It will be 1500 years before the invention of a mechanical clock that can chime on the hour.
Maybe someone was giving a sundial a beat to free their souls? Getting caught in the rock ... never mind.
It did prompt me to think about any anachronisms in the Bellairs Corpus. Do any come to mind? Bellairs seemed to have a good eye for keeping things grounded in the early 1950s and Strickland has admitted to researching products to ensure they existed in the established time period (refer to the White Rock Girl).
What about words? I was reminded of one fan who shared her thoughts about the language used in The Whistle, the Grave, and the Ghost (2003). Mrs. Zimmermann reads from Of the Lamia, the account of Father Kemp's travels with Michel d’Anjou:
"...in 1611, d’Anjou went along on a voyage of exploration with a party of French adventurers, and the young Kemp was d’Anjou’s servant. Voyage over, blah, blah, blah, let’s get to the good stuff.” (121)
The complaint?
"[It's] one sentence that has been a pain in my backside ever since I read it. There's no way Mrs. Zimmermann in the 1950's would ever say blah, blah, blah. I felt like Elaine from Seinfeld was being channeled for a brief moment. I kept waiting for her to then say, '...and then Anjou goes on, yada, yada, yada...'"
Another fan responed:
"An anachronism is one thing, but in my opinion, this was bad lazy writing on Strickland's part. I'm all for making characters more accessible to readers, but within limits."
Your thoughts? Would these characters ever say blah - or even yada? Does using such syntax interrupt the tone of the story? That said, while I personally have no issue with fan fiction, what little Bellairsian-inspired stories I’ve come across might sound better if authors pay closer attention to how what was being said.
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