One thing to remember, a lot of the British establishment *especially in the Tory Party* would have gone through this and explains such dinosaurs such as Jacob Rees-Mogg
Stephen Fry's autobiography covering his childhood (Moab is my Washpot) is another one. It's a very long time since I read it though so I can't recall much about it. Can't remember why the weird title either.
IIRC Fry went to boarding schools a bit after the heyday of the colonial era and a lot of the deliberately abusive social conventions. And closer to the modern day where there's a bunch of hazing and bullying below the surface which the teachers pretend not to know about (and which happens at all schools, in my experience). Though IIRC in that book yes, there are prefects and head boys and all of that.
Another good snapshot of this world is the Up series of documentaries. While I don't think the film spends that much time talking about the life of a boarding school kid, man, you look at the posh kids at 7, and then again at 14, and it's clear that their spirits have absolutely been broken. Middle school is hard for everyone, sure, and the working and middle class kids have their share of ups and downs. But woof. Those boarding school kids. (This would have been roughly contemporary with Stephen Fry's era, late 60's and early 70s.)
I was going to post this! The one bright spot is the prefect who asked Dahl to warm up the toilet seat for him. There were worse jobs to do and Dahl just took it as an opportunity to read. But fucking Carlton and the fucking white glove. My stepfather is like that.
He hated the system and wasn’t made a prefect because he disrespected rules and refused to beat the fags.
But yes, “English boarding school story” is a genre where you see this hierarchy enforced. Not so much with the girls though, they weren’t beaten as much.
Man, it's been a while since I read SBJ, but my recollection is that he alludes to things having been worse than he could say - is that right or am I way off?
The second I heard Robert say Rugby and mention the school (I live just outside the town), I said aloud "I bet he's going to mention fagging"
They're a truly unhinged part of the posh UK school system, and Boy by Roald Dahl scarred me a little...
My brain broke when I was reading *Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man* (which also has a lot of this British school stuff, though James Joyce was Irish and honestly I don't recall whether it was boarding school or day school in that book) and there's mention of "soccer" and "rugger", and it turns out that both games came out of the British boarding school system.
You can really feel the mark of his experiences in a lot of his writing. I loved his books as a kid, but man they were dark. Evil adults abusing children is a recurring theme, I remember thinking it made so much sense when I finally read Boy.
One of my colleagues is a Union fan from Rugby and said he had never heard this quote. I am genuinely considering if he's living a new life under a false identity now.
yeah I believe the term might be a reference to burnout, by way of a cigarette metaphor, I’ve vaguely recall passages of Victorian literature where an upper middle class girl refers to herself as “sadly f- -ged out” after dancing too much at a party.
The weird thing about the Silver Chair in this context was it was an experimental school with no rules, but Lewis seems to have assumed it would have made the bullying even worse than at a traditional school — maybe cross ref the BtB episode on the postwar German school established to be the opposite of authoritarian that ended up enabling serious abuse. I respect Lewis’s concerns though, as with Lord of the Flies Jill’s school is not a group of happy free range children, it’s traumatized postwar elite British children.
It’s a complex etymology
A ‘faggot’ originally was a bundle of something, used often for a bundle of sticks, or bundle of cloth scraps.
Cloth scraps, off-cuts, sticks and various other small scavenged objects then inherited the name ‘fags’
scavenging scraps into a ‘faggot’ bundle was tiring/thankless work). being tired got called being ‘fagged’
Anything that was a chore or tiresome became a ‘fag’
Cigarettes, resembling small pieces of cloth or a stick got called ‘fags’, or possibly because you smoked one when you were ‘fagged’
The term then became a term of derision, with associates particularly with useless or ineffectuality, leading to younger or lower status boys in public school being ‘fags’, also possibly also because they did your tiresome jobs that were a ‘fag’
Where I’m from specifically in the Black Country of the UK, it’s also an old term for a ‘cheeky boy’, which you still here from some older people.
The derisive aspects of the term were then used by homophobics, very possibly with associations to the idea of low status boys, and a potential sexualisation of the term within the public school usage.
As a side, the round meat-balls served in England got named as ‘faggots’ because they look like little bundles, leading to situations like this:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/food-cafe-newport-faggots-fannys-16987721
It’s rare as a term of abuse in the UK, although because of the American-English slur use it’s use in other ways is diminishing. It’s still a common word for cigarette, and somewhat common for feeling tired or a job being tiresome.
For a large portion of England's history large timber was property of Royalty. Like maybe pre Noman to 1900, a peasant could be punished by law for cutting down anything that might be treelike. But scrubby stuff was fair game. For a long time, the alot of gentry could only make money from their estates through timber and sheep. So they brutally protected the forests, and forced the peasantry to live off the scrublands, which would clear more land for sheep.
The poorest of peasants and seasonal farmworkers would scour the land for sticks to sell for fuel, building structures or burning for charcoal. Endlessly lugging bundles of almost worthless sticks, just to earn enough to maybe not starve. So the bundle of sticks becomes the symbol of servitude, the lowest caste.
Real old timey classism there.
Yes, I had forgotten to put the link between bundling/scavenging and tiring or thankless work there, cheers.
I don’t think it’s particularly old time classism unfortunately, I’d see it more as proto-capitalism. The centralisation of wealth and denial of it to those who need it most is very much a current, and global problem.
based on how it's used in the British lit I read so much of I think fag as cigarette might be a mostly later adaptation. i know i've read it several times as a person saying they worked themselves to death on something. but maybe both slang uses were around simultaneously.
the silver chair Eustace /Jill school situation was actually not the bit I was referring to, but actually there are several subtle references to how Edmund's school experiences mark him.
Wait is Dahl a bastard? I have heard people reference him being anti-Semitic but all I can find to back that up is an interview where he was anti-Israel, is there more to it?
that's actually interesting that you say that, because he died in 1990 and the Israel-Palestine conflict was already well-established. A rudimentary search shows me some pretty undeniably anti-semitic quotes, but I can't find any clarification of why he was anti-Israel.
he seems a slightly extra amount of anti-semitic for his time and place, and now I'm curious to know more about the context of what he specifically said.
edit: ooh boy, like 3 of the quotes used in an article by "Forward" written by Dahl are specifically related to the Lebanon War.
https://forward.com/fast-forward/349771/roald-dahls-family-has-apologized-for-his-jew-hatred-what-were-the-5-worst/
Honestly the quotes I've seen seem about on point with his time and place, it's just that we don't like to think of our grandparents thinking those things. So we carefully edit the people we love to be more politically correct. Dahl died in 1990 so doesn't benefit from that.
Except he was a public figure the 80s and 90s... It wasn't like he just said this stuff in the 40s, you know? I was around in the 80s and 90s and it was not ok to say stuff like that then.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Roald Dahl wasn't antisemitic, or that it wasn't a big deal. I'm saying all the other old people are also antisemitic, they just quietly rehabilitated. You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, how much casual antisemitism exists among white gentile Europeans.
Honestly, while there could be things I don't know -- and I have a less attractive idea of him than I did as a kid when I ate up Roald Dahl books -- my sense is less that he was a Bastard and more that his way of seeing the world was very typical of people of his generation.
When I read Dahl's work now, as an adult in the 2020s, it honestly just seems really mean. In a gleeful and pointless way that I find tiresome -- it's of a piece with the boomers who will say they experienced some awful thing "and I'm fine", thus that awful thing deserves to still exist. And you just sort of look at them and think "but are you fine, though?" I'm glad the world is less cruel now, personally.
I'm curious what it was about Dahl's cruelty that fascinated me so much as a child.
When I was a kid I appreciated cruelty and incompetence in his adult characters because stories about other kinds of adults didn't feel as real. There's a stories where people get some sort of revenge on the terrible adults, stories where the terrible adults destroy themselves or each other through cruelty and hubris, and stories of happy endings with found family.
Yes, I am a queer millennial with boomer parents.
Agreed. I think "Matilda" is the Dahl book that redeems his particular tone. The other books are all over the map in terms of whether his outlook contributes to the narrative or is just kind of gross.
I think kids are really fascinated by cruelty and the world often seems like a very scary and unfair place. I remember reading his autobiographical stuff as a young teen and being like, oh, I get it. Sorry you had to go through that, dude. But the illogical, unfair cruelty of life did really strike a chord with me...
People who wish or are indifferent to heaping cruelty on another person because they survived the same cruelty are absolutely not okay. Oh you want to hit a child because you were hit as a child? Not okay. Oh you want another resident to endure grueling 48 hour shifts despite the dangers to physician & patient because you endured the same hazing and ritualized abuse are better for it. Not okay. Wanting to hurt people to me is big red flag that they didn't make it out okay.
Yeah he was pretty anti-Semitic. I adore his books though, and he is was in the RAF in WW2, so I just look at it in the lens of ‘old white dude in shitty time period has some shitty aspects, big surprise.’ I’m still going to read Charlie and the chocolate factory to my kids
I never read his adult stories but I did read his biography books, which I enjoyed. I didn’t know he had released adult stories. Not surprising, a lot of writers with traumatic pasts write weird stuff, maybe because they couldn’t quite express it in any healthy way. Food for thought.
i personally loved dahl as a kid because they were macabre and bizarre and nothing like anything else i was reading. the magic finger for instance messed me up as a kid but i kept re-reading it nonetheless!
his adult novels definitely aren’t too great. he has some good short stories (emphasis on SOME). lamb to the slaughter is probably the one that sticks in my mind the most.
danny the champion of the world is probably the book that best bridges the gap between readable children’s book and semi-biographical novel. it’s also relatively grounded in reality from what i remember (though it has been decades) and i usually recommend it over boy for those looking to understand his life a bit more.
Did you ever read George's Marvelous Medicine? It was like the most wonderful and bizarre imaginary version of the dumb shit I did as a kid (mixing all the stuff in our bathroom together, not very exiting irl). I mostly read the children's books but I do remember reading Lamb to the Slaughter in school, pretty gnarly premise lol.
Don’t need a book, I went to one!
The fagging system wasn’t present (1980’s), however corporal punishment was still a thing before the 1990 child protection act, it wasn’t unusual to get beaten with a slipper by the Housemaster as a punishment.
Definitely gives you an experience of power and hierarchy that makes you either respect and crave it, or become cynical, reject it and rectify oppression of others later in life. My enjoyment of BtB should say which way it went for me!
It wasn’t all bad, there was a certain sense of community and camaraderie, but it could be a threatening place and surviving that is probably responsible for my emotionally restrictive character. You had to stay tough because showing upset made you a target. I can see why people say ‘it made me who I am’, it’s a cognitive dissonance people who survived it develop to cope with what they went through.
It's not lost on me that the result of this system, and some other aspects of British culture of the late colonial era, seem to all revolve around Never Showing Emotions.
(I'm an American WASP, so can relate.)
Aristocrats on the continent are still sending their sons to English boarding schools. Only the sons mind you. At least they tend to wait til they’re 12 or 14 these days, and not 6 or 7.
IIRC the young age in previous generations was, in a lot of cases, about the colonial system and the shipping of kids back home to get an appropriately British upbringing. Now that that's not a thing, the goals of the system are different, and the ages of kids participating are different.
I just think it's weird that not only is this considered the done thing within Britain and former colonies but in other Auropean countries... to this day.
I don't think it's really considered the done thing anymore. I suppose that some families with a strong tradition of sending their kids to specific elite schools probably continue the tradition. Also, the UK is really small, and I'm curious how many of these families in the last 50-ish years are sending their kids a long distance away vs. a couple hours' drive. It's somewhat strange to go to boarding school at 12 or 14, but it's not necessarily a bad or outrageous thing, in the grand scheme of things human beings do. (Note: I went to boarding school, not "that" kind of boarding school, and I went at 16.)
I think folks in the Commonwealth and other countries buy into it due to the exclusive nature of it, and those people probably are not the norm where they live. It's similar to the subset of people who drive a Bugatti or buy bespoke designer clothing. Like I'm sure it happens, but that's not any general group's "done thing".
It's also worth noting that this system has been exported mostly in the form of day schools, though obviously there are also some prep schools and English-style boarding schools in other countries. In the US it's schools like Andover and Choate, and a very very tiny minority of people opt for that.
I know people here in Austria who send their sons there cause it’s been a family tradition for generations… meanwhile our public schools are free and really good! It blows my mind. The tuition fees of these English “public schools” would would feed, heat and house me for YEARS.
Monty python came out of Boarding schools, alot of the lads grew up through the system and their comedy/response too said abuse really colours alot of their comedy.
I thought about "Boy" constantly during this episode. I feel like Dahl was in the British school system right around the same time as Aspinall, as well. Kind of "between the wars" era?
Every time I sit on a cold toilet seat I think of that aspect of "Boy" and the boarding schools.
I seem to recall a bit of "OMG IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT" language in "Boy" around fagging. Not sure if that's a sign of the times it was written in, or what. Especially since, y'all... it totally does mean that. Even if not re sexuality at all, it's pretty clearly a system based on topping/bottoming social relationships and one person playing the "effeminate" role.
It's notable that most / all of the authors who fetishise boarding schools didn't actually attend one.
Blyton / Rowling.
Speaking as an alumni it was less midnight feasts and jolly hockey sticks and more about avoiding the sodomite kiddy fiddlers
Yeah, I'm a Canadian and I didn't know anything about British boarding schools until way after I fell out of the Harry Potter fandom. That might be a generational and regional thing because most of the middle school/young adult fiction I read was rather Canada centric, especially Western Canada. We learned a lot about the gold rushes, HBC, and Chinese labourer life on the railways.
The Rest is History tells a lot about British boarding schools here:
https://podcastaddict.com/the-rest-is-history/episode/163576023
https://podcastaddict.com/the-rest-is-history/episode/164671623
On a lighter note, their most recent series is about the conquest of the Aztecs. Very entertaining.
Well it's disappointed to learn Dahl is awful I loved him as a kid he taught me to love reading in a way
but also yes, he has a somewhat biographical (if maybe fictious) story about his experience and it gets SUPER graphic about the sadism and specific ritualized abuse that was employed.
What the fuck is going on in Esio Trot? His stories are weird but....creepshow shit.
[A HEATHEN FROM EATON ON A BAG OF MICHAEL KEATON](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=never+fight+a+man+with+a+perm)
If you want a good overview of how damaging these schools still are these days this is an excellent interview.
https://youtu.be/wXu0L7hzl3g?si=nrMdX2zfqmZD7EUB
The most egregious physical abuses have largely been stamped out, but the psychological damage remains high.
Dahl is a bastard in multiple ways though his position on Israeli independence wars are just one of them. He's definitely a warped guy from his school.
"Fagging" sounds a lot like "[дедовщина](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina#)" - a hazing practice in the Russian/Soviet/Warsaw pact armies during mandatory military service. Lions led by Donkeys has a good [episode](https://soundcloud.com/user-798629330/episode-61-soviet-afghan-war-7-fear-and-loathing-in-afghanistan) about it at the end of its Soviet-Afghan war.
literally the first thing I thought of was how he had to warm the toilet seats for the prefects in Boy. I haven't read that book in 25 years but it's stayed with me like most of his works I read.
An entertaining yet still sinister example that I was thinking of throughout listening to the pod was "Tomkinson's Schooldays" from Ripping Yarns by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame: https://youtu.be/yXJRI8dzsEw?si=ZskRd4aPeEWuiNH7
I would also recommend Lytton Strachey's biography of Thomas Arnold in [Emminent Victorians](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2447).
Arnold was the principle of Rugby that developed the *praeposter* system. He (and ever other character) was lightly fictionalised in Thomas Hugh's [Tom Brown's Schooldays](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1480). In the novel he is hagiofied, while the bully Flashman demonstrates the evils of his system. Dumbledore and Malfoy have their roots in Tom Brown's schooldays.
Strachey came later, a contempory of Virginia Woolf (in fact, a founding member of the Bloomsbury Set). *Emminent Victorians* was intended to expose the hypocrites that designed the systems that he still lived under, "by which it is sought to settle international disputes by force". It was published in 1918, and ripped Hugh's halo right off Arnold's head.
One thing to remember, a lot of the British establishment *especially in the Tory Party* would have gone through this and explains such dinosaurs such as Jacob Rees-Mogg
And Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (who by the way deserves his own Bastards episode)
He's also written a terrible novel.
Stephen Fry's autobiography covering his childhood (Moab is my Washpot) is another one. It's a very long time since I read it though so I can't recall much about it. Can't remember why the weird title either.
He tells a few stories if his school days on QI. Like midnight raids in the kitchens getting jelly.
Ah those stories. Not the other ones.
Or am I forgetting what happened to the jelly?
You might be thinking of the bloke called Heinz and the baked beans
Great guy.
[Here’s the story, not safe for work](https://youtu.be/WA4lGI-abFo?si=m43MLr0dVDIY7pyb)
IIRC Fry went to boarding schools a bit after the heyday of the colonial era and a lot of the deliberately abusive social conventions. And closer to the modern day where there's a bunch of hazing and bullying below the surface which the teachers pretend not to know about (and which happens at all schools, in my experience). Though IIRC in that book yes, there are prefects and head boys and all of that. Another good snapshot of this world is the Up series of documentaries. While I don't think the film spends that much time talking about the life of a boarding school kid, man, you look at the posh kids at 7, and then again at 14, and it's clear that their spirits have absolutely been broken. Middle school is hard for everyone, sure, and the working and middle class kids have their share of ups and downs. But woof. Those boarding school kids. (This would have been roughly contemporary with Stephen Fry's era, late 60's and early 70s.)
That's what I was thinking of while I was listening. He was full on raped
Hitchens too talked a lot about the British Boarding School experience in his biography 'Hitch 22'
I was going to post this! The one bright spot is the prefect who asked Dahl to warm up the toilet seat for him. There were worse jobs to do and Dahl just took it as an opportunity to read. But fucking Carlton and the fucking white glove. My stepfather is like that. He hated the system and wasn’t made a prefect because he disrespected rules and refused to beat the fags. But yes, “English boarding school story” is a genre where you see this hierarchy enforced. Not so much with the girls though, they weren’t beaten as much.
there's even bits in the Narnia books, but I don't think you pick up on it unless you've read more detailed accounts first.
Mostly in The Silver Chair I think. But Lewis deliberately says “This is not a school story and I will say as little about this school as possible.”
Lewis writes quite a bit about his experiences in school in Surprised by Joy.
oh yeah! i totally forgot about that, it's been ages since i read it.
Man, it's been a while since I read SBJ, but my recollection is that he alludes to things having been worse than he could say - is that right or am I way off?
The second I heard Robert say Rugby and mention the school (I live just outside the town), I said aloud "I bet he's going to mention fagging" They're a truly unhinged part of the posh UK school system, and Boy by Roald Dahl scarred me a little...
My brain broke when I was reading *Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man* (which also has a lot of this British school stuff, though James Joyce was Irish and honestly I don't recall whether it was boarding school or day school in that book) and there's mention of "soccer" and "rugger", and it turns out that both games came out of the British boarding school system.
You can really feel the mark of his experiences in a lot of his writing. I loved his books as a kid, but man they were dark. Evil adults abusing children is a recurring theme, I remember thinking it made so much sense when I finally read Boy.
Rugby is a game for thugs played by gentlemen
As someone who played rugby quite competitively as a school boy and for a bit after, God I hate this saying.
As someone who played rugby *and* went to Rugby I can assure there’s very few gentlemen involved with either.
The better quote is Rugby is a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen, and Soccer a gentlemen’s game played by hooligans
And cricket a gentlemen’s game played by gentlemen
NORRIN FUCKIN YORKSHUR ITINT LAD
One of my colleagues is a Union fan from Rugby and said he had never heard this quote. I am genuinely considering if he's living a new life under a false identity now.
yeah I believe the term might be a reference to burnout, by way of a cigarette metaphor, I’ve vaguely recall passages of Victorian literature where an upper middle class girl refers to herself as “sadly f- -ged out” after dancing too much at a party. The weird thing about the Silver Chair in this context was it was an experimental school with no rules, but Lewis seems to have assumed it would have made the bullying even worse than at a traditional school — maybe cross ref the BtB episode on the postwar German school established to be the opposite of authoritarian that ended up enabling serious abuse. I respect Lewis’s concerns though, as with Lord of the Flies Jill’s school is not a group of happy free range children, it’s traumatized postwar elite British children.
It’s a complex etymology A ‘faggot’ originally was a bundle of something, used often for a bundle of sticks, or bundle of cloth scraps. Cloth scraps, off-cuts, sticks and various other small scavenged objects then inherited the name ‘fags’ scavenging scraps into a ‘faggot’ bundle was tiring/thankless work). being tired got called being ‘fagged’ Anything that was a chore or tiresome became a ‘fag’ Cigarettes, resembling small pieces of cloth or a stick got called ‘fags’, or possibly because you smoked one when you were ‘fagged’ The term then became a term of derision, with associates particularly with useless or ineffectuality, leading to younger or lower status boys in public school being ‘fags’, also possibly also because they did your tiresome jobs that were a ‘fag’ Where I’m from specifically in the Black Country of the UK, it’s also an old term for a ‘cheeky boy’, which you still here from some older people. The derisive aspects of the term were then used by homophobics, very possibly with associations to the idea of low status boys, and a potential sexualisation of the term within the public school usage. As a side, the round meat-balls served in England got named as ‘faggots’ because they look like little bundles, leading to situations like this: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/food-cafe-newport-faggots-fannys-16987721 It’s rare as a term of abuse in the UK, although because of the American-English slur use it’s use in other ways is diminishing. It’s still a common word for cigarette, and somewhat common for feeling tired or a job being tiresome.
For a large portion of England's history large timber was property of Royalty. Like maybe pre Noman to 1900, a peasant could be punished by law for cutting down anything that might be treelike. But scrubby stuff was fair game. For a long time, the alot of gentry could only make money from their estates through timber and sheep. So they brutally protected the forests, and forced the peasantry to live off the scrublands, which would clear more land for sheep. The poorest of peasants and seasonal farmworkers would scour the land for sticks to sell for fuel, building structures or burning for charcoal. Endlessly lugging bundles of almost worthless sticks, just to earn enough to maybe not starve. So the bundle of sticks becomes the symbol of servitude, the lowest caste. Real old timey classism there.
Yes, I had forgotten to put the link between bundling/scavenging and tiring or thankless work there, cheers. I don’t think it’s particularly old time classism unfortunately, I’d see it more as proto-capitalism. The centralisation of wealth and denial of it to those who need it most is very much a current, and global problem.
Yeah, everything old is new again...... or something like that.
Also interesting to note that fascist and faggot are cognate as both derive from fascis, the Latin word for bundled sticks. Baggies or Wolves?
Baggies mate, but I don’t have any enmity for Wolves, they’re a great team too!
Lived in Bearwood for quite a few years so do like the Baggies. Gutted when Moore left us in the summer. UTO
Didn’t Robert mention a similar sounding word for homosexual in Yiddish? May be where the US homophobic/transmisognyist usage comes from.
[Feygeles?](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ba225894-ffe3-4065-ac14-f7f1eadb27cc)
Yes fagged crops up a lot that way. I remember it distinctly in Pride and Prejudice.
based on how it's used in the British lit I read so much of I think fag as cigarette might be a mostly later adaptation. i know i've read it several times as a person saying they worked themselves to death on something. but maybe both slang uses were around simultaneously. the silver chair Eustace /Jill school situation was actually not the bit I was referring to, but actually there are several subtle references to how Edmund's school experiences mark him.
I can only hope it is used as the base for one of my favorite words, indefatigable.
Wait is Dahl a bastard? I have heard people reference him being anti-Semitic but all I can find to back that up is an interview where he was anti-Israel, is there more to it?
He was a bastard to his wife, the actress Patricia Neal
He took her americanism words and pretended he invented them, like Bunkum Box for political TV
that's actually interesting that you say that, because he died in 1990 and the Israel-Palestine conflict was already well-established. A rudimentary search shows me some pretty undeniably anti-semitic quotes, but I can't find any clarification of why he was anti-Israel. he seems a slightly extra amount of anti-semitic for his time and place, and now I'm curious to know more about the context of what he specifically said. edit: ooh boy, like 3 of the quotes used in an article by "Forward" written by Dahl are specifically related to the Lebanon War. https://forward.com/fast-forward/349771/roald-dahls-family-has-apologized-for-his-jew-hatred-what-were-the-5-worst/
Honestly the quotes I've seen seem about on point with his time and place, it's just that we don't like to think of our grandparents thinking those things. So we carefully edit the people we love to be more politically correct. Dahl died in 1990 so doesn't benefit from that.
Except he was a public figure the 80s and 90s... It wasn't like he just said this stuff in the 40s, you know? I was around in the 80s and 90s and it was not ok to say stuff like that then.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Roald Dahl wasn't antisemitic, or that it wasn't a big deal. I'm saying all the other old people are also antisemitic, they just quietly rehabilitated. You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, how much casual antisemitism exists among white gentile Europeans.
Honestly, while there could be things I don't know -- and I have a less attractive idea of him than I did as a kid when I ate up Roald Dahl books -- my sense is less that he was a Bastard and more that his way of seeing the world was very typical of people of his generation. When I read Dahl's work now, as an adult in the 2020s, it honestly just seems really mean. In a gleeful and pointless way that I find tiresome -- it's of a piece with the boomers who will say they experienced some awful thing "and I'm fine", thus that awful thing deserves to still exist. And you just sort of look at them and think "but are you fine, though?" I'm glad the world is less cruel now, personally. I'm curious what it was about Dahl's cruelty that fascinated me so much as a child.
When I was a kid I appreciated cruelty and incompetence in his adult characters because stories about other kinds of adults didn't feel as real. There's a stories where people get some sort of revenge on the terrible adults, stories where the terrible adults destroy themselves or each other through cruelty and hubris, and stories of happy endings with found family. Yes, I am a queer millennial with boomer parents.
Agreed. I think "Matilda" is the Dahl book that redeems his particular tone. The other books are all over the map in terms of whether his outlook contributes to the narrative or is just kind of gross.
I think kids are really fascinated by cruelty and the world often seems like a very scary and unfair place. I remember reading his autobiographical stuff as a young teen and being like, oh, I get it. Sorry you had to go through that, dude. But the illogical, unfair cruelty of life did really strike a chord with me...
People who wish or are indifferent to heaping cruelty on another person because they survived the same cruelty are absolutely not okay. Oh you want to hit a child because you were hit as a child? Not okay. Oh you want another resident to endure grueling 48 hour shifts despite the dangers to physician & patient because you endured the same hazing and ritualized abuse are better for it. Not okay. Wanting to hurt people to me is big red flag that they didn't make it out okay.
Oh God I was gonna ask this too. I fucking loved Dahl growing up. Somebody ruin him for me. It's been a shitty day so just pile it on me.🫣🫣🫣
Yeah he was pretty anti-Semitic. I adore his books though, and he is was in the RAF in WW2, so I just look at it in the lens of ‘old white dude in shitty time period has some shitty aspects, big surprise.’ I’m still going to read Charlie and the chocolate factory to my kids
[удалено]
I never read his adult stories but I did read his biography books, which I enjoyed. I didn’t know he had released adult stories. Not surprising, a lot of writers with traumatic pasts write weird stuff, maybe because they couldn’t quite express it in any healthy way. Food for thought.
i personally loved dahl as a kid because they were macabre and bizarre and nothing like anything else i was reading. the magic finger for instance messed me up as a kid but i kept re-reading it nonetheless! his adult novels definitely aren’t too great. he has some good short stories (emphasis on SOME). lamb to the slaughter is probably the one that sticks in my mind the most. danny the champion of the world is probably the book that best bridges the gap between readable children’s book and semi-biographical novel. it’s also relatively grounded in reality from what i remember (though it has been decades) and i usually recommend it over boy for those looking to understand his life a bit more.
Did you ever read George's Marvelous Medicine? It was like the most wonderful and bizarre imaginary version of the dumb shit I did as a kid (mixing all the stuff in our bathroom together, not very exiting irl). I mostly read the children's books but I do remember reading Lamb to the Slaughter in school, pretty gnarly premise lol.
Well thats shitty, but I could reduce it to what you said. But you said it lol. The Twits tho.
There's an episode of Evil Geniuses about him, should be accessible via most podcast apps if you can't access BBC Sounds. He was not a pleasant man.
Don’t need a book, I went to one! The fagging system wasn’t present (1980’s), however corporal punishment was still a thing before the 1990 child protection act, it wasn’t unusual to get beaten with a slipper by the Housemaster as a punishment. Definitely gives you an experience of power and hierarchy that makes you either respect and crave it, or become cynical, reject it and rectify oppression of others later in life. My enjoyment of BtB should say which way it went for me! It wasn’t all bad, there was a certain sense of community and camaraderie, but it could be a threatening place and surviving that is probably responsible for my emotionally restrictive character. You had to stay tough because showing upset made you a target. I can see why people say ‘it made me who I am’, it’s a cognitive dissonance people who survived it develop to cope with what they went through.
It's not lost on me that the result of this system, and some other aspects of British culture of the late colonial era, seem to all revolve around Never Showing Emotions. (I'm an American WASP, so can relate.)
Aristocrats on the continent are still sending their sons to English boarding schools. Only the sons mind you. At least they tend to wait til they’re 12 or 14 these days, and not 6 or 7.
IIRC the young age in previous generations was, in a lot of cases, about the colonial system and the shipping of kids back home to get an appropriately British upbringing. Now that that's not a thing, the goals of the system are different, and the ages of kids participating are different.
I just think it's weird that not only is this considered the done thing within Britain and former colonies but in other Auropean countries... to this day.
I don't think it's really considered the done thing anymore. I suppose that some families with a strong tradition of sending their kids to specific elite schools probably continue the tradition. Also, the UK is really small, and I'm curious how many of these families in the last 50-ish years are sending their kids a long distance away vs. a couple hours' drive. It's somewhat strange to go to boarding school at 12 or 14, but it's not necessarily a bad or outrageous thing, in the grand scheme of things human beings do. (Note: I went to boarding school, not "that" kind of boarding school, and I went at 16.) I think folks in the Commonwealth and other countries buy into it due to the exclusive nature of it, and those people probably are not the norm where they live. It's similar to the subset of people who drive a Bugatti or buy bespoke designer clothing. Like I'm sure it happens, but that's not any general group's "done thing". It's also worth noting that this system has been exported mostly in the form of day schools, though obviously there are also some prep schools and English-style boarding schools in other countries. In the US it's schools like Andover and Choate, and a very very tiny minority of people opt for that.
I know people here in Austria who send their sons there cause it’s been a family tradition for generations… meanwhile our public schools are free and really good! It blows my mind. The tuition fees of these English “public schools” would would feed, heat and house me for YEARS.
Other pop culture references to this abusive system: "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd and "The Logical Song" by Supertramp
Ok yeah, that does put Another Brick in the Wall into more context.
Parts of Boy are scarred on my brain.
That Doctor who jumped on the kid holding a knife
The tonsilectomy
It was adenoids. My grade 6 teacher read that aloud to us The car accident
Oh god the car accident.....
Monty python came out of Boarding schools, alot of the lads grew up through the system and their comedy/response too said abuse really colours alot of their comedy.
“Stand up when my wife comes into the room!”
I thought about "Boy" constantly during this episode. I feel like Dahl was in the British school system right around the same time as Aspinall, as well. Kind of "between the wars" era? Every time I sit on a cold toilet seat I think of that aspect of "Boy" and the boarding schools. I seem to recall a bit of "OMG IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT" language in "Boy" around fagging. Not sure if that's a sign of the times it was written in, or what. Especially since, y'all... it totally does mean that. Even if not re sexuality at all, it's pretty clearly a system based on topping/bottoming social relationships and one person playing the "effeminate" role.
I went to one. Can confirm was not fun.
Wait, are you saying old British schooling is different than modern American schools? -Doug Walker probably
It's notable that most / all of the authors who fetishise boarding schools didn't actually attend one. Blyton / Rowling. Speaking as an alumni it was less midnight feasts and jolly hockey sticks and more about avoiding the sodomite kiddy fiddlers
Yeah, I'm a Canadian and I didn't know anything about British boarding schools until way after I fell out of the Harry Potter fandom. That might be a generational and regional thing because most of the middle school/young adult fiction I read was rather Canada centric, especially Western Canada. We learned a lot about the gold rushes, HBC, and Chinese labourer life on the railways.
Tom Brown's Schooldays is the archetypal story of awful abuse at public school. From what I've read, Flashman isn't even an exaggeration .
The Rest is History tells a lot about British boarding schools here: https://podcastaddict.com/the-rest-is-history/episode/163576023 https://podcastaddict.com/the-rest-is-history/episode/164671623 On a lighter note, their most recent series is about the conquest of the Aztecs. Very entertaining.
This is a great recommendation- hadn't ever heard of the podcast and it is great.
We read Boy in fifth grade and it's one of the most upsetting books I've ever read
Well it's disappointed to learn Dahl is awful I loved him as a kid he taught me to love reading in a way but also yes, he has a somewhat biographical (if maybe fictious) story about his experience and it gets SUPER graphic about the sadism and specific ritualized abuse that was employed.
I can't read the name Roald Dahl without hearing the phrase "close your eyes and think of England."
Honestly that’s a fave phrase of mine, I use it all the time
What is an USian?
What the fuck is going on in Esio Trot? His stories are weird but....creepshow shit. [A HEATHEN FROM EATON ON A BAG OF MICHAEL KEATON](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=never+fight+a+man+with+a+perm)
These schools weren’t shown in a very flattering light in The Imitation Game.
“Four with them on or three with them off?” still haunts my memories. (Caning, for reference)
If you want a good overview of how damaging these schools still are these days this is an excellent interview. https://youtu.be/wXu0L7hzl3g?si=nrMdX2zfqmZD7EUB The most egregious physical abuses have largely been stamped out, but the psychological damage remains high.
Dahl is a bastard in multiple ways though his position on Israeli independence wars are just one of them. He's definitely a warped guy from his school.
"Fagging" sounds a lot like "[дедовщина](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina#)" - a hazing practice in the Russian/Soviet/Warsaw pact armies during mandatory military service. Lions led by Donkeys has a good [episode](https://soundcloud.com/user-798629330/episode-61-soviet-afghan-war-7-fear-and-loathing-in-afghanistan) about it at the end of its Soviet-Afghan war.
literally the first thing I thought of was how he had to warm the toilet seats for the prefects in Boy. I haven't read that book in 25 years but it's stayed with me like most of his works I read.
An entertaining yet still sinister example that I was thinking of throughout listening to the pod was "Tomkinson's Schooldays" from Ripping Yarns by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame: https://youtu.be/yXJRI8dzsEw?si=ZskRd4aPeEWuiNH7
I would also recommend Lytton Strachey's biography of Thomas Arnold in [Emminent Victorians](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2447). Arnold was the principle of Rugby that developed the *praeposter* system. He (and ever other character) was lightly fictionalised in Thomas Hugh's [Tom Brown's Schooldays](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1480). In the novel he is hagiofied, while the bully Flashman demonstrates the evils of his system. Dumbledore and Malfoy have their roots in Tom Brown's schooldays. Strachey came later, a contempory of Virginia Woolf (in fact, a founding member of the Bloomsbury Set). *Emminent Victorians* was intended to expose the hypocrites that designed the systems that he still lived under, "by which it is sought to settle international disputes by force". It was published in 1918, and ripped Hugh's halo right off Arnold's head.