Who’s Telling the Story: Quentin Blake or Roald Dahl?

At the point of writing this blog, Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake are practically synonymous. But is their work always harmonious? 

By the time they begin working together (1976, ahead of the 1978 publication of The Enormous Crocodile), they are individually established in the children’s literature sphere. Both became even more popular as time went on, cementing their position as giants in industry; Quentin Blake has illustrated for big-name writers like John Yeoman, Michael Rosen, David Walliams as well as authoring around 40 books himself; Dahl wrote over 80 adult short stories and 20 children’s texts. But it is their collaboration which appears to be career-defining for both men. I personally feel that Dahl and Blake are one of the most powerful author/illustrator duos, and struggled to think of other examples – Nick Sharratt & Jacqueline Wilson and A.A. Milne & E.H. Shepard stood out. Would love to hear about others!

They worked on 10 texts while Dahl was alive and after his death in 1991 Blake was invited to illustrate the other texts from Dahl’s bibliography. Most editions not illustrated by Blake were allowed to go out of print – and by 1996 Blake had re-illustrated all of the works published before they began working together. I want to briefly look at three select texts from early on in their partnership: The Enormous Crocodile (1978) because it is their first time working together; The BFG (1982) because this is where their relationship evolved; Dirty Beasts (1983) because it is the first text Blake is invited to re-illustrate.

It’s in this way that some tension arises from their collaboration: does Blake have more authority over these texts, given that not only are all of Dahl’s children’s books accompanied by Blake’s illustrations, but because this has spread into the branding and marketing of Dahl’s books?

“Roald was a very different sort of person from me, and in a way that was good…because if you’re a double act, you don’t want to be two versions of the same person. There is that contrast, and slight sort of tension.”
Quentin Blake

The Enormous Crocodile

Even using these three screenshots of covers over the years, you can see the Dahl/Blake dynamic evolving. In the first run, Blake’s name is almost a footer, and the phrase “with pictures by” suggests the secondary nature of the illustration to the text, as though the words don’t require the illustrations. The second cover confines Blake to the cartoon-style box, but it is now “illustrated by” Blake, suggesting a combination of word and image rather than a separation. In the third example, the Quentin Blake Font is now used for both Blake’s name and the title of the text, with Dahl in a separate banner from the title; to me this suggests the start of the branding efforts for Dahl As Author.

As my PhD is all about Dahl, I have naturally read a great many of the biographies. Jeremy Treglown and Donald Sturrock both make interesting comments about the relationship between Dahl’s words and Blake’s images…

Treglown writes that “Quentin Blake’s illustrations turn the crocodile into an amiably incompetent character” (210). Sturrock writes that “Blake’s colourful, witty, yet slightly dangerous illustrations were a sparkling counterpoint to Roald anarchic description of a greedy, cunning reptile hunting children down in the African jungle” (525). It’s the use of ‘turn’ and ‘counterpoint’ which stand out to me as suggesting that the words and images are butting against each other. Blake is either asserting narrative control over Dahl’s text by changing the characterisation, or he is challenging the control by offering a rebuttal to the text. Both comments, to me, [suggest] that the text’s version of the crocodile is different to the image version. And if we look at some examples, there does appear to be some vying for authority in terms of characterisation and tone – especially in the explicitly violent scenes.

…THE CROCODILE LIES IN WAIT
These two examples are scenes in which the crocodile is trying to disguise himself to trick children to come closer to him, so that he can reach them to eat them. He calls these his “clever tricks”

.

As he lies in wait having disguised himself as a coconut tree, the text says that the crocodile “licked his lips” and “began to dribble with excitement”. The emphasis on the mouth pulls the act of consumption into focus; licking lips and dribbles are tell-tale signifiers of both desire and hunger. 

But in the illustration, the leaves hide his face in such a way that he could be smiling; without the text highlighting the desire, he could well be playing an innocent game of hide-and-seek. The violence of the crocodile’s motivations are specified in the text.

Then the crocodile disguises himself as a park bench, hoping the children will sit on him. The crocodile talks to himself and emphasises the onomatopoeic sounds the children will make in his mouth: “squish, crunch, gollop”. The reader is encouraged to think about the death scene and its violence. But in the illustration, the crocodile’s smiling mouth is closed, notably his closed lips obscure his teeth and thus blur the violence of his children-eating teeth.

In both examples, the illustrations soften or obscure the violence the crocodile seeks to enact. Blake is affects the tone of the character and undermines the textual crocodile’s desire for violence and villainy.

The BFG

Again, some thoughts on the cover design! In the first instance, Blake’s name is underneath the giant’s feet, suggesting that in terms of hierarchy he’s the lowest. Then in the second example, Blake’s name is capitalised (which usually is reserved for Roald Dahl only), which to me [suggests] Blake’s elevated status in relation to the text. Then in the final example, Blake’s name is actually central to the illustration; he is enmeshed in the text and the frobscottle depicted.

This text is their third collaboration – we’re skipping over The Twits (1980) – and marks the start of a new, collaborative phase of their working relationship. Heretofore they had only met in meetings facilitated the publisher, Jonathan Cape, but with BFG they had dinners together and private correspondence – and, importantly, the illustrations began to influence the text such that Dahl revised the giant’s description as a result of Blake’s illustrations.

When Blake first submitted the illustrations for the text, Dahl was unimpressed. In short, they were rejected.

So Dahl invited Blake to dinner, where they discussed the book and how to revise the images. They discussed the movement of the images and how having, faithfully illustrating the textual description, the BFG’s movements were encumbered by his costume. Originally, the BFG wore a leather apron and large boots (you can see these in the illustrations below); after their discussions, Dahl revised the BFG’s description to wear a vest and sandals instead. In a letter to his editor Stephen Roxburgh, he wrote: “I have been working hard with Quentin Blake to make The BFG look more curious and comical…I think we have about got it now and this necessitates a change in my brief description of the clothes he was wearing…” (Sturrock, 527). These changes and their origins suggest that the storytelling within the BFG is a dual, shared endeavour – a complementing of art and text, rather than a ‘counterpoint’.

(As a fun anecdote, the shoes the BFG wears are modelled after a Norwegian pair Dahl himself owned and posted to Blake as inspiration!)

…MEETING THE BFG
Looking at a moment of narrative tension between text and image, the scene in which we are introduced to the BFG reveals their harmony. In the description, the BFG’s costume’s key items are written in capitals (“A GIANT PERSON”, “BLACK CLOAK”, “VERY LONG, THIN TRUMPET”, “LARGE SUITCASE”) – almost like the text is giving instructions to the illustrator, thinking of challenges and interesting items for the illustrator to play with in the image. 

By the end of the second page below, the BFG is opening his briefcase and pouring in the contents to his trumpet, which he uses to spread good dreams – but as we turn the page, the BFG is still, before the actions. While at first this may suggest that the illustration isn’t best placed or even trying to control the reader’s pace, I suggest that the image’s control supplements the narrative tension in the passage. In effect, the image is attempting to encourage the reader to linger in the moment before the BFG is fully revealed; this means the reader is mimicking Sophie (the protagonist) as she peers through her window at midnight at the mysterious being. Blake’s use of dark watercolours help to recreate the darkness of night-time and also encourage the reader to squint to work out what the figure is doing. This creates a shared experience between the reader and Sophie; this would also be heightened if this text was being read as a bedtime story, as it would be darker as they read. Writer and illustrator here work together to build suspense; Blake’s illustration encourages engagement with the scene, and the aforementioned textual checklist means the reader can flick backwards and check that all the items that Sophie has seen are included.

Dirty Beasts

Beginning with the covers, the patterns continues: Blake’s name is initially small, with the illustrations contained within the box; the later edition spreads the illustration over the front and back cover and Blake’s name becomes more central to the illustration, and Dahl’s name dominates the cover with large writing.

This book is the first that Blake was invited to re-illustrate; the book was first published with illustrations by Rosemary Fawcett. Dahl reportedly hated the illustrations, refused to give them out to friends and family, and instructed the ones remaining at the end of the print run be burned instead of sold (Treglown). The reviews of Fawcett’s edition were particularly unfavourable, with one critic suggesting that Fawcett’s illustrations and not Dahl’s poems would give children nightmares. (Yet of course there were positive reviews – one such review said that “The nastiness of [Fawcett’s] pictures is exceptional” [Candida Lycett Green’s review, TLS, 22 July 1983]). Treglown says that “Fawcett does more than justice to Dahl’s ferocity, but not to his humour or underlying traditionalism” (222); this, I believe, speaks to the humour that Blake inejcts into Dahl’s texts (the ‘counterpoint’ which may be needed to dilute some of Dahl’s tendencies for violence). This brings into focus the interpretive acts of an illustrator and the choices they make in regards to tone and amplification of moments. I’d like to look at one poem in particular, though, in which this is not the case – and Blake is the one inserting more overt violence into the text.

…’THE ANTEATER’
When the ant-eater says he’s hungry, his new American owner introduces him to his Aunt (which, in the US, is pronounced with a short ‘a’ like ‘ant’; in the UK, it is pronounced with a longer ‘aah’ sound). The poem relies upon the wordplay between the difference in the English and American pronunciation of the word; a verbally comic poem, it is typical of Dahl’s wordplay (this is something also present in The BFG: he tells Sophie that ‘people from Panama taste like hats’).

In the text, there is little description of the ant-eater’s consumption of the aunt: “then, taking very careful aim/it pounced upon the startled dame/it grabbed her firmly by the hair/& ate her up right then & there”. In this instance, Blake’s illustration is more violent than Dahl’s words, as the image lingers on the moment in between the ant-eater picking up the aunt and eating her. Her face is shocked, almost knowing: does she know what is about to happen to her? The contents of her purse are spilling around her, suggestive of the animal’s force; his eyes are directed towards her in anticipation. He could almost be toying with her, throwing her back and forth before eating her. The lingering means more action can be created and implied. Fawcett’s illustrations are the moments after the ant-eater has finished eating her, and without the text, could be interpreted as a playful image of the ant-eater playing dress-up in a costume box. Fawcett’s illustration could well depict an ant-eater hunting for snacks in the aunt’s purse, not the consumption of the aunt herself. 

So who really has the narrative control in the poem? I posit that this is not just the ‘counterpoint’ of humour to violence seen before in The Enormous Crocodile, but an insertion of violence into the text by the illustration. It’s unclear whether this is a result of the collaboration affecting the illustrative choices Blake makes when working on Dahl’s books, or whether Dahl is glossing over the act of violence to encourage the reader to linger in the accompanying images. As with all poetry, rhythm is important; the poem using rhymes and simple language to move the poem along at pace – thus, it may well be easy to breeze past this important narrative moment when being carried along by the rhythm. 

Throughout their collaboration, Blake and Dahl assert their own authority on the text; Blake includes his personal motifs (spotty bowties and birds being two of them); Dahl with his narrative twists and wordplay. At times their work is truly harmonious, but at times the text and image vie for authority on the story, playing with rhythm and focus. Perhaps this is what brings readers back time and time again: the text is rich enough with word and image that different themes and moments stand out each time.

I’ll be writing a blog soon about how their collaboration continued after Dahl’s death…