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Forrest Reid
Book by Bryan, Mary
173 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1976
2 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 12, 2025
Typical academic mumbo-jumbo. It practically all went straight over my head, either proving my ignorance or showing what a poor job Bryan did of explaining herself - or failing to explain herself so that the lay person could understand. Lots of long and fine-sounding words and phrases, and lots of undefined terms and unexplained concepts.
Personally I can't see the point in books like this. Who does it help? Did it help Bryan to gain some extra qualification, or help to justify her salary that she was managing to produce an original and scholarly work? If so then good for her. But if she loved Forrest Reid and believed that he deserved greater recognition than he had so far received, such a work as this was never going to do much to promote him. His greatness has always been recognised by a minority, and yet an academic appraisal of his work such as this is only going to promote him amongst an academic elite and thus only serve to keep him locked up in obscurity.
Reid doesn't need to be analysed and interpreted, he just needs to be read. The common man on the street can read and enjoy him without any need for an interpretative commentary which twists his books out of all recognition. But until mainstream publishers latch onto his works and get them out there in the bookshops in prominent positions, he's still going to remain in the shadows when his works should rightfully be regarded as classics, him name standing up there alongside the most famous of English authors.
I can't help suspecting that scholars who appreciate Forrest Reid might tend to rather miss the point of his books. Instead of simply enjoying the story they are too busy analysing it, reading things into it and finding hidden messages, and they miss the sheer beauty or emotive power of it all, as though plain and straightforward good storytelling isn't a good enough reason for an author to be appreciated and remembered. Instead they have to give him some hidden agenda, some philosophy or world-view he is trying to push. But the academics are so busy trying to read their own theories into his books that they fail to see what is before their eyes.
Young Tom is the most famous of Reid's books, and yet Bryan's summary of the plot was full of glaring errors suggesting that she'd probably only read it once and not paid a great deal of attention. Things she said about many of Reid's other novels also didn't seem to ring true, though I would have to read them again to be sure.
This is definitely not a book to read before you have read Reid's novels for yourself. It contains too many spoilers. Much better to read Reid directly and fall in love with him for yourself, before wasting time on works such as this.
Personally I can't see the point in books like this. Who does it help? Did it help Bryan to gain some extra qualification, or help to justify her salary that she was managing to produce an original and scholarly work? If so then good for her. But if she loved Forrest Reid and believed that he deserved greater recognition than he had so far received, such a work as this was never going to do much to promote him. His greatness has always been recognised by a minority, and yet an academic appraisal of his work such as this is only going to promote him amongst an academic elite and thus only serve to keep him locked up in obscurity.
Reid doesn't need to be analysed and interpreted, he just needs to be read. The common man on the street can read and enjoy him without any need for an interpretative commentary which twists his books out of all recognition. But until mainstream publishers latch onto his works and get them out there in the bookshops in prominent positions, he's still going to remain in the shadows when his works should rightfully be regarded as classics, him name standing up there alongside the most famous of English authors.
I can't help suspecting that scholars who appreciate Forrest Reid might tend to rather miss the point of his books. Instead of simply enjoying the story they are too busy analysing it, reading things into it and finding hidden messages, and they miss the sheer beauty or emotive power of it all, as though plain and straightforward good storytelling isn't a good enough reason for an author to be appreciated and remembered. Instead they have to give him some hidden agenda, some philosophy or world-view he is trying to push. But the academics are so busy trying to read their own theories into his books that they fail to see what is before their eyes.
Young Tom is the most famous of Reid's books, and yet Bryan's summary of the plot was full of glaring errors suggesting that she'd probably only read it once and not paid a great deal of attention. Things she said about many of Reid's other novels also didn't seem to ring true, though I would have to read them again to be sure.
This is definitely not a book to read before you have read Reid's novels for yourself. It contains too many spoilers. Much better to read Reid directly and fall in love with him for yourself, before wasting time on works such as this.
Displaying 1 of 1 review