Re: lack of schooling
Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Tue, 23 Feb 1999 09:45:09 +0000
I'm not sure, Jim, what you mean by 'his subjects in these schools'.
Sherborne & Eton are two of the best (second level - age 11 to 18)
schools in England. (What we call 'public' & you would call 'private.)
One doesn’t take 'subjects' as one might in a university (& which I
believe
Americans sometimes refer to as 'school'.) They offer a general range
of education with no specialisation until the last year or two. And you
can take my word for it that anyone teaching French & German
in Eton has a pretty thorough grounding in the 'literature' of those
languages.
Your revelation of childhood asthma is, of course, cheating. My
reference
to your curious linguistic tic of introducing so many posts with that
'heh' had nothing to do with any actual pathology you might suffer.
To introduce such a personal diversion at once opens other
possibilities.
Just as my introduction of my anterior cardiac infarct might expose me
to comments on the aggressive personality traits that so often go with
such
a lesion, so may your asthma expose you to a discussion of the marked
inhibitory/repressive features that so often go with *it*.
Beyond all that, I'm interested that my innocuous tease should arouse
such strong feelings. You & Tim may offer various exceptions to the
rule
(in which, incidentally, le Carre used the word 'mainly') but it's
something
of a cliché that most artists look on critics & commentators with
contempt.
I wasn't offering anything new.
But what was it? Was it the word 'failure'?
Scottie B.