Bonking

(First posted 10th May, 2017)

I used to have a book by a pair of American educationalists called Curtis Jay Bonk and Kira S. King. Students used to call it the bonking book. The surnames of the two authors were juxtaposed on the spine in such a way as to make it look as if it was a book about bonking: “a bonking good read” perhaps.

The cover shows the first author’s name in full, but in the rest of the book and on his web site he goes by the shorter Curt Bonk. Does he know how that sounds to English ears? Perhaps he does. It might be his come on line.

I’m not sure when I first encountered the word “bonk”. It wasn’t at school in Yorkshire. Bonk would then have meant hitting someone on the top of the head, or perhaps the percussive knock made by a large piece of wood. Runners and cyclists also now use it to mean running out of energy. I don’t think it emerged in the sexual sense until the nineteen-seventies. I can imagine Jo Kendall’s elegant but naughty voice saying it in “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”, but perhaps she never actually did. It would have amused me if she had.

The alternatives would have been completely unacceptable on broadcast media before the -seventies, despite the efforts of Brendan Behan and Kenneth Tynan who came out with the f-word on live television in the -fifties and -sixties, or even the music hall comedian Hector Thaxter who is said to have got away with “arse” on the radio in 1936.

Most of us don’t seem to notice swearing now. It was better when it was the exception rather than the rule. It was kinder when the worst we heard was “naff off” and “bonk”.

John Wyndham: The Chrysalids

John Wyndham: 

The Chrysalids (5*)

Chrysalids sound like some kind of horrible pupating insect things, yet the book contains nothing so nasty at all. 

The title must put a lot of people off, especially from a science fiction writer known for Krakens, Triffids and Midwich Cuckoos. In fact, even after reading it, I still have no idea what Chrysalids are, and hardly think of this as science fiction. Something less frightening might have been better. In America, it was called Re-Birth, but that misleads too. An early manuscript was called Time for a Change.

The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world that was ravaged by nuclear war so long ago that only vague memories of the previous civilisation remain. Descendant survivors live in an isolated fundamentalist agrarian community struggling to eliminate mutations from crops, livestock and people. Anything that is not normal is destroyed. Children with even the slightest deformities (such as the six-toed footprint on the cover) are regarded as abominations, “blasphemies against the true image of God, and hateful to the sight of God”, and are sterilized and outcast. This claustrophobic setting is brilliantly constructed and utterly believable.

Trying not to give away too much of the plot, a small group of children find they differ from others in that they are telepathic, which they must hide to avoid persecution and banishment as mutants. There follows a tense tale of questioning. near-discovery, escape, an anxious chase through the dangerous countryside of ‘the fringes’, and rescue – I won’t say how. It touches upon deep issues, such as religious bigotry, freedom of thought, social perceptions of normality, deformity, tolerance, discrimination and eugenics.

Many think Wyndham is remembered for the wrong book, that he should be remembered more for The Chrysalids than The Day of the Triffids. Others believe that by turning it into a clichéd chase with a ‘deus ex-machina’ finale he failed to make the most of the profound setting he had created. Both are probably right. A different author might have made more of the potential. Nevertheless, it is a compelling and exciting story. I nearly dropped my Kindle into the bathwater.

Mmmm! Telepaths forcibly sterilised because they are a threat to society. I wonder what Salman Rushdie read before writing Midnight’s Children.

Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

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