Another little literary brick falls into place.
One of the few triumphs I achieved as a pupil in Gladstone Primary and Infants School, Cathays, Cardiff was in building.
I do not pretend, unlike so many who seem to have photographic recall about their early days, to remember which class I was in at the time, but I do remember that at some stage or other we were allowed constructive play. In my case I remember putting a great deal of effort into making a house.
It was a fiddly affair. You started with a green plastic base which was pierced with rows of holes. Into these holes you placed a series of very thin metal poles and, if they were the right space apart you could begin to slot in specially grooved bricks which made the walls and there were windows and doors all of which could be fitted into the structure. Eventually the whole thing could be finished off by an all in one roof.
In retrospect virtually everything in the kit to make the house was unsuitable for very young pupils, but in the Wild West days of education in the 1950s we kids were allowed to do things and use things which would probably be regarded as child abuse today!
In the way of children, houses were often started but never finished. You would run out of bricks, patience or a coherent sense of what a house was. But I came as near to finishing a house as anyone had done and I was promptly sent to the headteacher with my plastic dwelling to receive my due amount of praise. I can remember the praise and also the fact that the headteacher used the occasion to test my knowledge of my times tables and spelling!
I suspected in retrospect that the auxiliary tests were attempts by the headteacher to discover more of my ability than an imperfectly built model plastic house seemed to indicate. Proud though I was of my house I could not help notice that the walls were not perfect. I knew in my own home that all the walls tended to meet at ninety degrees with no gaps. This was not the case with my model: there were distinct gaps both horizontal and vertical. Gaps waiting to be filled in at a later date.
Those gaps never were. By the time I was older there was Lego as a building material in its pungent rubber manifestation before it lost its character and became rigid plastic with no character. The metal poles and plastic bricks I never met again. I don’t know what the system was called and I’m not sure that it is sold now. The gap house became a powerful memory and a useful metaphor.
The little house became for me an example of something which looked good, got me credit, but could have been better with a few more bricks.
I did not go into building so the metaphor has had to be pushed more into those areas which I found congenial: literature and art history.
When I was very much younger I thought that because I generally could tell the difference between a Monet and a Manet meant that I knew pretty much everything that a reasonable chap could be expected to know about Modern Art.
I often try and retexture the pleasure that wilful delusion gave me for the short period before I discovered just how little I really knew about even the most important painters in the more obvious art movements just in Western Europe. I can still remember the panic that Mary Cassat threw me into when I first saw reproductions of her work
and discovered that she was American, and important, and that led me to the Prendergasts, 
who were also American, and important, and how did they fit into what I knew about modern art. The whole structure of my knowledge of art was turning into some sort of monster and threatening my very being!
It took a while before I was able to look on the growing areas of undiscovered ignorance as opportunities to enjoy new (for me) artists and realise that modern art in a modern world was going to be global and that I could only scratch at the surface of what was and is going on. Enough raw materials for more than a life time!
So, the concept of another brick in the wall (that phrase seems familiar somehow) is one which pleases me. Each time I discover something new I can hear in my brain the sharp little click as another tiny plastic brick slides into place guided by the slim metal poles of the structure.
The ‘brick’ which prompted this Proustian memory was reading a novel called ‘Nocturne’ (1917) by Frank Swinnerton.
Swinnerton for most literature students is merely a footnote – a long lived writer and critic, probably more famous for his books on other writers, especially The Georgian Literary Scene (1935) and his autobiography than for his own creative writing. But now I have read his most famous novel ‘Nocturne’ and so the man who knew everybody literary who was worth knowing for his ninety odd years becomes a little bit more real.
I realize now, of course, that those gaps which seemed so difficult to fill in completely on the model are just as difficult when it comes to knowledge. Except here the gaps are vast voids and each little brick makes no perceptible difference in the filling of it up.
But that, surely, is the delight of it all!
One of the few triumphs I achieved as a pupil in Gladstone Primary and Infants School, Cathays, Cardiff was in building.
I do not pretend, unlike so many who seem to have photographic recall about their early days, to remember which class I was in at the time, but I do remember that at some stage or other we were allowed constructive play. In my case I remember putting a great deal of effort into making a house.
It was a fiddly affair. You started with a green plastic base which was pierced with rows of holes. Into these holes you placed a series of very thin metal poles and, if they were the right space apart you could begin to slot in specially grooved bricks which made the walls and there were windows and doors all of which could be fitted into the structure. Eventually the whole thing could be finished off by an all in one roof.
In retrospect virtually everything in the kit to make the house was unsuitable for very young pupils, but in the Wild West days of education in the 1950s we kids were allowed to do things and use things which would probably be regarded as child abuse today!
In the way of children, houses were often started but never finished. You would run out of bricks, patience or a coherent sense of what a house was. But I came as near to finishing a house as anyone had done and I was promptly sent to the headteacher with my plastic dwelling to receive my due amount of praise. I can remember the praise and also the fact that the headteacher used the occasion to test my knowledge of my times tables and spelling!
I suspected in retrospect that the auxiliary tests were attempts by the headteacher to discover more of my ability than an imperfectly built model plastic house seemed to indicate. Proud though I was of my house I could not help notice that the walls were not perfect. I knew in my own home that all the walls tended to meet at ninety degrees with no gaps. This was not the case with my model: there were distinct gaps both horizontal and vertical. Gaps waiting to be filled in at a later date.
Those gaps never were. By the time I was older there was Lego as a building material in its pungent rubber manifestation before it lost its character and became rigid plastic with no character. The metal poles and plastic bricks I never met again. I don’t know what the system was called and I’m not sure that it is sold now. The gap house became a powerful memory and a useful metaphor.
The little house became for me an example of something which looked good, got me credit, but could have been better with a few more bricks.
I did not go into building so the metaphor has had to be pushed more into those areas which I found congenial: literature and art history.
When I was very much younger I thought that because I generally could tell the difference between a Monet and a Manet meant that I knew pretty much everything that a reasonable chap could be expected to know about Modern Art.
I often try and retexture the pleasure that wilful delusion gave me for the short period before I discovered just how little I really knew about even the most important painters in the more obvious art movements just in Western Europe. I can still remember the panic that Mary Cassat threw me into when I first saw reproductions of her work
and discovered that she was American, and important, and that led me to the Prendergasts, who were also American, and important, and how did they fit into what I knew about modern art. The whole structure of my knowledge of art was turning into some sort of monster and threatening my very being!It took a while before I was able to look on the growing areas of undiscovered ignorance as opportunities to enjoy new (for me) artists and realise that modern art in a modern world was going to be global and that I could only scratch at the surface of what was and is going on. Enough raw materials for more than a life time!
So, the concept of another brick in the wall (that phrase seems familiar somehow) is one which pleases me. Each time I discover something new I can hear in my brain the sharp little click as another tiny plastic brick slides into place guided by the slim metal poles of the structure.
The ‘brick’ which prompted this Proustian memory was reading a novel called ‘Nocturne’ (1917) by Frank Swinnerton.
Swinnerton for most literature students is merely a footnote – a long lived writer and critic, probably more famous for his books on other writers, especially The Georgian Literary Scene (1935) and his autobiography than for his own creative writing. But now I have read his most famous novel ‘Nocturne’ and so the man who knew everybody literary who was worth knowing for his ninety odd years becomes a little bit more real.I realize now, of course, that those gaps which seemed so difficult to fill in completely on the model are just as difficult when it comes to knowledge. Except here the gaps are vast voids and each little brick makes no perceptible difference in the filling of it up.
But that, surely, is the delight of it all!
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