A couple of thoughts on the
death of Judith Kerr, venerable (she was 95) and celebrated children's author and illustrator:
- If you had asked me to express an opinion on whether Kerr's Mog books were the origin of the general words "mog" and "moggie" to describe a cat (usually of a nondescript non-pedigree variety), I would probably have said that on balance I imagined that the expression pre-dated the books, but that I wouldn't want to stake my or anyone else's life on it. It turns out that the word does indeed pre-date the books, the first of which was published in 1970, the year I was born, and includes a character called Mr. Thomas (coincidence, or IS IT, etc etc). It apparently used to be a pet name for a cow and by some mysterious trans-species etymological osmosis became subsequently used for cats.
- Kerr is one of those annoying names which can be pronounced in one of two ways and where there's absolutely no clue to which is the correct one from seeing it written down. In this case it can be "Kurr" (or, more correctly given its Scottish origins, "Kairr") or "Karr". Judith Kerr pronounced it the second way, as far as I can gather. Other examples include Sara/Sarah, which can be "Sair-rah" or "Sah-rah" with no chance of deciding which it is without advance knowledge, and the only advance knowledge you can have is that if you guess you'll choose the wrong one. And don't get me started on the whole Ralph/Rafe thing.
- Kerr's most famous book is almost certainly The Tiger Who Came To Tea, which we, in common with most parents of young kids, have a copy of. It's always struck me that the tiger is a fairly obvious metaphor for sex, and in particular that an obvious subtextual interpretation of the surface story is that Sophie's Mum has been having a ferociously sexual extra-marital relationship, involving much smashing of crockery, urgent food-smeared couplings on the kitchen table and leaving her in a sweaty, sore, jism-festooned heap on the kitchen floor. The subsequent trip out to the cafe with Dad can be seen as him forgiving her for her infidelity and her settling back into the sausage-and-chips, half-a-pint-of-mild, once-a-week-with-the-lights-off regime with wistful regret but also a slight sense of relief. Needless to say I'm not the first person to think of this, as it's alluded to in this Guardian obituary, and was put to her a few times in interviews, where she played it with an impeccably straight bat.
- I should point out that the first scurrilous image above is my own work; the second is stolen from this perhaps slightly ill-judged humorous tweet by the good people at Foyles Bookshop.
- Judith Kerr was married to writer Nigel Kneale, probably most famous for his work on the various Quatermass serials and films. The only piece of his writing that I own, as far as I know, is the absurdly over-the-top (but absurdly entertaining) haunted-house story Minuke which I have in an anthology of supernatural stories published by, slightly bizarrely, Marks & Spencer. I got this as a present from my parents when I must have been about 16 and it's got some pretty serious heavyweight stuff in it. Minuke is based on an age-old and much-used premise: a house built on top of some old stones that conceal Unquiet Things that don't take kindly to being disturbed. It's basically the same plot as the South Park episode with the accursed pet store, not to mention Pet Sematary and Poltergeist.
Stan: So you just built your store on top of an Indian burial ground?!
Shop Owner: Oh, hell no! First, I dug up all the bodies, pissed on 'em, and then buried them again upside-down.
Kyle: Why?
Shop Owner: Why? I don't know. I was drunk.
- Kerr and Kneale's son Matthew is best known for his 2000 novel English Passengers, which I own and recommend to you highly. I see I mentioned this previously (and Kerr, in passing) here.
1 comment:
Nicee blog post
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