair has been replaced by a more banal wasteland of parking lots and cheap housing units: the darkness on the edge of town (in Springsteen's phrase) has been traded in for six-lane highways petering out in arid nowhere. These towies seem, at times, as futile and hapless as Wall-E robots, trying vainly to clean up an endlessly spreading (and self-renewing) stain on the landscape.

Can we - as a species - survive much more of this? I guess that remains to be seen. After all, as Ian Wedde put it in his great ecological anthem "Pathway to the Sea":

... we know, don’t we,
              citizen, that there’s nowhere
                          to defect to, & that
living in the
              universe doesn’t
                          leave you
any place to chuck
              stuff off
                          of. 

•

The owners of the Tow Truck Company preparing a car for auction

•

The Ghost in Hamlet

William Blake: Hamlet and his Father's Ghost (1806)

I remember that when we marked exams in the Auckland University English Department, we tutors were always instructed not to leave any comments - especially nasty ones - on the papers. Instead, we circulated a few stapled sheets for any thoughts we had beyond the bare grade.

The reason for this (I was told) was because there'd been a big fuss a few years before when a student made a formal request to see their script and found it covered with sarcastic marginalia.

Human nature being what it is, these comment-bundles tended to become the academic equivalent of a gag reel. They were carefully collected and burned at the end of each examination season.

Among the quotable quotes one of my colleagues recorded from our Stage 1 Shakespeare exam one year was the following remark about Hamlet: "The question is: is it a Protestant ghost or a Catholic ghost?"

He apparently thought it very risible to have to ascertain the spectre's doctrinal preferences before you decided whether or not you should pay any attention to its advice. It did sound rather funny - as stated - but I suspected at once that this phrase must have come from one of my tutorial students. It was I who had been stressing the differing views on the afterlife held by various Christian sects.

John Gilbert: Hamlet in the Presence of His Father's Ghost (1858-60)

Put simply, is Hamlet's deceased father now located in Purgatory, or in Hell? If the former, his intentions must presumably be good; if the latter, the question is far more equivocal.

When the ghost speaks of the "sulf’rous and tormenting flames" to which he is condemned by day, that sounds very much like hellfire.

However, the rest of his statement would imply otherwise:

I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away.

Ludovico Carracci: Purgatory (1610)

It's hard to read that line about his "foul crimes" being "burnt and purged away" as anything other than a reference to Purgatory. That is, after all, the place where such cleansing occurs. And Purgatory:

is a belief in Catholic theology. It is a passing intermediate state after physical death for purifying or purging a soul. A common analogy is dross being removed from gold in a furnace.

But how old is this doctrine? The idea of praying for the dead appears to have been part of Judeo-Christian practice for a very long time indeed. However:

At the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, when the Catholic Church defined, for the first time, its teaching on purgatory, the Eastern Orthodox Church did not adopt the doctrine. The council made no mention of purgatory as a third place or as containing fire ...

Subsequent papal pronouncements have clarified that "the term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence."

As for the various Protestant churches, opinions vary according to denomination:

The Church of England, mother church of the Anglican Communion, officially denounces what it calls "the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory", but the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and elements of the Anglican, Lutheran, and Methodist traditions hold that for some there is cleansing after death and pray for the dead, knowing it to be efficacious. The Reformed Churches teach that the departed are delivered from their sins through the process of glorification.

In other words, you pays your money and you makes your choice.

The Harrowing of Hell (1503)

Returning to Hamlet, though: despite its generally gloomy demeanour, the prince seems convinced by the end of this first encounter that it is "an honest ghost." That was not his initial reaction, though:

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee.

There is indeed something very "questionable" about this apparition. It certainly claims to come from Purgatory, but ought we to believe it?

William Shakespeare: The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke (1603)

It's thought that Hamlet was written sometime between 1599 and 1601, in the latter years of Queen Elizabeth's reign. It was first published in 1603. The date of composition can be ascertained (to some extent) by some references in the text to the newly-formed company of boy players at Blackfriars theatre, as well as verbal echoes of some of Shakespeare's earlier plays.

This was definitely a time of great political uncertainty. Shakespeare himself only narrowly avoided trouble when his acting company put on a special performance of the play Richard II - which depicts the deposition of a monarch - for the supporters of the Earl of Essex, who mounted an abortive coup against the Queen in early 1601.

It seems a little unlikely, then, that Shakespeare would have been actively promulgating the "Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory" in such troublous times, even if he was (as some suspect) a secret Catholic.

Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum (1514)

Denmark has, of course, been staunchly Protestant since the 1520s, when the Reformation first reached Scandinavia. But that doesn't really help us either way, since Shakespeare's knowledge of the country was probably hazy, and since the actual "events" on which the play is based (as reported in the 13th-century "Life of Amleth" by Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, at any rate) took place in the legendary past of the country.

So we're left with that question: Was this ghost more likely to be regarded as a "spirit of health" or as a "goblin damned" by contemporary playgoers?

The question was definitively resolved - in his own judgement, at any rate - by Professor Ken Larsen of Auckland University. Or so he informed us in the first year tutorials I attended as a callow undergraduate.

Larsen told us that he'd read a book on thaumaturgy from the 1590s which gave a series of clear indications whether or not you could trust a spirit to tell you the truth or not (I'm sorry to say that I don't recall its title).

I was argumentative even in those days, and suggested that even if that was so, it didn't necessarily follow that Shakespeare himself was of the same opinion as the author of the self-help guide to necromancy Larsen was citing as evidence.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"I mean that nowadays lots of people write lots of books about spirits and the supernatural, but just because they're contemporary with us doesn't mean that we agree with them, or that we're even aware of their conclusions. Even in a smaller cultural circle, 1590s London, there could be room for a number of views on the subject."

"What do you mean?" he repeated.

"I mean even though this book gives one clear opinion, Shakespeare may have been unaware of it, or even actively disagreed with it."

"I don't know what you're saying. Are you saying that it's a waste of time to try to gauge contemporary opinion on the subject?"

"No, not at all. I'm just saying that this book can be cited as valuable evidence, but it doesn't necessarily prove that that was what Shakespeare had in mind."

"I don't see what else I can do except what I'm doing. I've told you what the book said. You seem to be disputing that. I don't see what else I can say to make it clearer."

It was all rather frightening. The other students were glaring at me. My point seemed to me so obvious that it was hard to believe he couldn't understand it. Naturally he didn't expect any mere freshman to dispute his learned views - "What, I say? My foot my tutor?", as Prospero puts it when Miranda dares to question him similarly in The Tempest. But it was more than that. He didn't seem willing to concede the simple axiom that evidence (however interesting and relevant) isn't ipso facto conclusive proof.

I got a B+ from him on my essay - the only mark below the A's I received in my whole undergraduate career, I think.

But, as you can tell from my - no doubt somewhat biassed - account of our conversation, I still agree with myself. Larsen was a devotee of theological hairsplitting. He was always pointing out arcane doctrinal points in sixteenth and seventeenth century texts (as I discovered a few years later when I benefitted from his instruction on Spenser and other esoterically inclined poets). But he did seem, nevertheless, to lack what Keats called "negative capability": the ability to remain in doubt on a variety of thorny issues.

Jack Thorne: The Motive and the Cue (2023)

Recently, watching a cinematically projected version of Jack Thorne's stage-play The Motive and the Cue, which records:

the history behind the 1964 Broadway modern-dress production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet starring Richard Burton in a production directed by Sir John Gielgud.

I came across yet another interpretation of Hamlet's father's ghost. Could it be, as Gielgud suggests to his turbulent star, that Hamlet simply didn't like his father? That the real reason for his apparent dilatoriness and indecision throughout the play is because he'd been bullied and belittled by him all his life, and is therefore reluctant - however subliminally - to continue this state of subordination even after the old man's death?

This is, admittedly, meant more as a guide to Burton's brilliantly moody (by all accounts) performance as the melancholy Dane than as a serious theory about the play. But even taken out of context it does help to explain the Oedipal struggle so many have sensed at the root of the drama.

John Gilbert: The Ghost, Gertrude & Hamlet (1867)

The ghost does, after all, reappear. In Act 3, scene 4, just when Hamlet seems to be making progress in explaining and even justifying his odd behaviour to his mother, Queen Gertrude, the ghost suddenly walks in and starts to chide his son for tardiness in exacting revenge:

Do not forget. This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But look, amazement on thy mother sits.
O, step between her and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.

This is, at that particular moment, distinctly unhelpful advice. Gertrude can neither hear nor see the spirit, and her son's reaction to it persuades her - once and for all - that he's as crazy as a bedbug: "Alas, he’s mad."

So, once again, is this simply an act of tactlessness on the part of the impatient ghost - or is it deliberate sabotage? Is he a malign spirit, stirring up trouble for purposes of personal vengeance - or is he a genuine messenger from beyond, sent to purge all that's "rotten" in the state of Denmark.

Does he come from Purgatory, as a blessed (albeit somewhat erring) spirit - or from Hell, as a damned soul? To a strict Protestant, only the second alternative is really theologically possible. A Catholic could more easily entertain the first theory, though further proof would be necessary to confirm it.

An Anglo-Catholic, in the 1590s, could well be in doubt on such a matter. It's important to stress that Anglicanism is not, strictly speaking, a Protestant denomination. It's always existed in a complex and uneasy negotiation between the two extremes of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. That's still the case now, and it was certainly the case then.

Hamlet is not generally listed among the Shakespearean Problem Plays. As conceived by critic F. S. Boas in 1896, these are:

All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida. Some critics include other plays that were not enumerated by Boas, most commonly The Winter's Tale, Timon of Athens, and The Merchant of Venice.

However, Boas did adds that Hamlet links Shakespeare's problem-plays to his unambiguous tragedies.

The term itself (borrowed from Ibsen) was meant to denote plays "uneasily situated between the comic and the tragic." That's not really the case with Hamlet, which has all the hallmarks of Shakespearean tragedy (a fatally flawed hero, a tragic dilemma, and the curtain coming down on a stage full of corpses). But the play is profoundly problematic, all the same.

Laurence Olivier, dir.: Hamlet (1948)

The other great tragedies all exemplify a clear flaw in their protagonists: jealousy in Othello; ambition in Macbeth; pride in King Lear. But what's the moral deficiency in Hamlet? Laurence Olivier's film referred to it as "the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind."

T. S. Eliot: The Sacred Wood (1920)

T. S. Eliot's notorious 1919 essay "Hamlet and His Problems" called the play an "artistic failure" because the character's emotion does not accord with the external machinery of the play. It fails (he claims) to find an adequate "objective correlative" — a set of external objects or situations which could evoke that specific emotion in the audience.

C. S. Lewis: Hamlet: the Prince or the Poem? (1942)

C. S. Lewis, in his riposte "Hamlet: the Prince or the Poem?" creates an amusing thought experiment to explain his own reactions to the play:

Let us suppose that a picture which you have not seen is being talked about. The first thing you gather from the vast majority of the speakers ... is that this picture is undoubtedly a very great work. The next thing you discover is that hardly any two people in the room agree as to what it is a picture of. Most of them find something curious about the pose, and perhaps even the anatomy, of the central figure. One explains it by saying that it is a picture of the raising of Lazarus, and that the painter has cleverly managed to represent the uncertain gait of a body just recovering from the stiffness of death. Another, taking the central figure to be Bacchus returning from the conquest of India, says that it reels because it is drunk. A third, to whom it is self-evident that he has seen a picture of the death of Nelson, asks with some temper whether you expect a man to look quite normal just after he has been mortally wounded. A fourth maintains that such crudely representational canons of criticism will never penetrate so profound a work, and that the peculiarities of the central figure really reflect the content of the painter’s subconsciousness. Hardly have you had time to digest these opinions when you run into another group of critics who denounce as a pseudo-problem what the first group has been discussing. According to this second group there is nothing odd about the central figure. A more natural and self-explanatory pose they never saw and they cannot imagine what all the pother is about. At long last you discover — isolated in a corner of the room, somewhat frowned upon by the rest of the company, and including few reputable connoisseurs in its ranks — a little knot of men who are whispering that the picture is a villainous daub and that the mystery of the central figure merely results from the fact that it is out of drawing.

It's not unreasonable to suppose, Lewis goes on, that "our first reaction would be to accept, at least provisionally," the last of these views. However:

‘Most certainly,’ says Mr. Eliot, ‘an artistic failure.’ But is it ‘most certain’? Let me return for a moment to my analogy of the picture. In that dream there was one experiment we did not make. We didn’t walk into the next room and look at it for ourselves. Supposing we had done so. Suppose that at the first glance all the cogent arguments of the unfavourable critics had died on our lips, or echoed in our ears as idle babble. Suppose that looking on the picture we had found ourselves caught up into an unforgettable intensity of life and had come back from the room where it hung haunted for ever with the sense of vast dignities and strange sorrows and teased ‘with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls’ — would not this have reversed our judgement and compelled us, in the teeth of a priori probability, to maintain that on one point at least the orthodox critics were in the right? ‘Most certainly an artistic failure.’ All argument is for that conclusion — until you read or see Hamlet again. And when you do, you are left saying that if this is failure, then failure is better than success. We want more of these ‘bad’ plays. From our first childish reading of the ghost scenes down to those golden minutes which we stole from marking examination papers on Hamlet to read a few pages of Hamlet itself, have we ever known the day or the hour when its enchantment failed? That castle is part of our own world. The affection we feel for the Prince, and, through him, for Horatio, is like a friendship in real life ... When we want that taste, no other book will do instead. It may turn out in the end that the thing is not a complete success. This compelling quality in it may coexist with some radical defect. But I doubt if we shall ever be able to say ... that it is ‘most certainly’ a failure. Even if the proposition that it has failed were at last admitted for true, I can think of few critical truths which most of us would utter with less certainty, and with a more divided mind.

Lewis is, I hope you'll agree, quite right. Hamlet is a magnificent play - almost the magnificent play. It's the mountain peak all others aspire to. "If this is failure, then failure is better than success," as he so eloquently puts it.

I don't have a solution to the problem of the ghost in Hamlet. But I don't think that this is because I haven't looked hard enough - or am just too dumb to find it. I'm fairly sure that the point of the ghost in Hamlet is that we're being forced to remain in doubt about it.

It seems that the murder the ghost is so anxious Hamlet should revenge did indeed take place as described: Hamlet's uncle's actions at various points in the drama reveal as much. It also seems that the posthumous fate it describes for itself: "Doomed for a certain term to walk the night / And for the day confined to fast in fires" does indeed closely resemble the contemporary understanding of Purgatory. So it may well have been intended to be regarded by Shakespeare's immediate audience as "a spirit of health" rather than as "a goblin damned."

William Salter Herrick: Hamlet in the Queen’s Chamber (1857)

But it's impossible to be sure. Its second appearance is so unhelpful that it inevitably gives rise to doubts. Which leads us to go back and think again. Doesn't it make sense for Hamlet to question its bona fides, given the stark doctrine of pagan revenge this ghost is preaching?

It would indeed be nice if we could solve just this one little vexed point in the play, as Ken Larsen thought he had done. But to claim that is to miss the point. The reason Hamlet remains alive for us is because it defies easy analysis. It may be a "failure" if you measure it against the inexorable certainties of Oedipus Rex - but not if you see it as the root of all things modern in literature: uneasy, equivocal characters; unresolvable dilemmas; action as the root of harm as well as good.

The problems with Hamlet, then, are like so many of the other problems that beset us. As Dr. Johnson said, when asked to resolve the question of the existence of ghosts: "all argument is against it; but all belief is for it". There's definitely a ghost in Hamlet, and we're told that it's a role Shakespeare liked to reserve for himself, but who or what that ghost is, and whether or not it's seeking relief from damnation or purgation is beyond final construing. Perhaps that's the real significance of Hamlet's famous remark:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

•

King James I: Dæmonologie (1597)

•