Shame and Consequences

[Cole Parker]

OK, I've read 1-16. Great story. More please. Can't stop here.

http://www.awesomedude.com/mihangel/shame-and-consciences/index.htm

C

[FreeThinker]

I've been absolutely delighted by this wonderful story! And, I am grateful for the prologue and the education I've gotten from it. I am now going to Barnes and Noble online (I boycott Amazon) to search for many more of those dozens of schoolboy stories Mihangel mentions. I fell in love with the genre when I saw Tom Brown's Schooldays on PBS in 1973 when I was 15. I loved Joel's offering and now I am captivated by Mihangel's. Jan Rutter is my hero and I love Chips Carpenter.

[Nigel Gordon]

This is a delightful rendering of Hornung's classic. When I started to read this I was somewhat disappointed not to be immersed in the language and style which one associates with Mihangel, though I found myself enjoying the story. I missed that language and style so much I emailed Mihangel about it and raised the issue, getting an informative and educational reply. Having read the first 16 chapters I can now see what he was doing. This is a retelling of Hornung's story in Hornung's voice, presented in a manner and style which I have no doubt Hornung would have been using if he was alive today.

I can only congratulate Mihangel on what he has achieved and look forward to reading the rest of this story, then it is off once more to read more of Hornung. Have not read any of his stuff since the 1980s and there is a lot of good writing there.

Regards

Nigel

[Mihangel]

For the kind words, thanks. As Nigel says, this is really Hornung's story, not mine; and so I had to try to preserve Hornung's own voice, not only in what he did write himself but in the inserted parts (especially Chapters 11 and 16 and a lot of 31) which are entirely mine. The crunch, I suppose, is whether the joins between the two can be seen.

FT - in your search through the jungle you may get some guidance from the Wikipedia entry under "School story." Most of the better-known (and older) examples of the genre are now online (which Hornung's wasn't when I adapted it, and that meant an awful lot of typing!). But many of them are so moralistic that I find them virtually unreadable. The author of Eric or Little by Little positively stated that "The story of 'Eric' was written with but one single object - the vivid inculcation of inward purity and moral purpose." Yuck. To my mind the best of the earlier lot, Hornung apart, is Kipling's Stalky & Co; but remember that it was done as a deliberate parody. And none of them even hints at sexuality until Michael Campbell's Lord Dismiss us (1967), which some people praise to the skies but personally I find very implausible and unconvincing.

[Jeff Ellis]

Jolly well done that boy. A ripping good yarn, awfully well told.

[Cole Parker]

Finished it. Wonderful stuff. Thanks for all that hard work, Mihangel.

C