more ripping yarns
Last month I printed out and re-read “In Wine” and “In Wrath”, both by Ripping Yarns. The former was Mark-centered (Mark Aken, not my Mark): Hold-in Mark, age 18, feels guilty for getting drunk and asks for the whack, which Dad gives until the Hold-in lets the guilt go and starts to cry, cf. Jack Radcliffe in “First Half at Keene’s”, cf. Gray Riding, cf. all the hold-ins we know. In the second story, “In Wrath”, Dan mouths off to a neighbor and over the course of the story is moved from temper to repentance. Both stories are classic in that the climax is the same: the switch from Dad in the bedroom; and both are narrated by Dad, which seems to be how that series gets started. Both I read slowly and closely, more so than usually happens when I read on the screen. In both stories I was 100% with the author at every word. It felt as if I had written them, or M had written them, certainly someone who knew us that well. In some ways this dad had an edge over RP (I can’t believe I’m being disloyal enough to write that) because he was less coercive and calmer, although just as firm. Still, he doesn’t have RP’s playfulness or his lucky-dippy demeanor. But look, it’s no good comparing them because they’re so different; plus one is fictional and the other’s dead.
But I’m attracted to this character of Rip’s, to his unswerving moral compass; to his compassion and firmness which co-exist without conflict, in fact in service of each other; to his persistence; to his even-tempered nature; to his honesty; to his huge dependability. Even as a p.o.v. character, he is focused on his sons and their needs (which makes him perhaps a bit unrealistic?).
I don’t remember if I ever discussed Rip’s “In…” stories with M. I remember discussing “Keene’s” briefly and him saying it wasn’t his thing exactly but that he could see it was mine. He liked a more severe, non-con quality in his stories and fantasies, veering into the sexual. Less of the emotional stuff that I like. I can’t see him being too interested in these two stories whose implement is a very unaesthetic nylon cane/switch. Marky would also find them very wet because there are all these tears, but no marks from the whacking – s-nore, he’d say. Yet, M. would have liked this family, I think, and approved of a lot of it. Would we have been that kind of parents if we’d had kids? I wonder if he ever did read those stories and what he thought. I can’t quite grasp the reality that I’m not ever going to know.
