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Donald Sturrock. Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl
Copyright
Contents
PROLOGUE. Lunch with Igor Stravinsky
CHAPTER ONE. The Outsider
CHAPTER TWO. Shutting Out the Sun
CHAPTER THREE. Boy
CHAPTER FOUR. Foul Things and Horrid People
CHAPTER FIVE. Distant Faraway Lands
CHAPTER SIX. A Monumental Bash on the Head
CHAPTER SEVEN. David and Goliath
CHAPTER EIGHT. Alive But Earthbound
CHAPTER NINE. A Sort of Fairy Story
CHAPTER TEN. Secrets and Lies
CHAPTER ELEVEN. The Scholar-Gypsy
CHAPTER TWELVE. The Poacher
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Master of the Macabre
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. A Tornado of Troubles
CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Breaking Point
CHAPTER SIXTEEN. Indomitable
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. The Gentle Warmth of Love
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. Explosions Are Exciting
CHAPTER NINETEEN. The Wizard and the Wonderman
CHAPTER TWENTY. No Point in Struggling
Notes
PROLOGUE: Lunch with Igor Stravinsky
CHAPTER ONE: The Outsider
CHAPTER TWO: Shutting Out the Sun
CHAPTER THREE: Boy
CHAPTER FOUR: Foul Things and Horrid People
CHAPTER FIVE: Distant Faraway Lands
CHAPTER SIX: A Monumental Bash on the Head
CHAPTER SEVEN: David and Goliath
CHAPTER EIGHT: Alive but Earthbound
CHAPTER NINE: A Sort of Fairy Story
CHAPTER TEN: Secrets and Lies
Notes. CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Scholar-Gypsy
CHAPTER TWELVE: The Poacher
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Master of the Macabre
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A Tornado of Troubles
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Breaking Point
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Indomitable
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: The Gentle Warmth of Love
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Explosions Are Exciting
CHAPTER NINETEEN: The Wizard and the Wonderman
CHAPTER TWENTY: No Point in Struggling
Bibliography. SHORT STORIES — FIRST PUBLICATION
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
BOOKS — FIRST PUBLICATION
UNPUBLISHED WORK (SELECTED)
PLAYS
SCREENPLAYS AND TELEPLAYS FOR COMPLETED FEATURE FILMS AND TELEVISION DRAMA
SELECTED JOURNALISM
SECONDARY SOURCES — PUBLISHED WORKS
UNPUBLISHED SOURCES
SELECTED INTERVIEWS ON RADIO AND TELEVISION
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
DONALD STURROCK
Storyteller
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These tales were illustrated by an artist called Theodor Kittelsen. Kit-telsen was a Norwegian mystic — a visionary and fantastical painter, much loved by the Dahls. He was born in 1857 on the west coast of Norway, in Kragero, the birthplace of Ludvig Aadnesen. Like his contemporary Edvard Munch, many of his paintings and illustrations are not for the fainthearted. He too was fascinated by the grotesque. His drawings of the bubonic plague, for example, which raged through medieval Norway, are remarkable for their evocations of death and loneliness in a dark, hostile landscape; yet he was also able to depict the evanescent swiftness of a running stream, the misty stillness of an autumn sunrise, and the strange shapeless wonderland of a familiar human landscape transformed by a heavy fall of snow. His eye is sharply observant, and his sense of humour usually coarse and hard-edged in a way that prefigures Dahl’s own. In Morbid Love, for example, a bedraggled green mosquito and a frog in a crumpled white ball gown embrace by the side of a tranquil blue lake. A distant sun is setting. At the water’s edge stands an empty bottle of wine. Beside it a drained glass lies on its side. The two animal lovers are parting. Both are weeping. But the pathos of this melancholy moment will soon be shattered. For, unbeknown to them, a mischievous crab has emerged from the water and is about to nip the grasshopper’s leg, while on a branch above their heads a warbling bird has just evacuated its bowels. In a moment the resulting mess will splatter all over the lovers’ tear-stained faces.87
This dimension of the ironic and absurd masked Kittelsen’s profound fascination for the natural world. A fellow painter, Erik Werenskjold, praised his concern with “man’s pettiness and absurdity, his vindictiveness and jealousy”, which was set against “the lofty and unfathomable grandeur of Nature, as revealed in snowclad mountains, desolate hills or a tiny fragrant blossom”.88 This combination of the satirist and the naturalist, the fantasist and the observer, also defined an important aspect of Dahl’s own aesthetic. His sisters, particularly the sharp and observant Alfhild, saw the link at once between their brother’s tales and those Norwegian legends they had been told as children, recognizing in both a distinctive blend of humour and fear, combined with a sense of the solitary majesty of the natural world.89 Recalling his childhood diaries, scribbled high up in the branch of an ancient chestnut tree, far away from other humans and deep within the realm of nature, Dahl himself would later write: “In springtime, I was in a cave of green leaves surrounded by hundreds of those wonderful white candles that are the conker trees flowers. In winter it was less mysterious, but even more exciting because I could see the ground miles below me as well as the landscape all around. Sitting there, above the world, I used to write down things that would have made my mother and my sisters stretch their eyes with disbelief had they ever read them. But I knew they wouldn’t.”90
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