My theory is that Silverstein woke up one day and said "How come there aren't any children's books that make you feel like shit? I'll think I'll write one!"
yeah, but it's not like Hans Christian Andersen is a laff riot. my fave: the girl who trod on a loaf. but the giving tree, that shit is just wrong. and mimes make it worse.
Mime + The Giving Tree: two great tastes that taste great together!
Funny coincidence: I was just thinking about SS's "Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too" in the context of a LanguageHat post which mentions Eugene Field's "Wynken, Blynken and Nod".
Anyway, I think you're right about it being a metaphor for never-failing abundant (self-sacrificial) love, whether of God or just those trying to emulate him.
I don't understand all the hate on this book -- I remember thinking it was nice/touching as a kid. I haven't read it in 20+ years, so maybe I'm forgetting something (though the plot is pretty simple, IIRC).
Yeah the subtext of that book (as I remember it) is that the tree is laying a guilt trip on the man, is why he can't ever really feel at peace til he has used up the tree and himself. Yes, sexist.
1: Somebody gave us a pretty non-descript Disney book when Keegan was a baby that was meant to teach shapes. Baby Mickey has lost his ball and his friends are helping him look for it. Baby Goofy brings a boat, but that not it, the boat is a triangle, etc. Goes through all the shapes until they find the ball and everybody's happy and the friends go home.
Keegan would bring that book to be read to him frequently and every single time would burst into tears at the end of it because all of Baby Mickey's friends had gone away and now he was alone.
15: Which part? Lewis depiction of all those nasty working-class atheists spending eternity in locked in a midden of their own minds, the train wreck that lets everyone (except Susan) go to Heaven tra-la-la, or the problem of Susan itself?
House of Stairs gave me nightmares, but that's a book for a slightly older audience.
Shel Silverstein was a songwriter too who wrote mostly country songs, including "A Boy Named Sue". He was the brains behind "Dr. Hook". He lived in the Playboy mansion and did a lot of writing for Playboy, starting in 1956. Seems to have been a very odd fish.
yeah, I've always thought Silverstein was a sick, sick fuck for writing that book.
I remember a friend of mine telling me that she dumped a boyfriend early on because he gave her a copy of it. Good move; if his views on romance are based on that book, better to get shut of him right now.
Coincidentally, I just re-read The Giving Tree about a week ago in the waiting area of a local barbershop while waiting for a haircut. The tree doesn't try to guilt trip the boy, she just keeps on giving and giving until finally the sociopathic boy, now an old man, has no other choice but to spend his final days sitting on her stump. And this makes her happy.
I like a lot of SS's other books, but this one, not so much.
by the way, all this uncertainty about the right interpretation (is it environmentalism? is it God?)--drop that stuff.
SS made it clear with just one word: her.
That immediately made it an issue in gender politics. And that's what he intended: a depiction of das ewige Weibliche in all of its self-sacrificing, masochistic glory.
Sick fuck.
And, yeah, I haven't forgiven Lewis for his treatment of Susan, either. It's a legacy from Lewis Carroll, really: male British authors of childrens fiction are okay with girls, sorta, as long as they're *really* pre-pubescent.
And as long as they know their place. Then they're even allowed to be feisty now and then, for contrast. But not too much.
Even E. Nesbit, bless her heart, is more fair to her boys than her girls. Conversely, Arthur Ransome did pretty well by the Blackett girls. Pretty well for a male British author, anyhow.
The story would have been a little different if instead of a train wreck, the children had been eaten by a lion in a zoo whom they had mistaken for Aslan and tried to get close to.
16: I hate that book. Every time I read it to Thing 1 and Thing 2, I made a mental note to be sure and instill in them a deep hatred of the Disney Corporation later on.
I always thought of The Giving Tree as an illustration of the Wallace Stevens line, "The world is ugly and the people are sad." You know, for kids.
The ultimate number one awful story? The Red Balloon. I saw that when I was nine or so, and I remember thinking "OH MY GOD! THEY JUST MURDERED HIS BEST FRIEND!" Just the thought of it fills me with dread.
Oh, I've got nothing but love for St.-Ex. He was cool. But for some reason The Little Prince really creeped me out when I was a kid. There was something ghostly about him. Maybe it was the baobab trees. I can't even remember now. But I still feel a slight thrill of disgust whenever I see the book.
Man, threads like this make me feel unutterably white-bread and lame. All the books people are mentioning (except the Disney one about shapes and the Fox & Hound, both of which are previously unknown to me) are cherished childhood memories. I mean I had a pretty unhappy time of it as a kid but books like "The Red Balloon" and "The Little Prince" and Narnia were uplifting. But now I come to find out the Intelliwhatsitia despises them and by extension me.
stras--yeah, that was a slightly redeeming bit of universalism peeking out around the edges of Lewis' theology.
But not too much. Point being, it is easier for a worshiper of Baal to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a pubescent girl. Esp. one who actually *likes* lipstick.
Oh yeah, Red Balloon--horrible, black, depression. Screening that film for children is just pure child abuse.
Fact is, if you have the emotional stability of a happy 40 year old and a psychic keel deeper than a racing yacht's, Red Balloon and all ain't going to rock you and shock you.
It's no hit on you to say that most infants are just a lot more susceptible than you were.
But not too much. Point being, it is easier for a worshiper of Baal to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a pubescent girl. Esp. one who actually *likes* lipstick.
Yeah, that's what gets me. The key to eternal life is following rigid, puritanical purity codes - and the good part is supposed to be that they're the same rigid, puritanical purity codes for every race, color and creed!
The ending was always the worst part, though, because it's supposed to be this joyously happy ending, but they're all dead and Narnia is destroyed and they'll never see Susan again. I mean, what the hell?
Books that made me feel like shit, in chronological order:
Pale Green Pants With Nobody Inside Them The Last Battle The Great Gilly Hopkins
That last one takes the cake. I love it, but it really is kind of mindboggling that someone wrote a children's book about a girl who is at least partially to blame (to the extent that children can be to blame for anything) for her own desolation and loneliness. And there isn't any reprieve, or redemption, or suggestion that things might look up in a few years. The book just ends.
Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan", for those who are interested; I suspect the case of Susan is one of the major contributing factors in Pullman's decision to write "His Dark Materials".
42: Yeah, I was worried that was going to be a spoiler for someone, but I figured there was a 50-year exemption rule.
I mean I had a pretty unhappy time of it as a kid but books like "The Red Balloon" and "The Little Prince" and Narnia were uplifting. But now I come to find out the Intelliwhatsitia despises them and by extension me.
I loved the Narnia books as a kid, but The Last Battle really, really used to depress me even then, and looking back there's a lot of screwed-up stuff in most of them.
What's wrong with The Red Balloon, other than that it's sad?
What's wrong with The Red Balloon, other than that it's sad?
Well, first there's the vicious murder of the title character, and then all the other balloons come and whisk Pascal away, which suggested to me that the world is a horrible, lonely, violent place where the best you can hope for is to go to heaven following some catastrophic, soul-rending sacrifice. But then, I was a sensitive kid.
42: The two big hits were "Boy Named Sue" (Johny Cash, of course) and "One's On the Way" (Loretta Lynn).
Silverstein also wrote "25 Minutes to Go," which is about a hanging, also recorded by Johnny Cash. And "Boa Constrictor," which is a country song only because it was recorded by Cash.
I agree with Kid Bitzer that The Giving Tree is about gender politics--it has to be, even if it wasn't intended as such, because self sacrifice is so gendered a concept.
I'm not sure that TGT is making a misogynist statement, though, because it is not clear to me that Silverstein is endorsing anyone's behavior here. He is depicting a relationship where one person only gives, and the other person only takes. We know such relationships exist. If Silverstein is saying anything about this relationship, he is saying something negative about it, because he makes you feel so sad for the tree.
When I read it to my kids, I use it as a negative example. You mother is like this tree; don't be like the boy.
58: Is there no value in children's stories that show the world as a horrible, lonely, violent place, but one in which hope still exists? I don't think the movie is presenting that hope in as explicitly Christian a package as you seem to think, either: the balloon doesn't die to atone or save the boy; the boy is rewarded for his kindness with the kindness of others (in this case, the kindness of a bunch of other magical balloons).
Red Balloon--basically it's Lord of the Flies in French. Maybe that's useful--it's good to learn early on that if you put a lot of boys in a pack, they all turn into Hutus.
You know, Bush is always driveling on about these universal human values. And he's right about that stuff. It's good to learn early on that, no matter what their accent is, no matter whether they are French villagers, British public school boys, or AIDS-infested Africans, if you put boys in a pack, they will seek out and destroy objects of beauty and of value.
And JMcQ is right that the Red Balloon is made much worse by the salvation at the end. It's enough to make a confirmed Nietzschean out of anyone--the afterlife as slim, implausible consolation for powerless and abuse at the hands of toddlers without conscience.
(Toddlers Without Conscience actually sounds like a good match for Doctors Without Borders. In a way.)
I think I mentioned on a previous thread that I remembered about three things from the Narnia books: the bit in Dawn Treader where Lucy casts the magic spell and hears her friends being mean to her, the bit (in Horse and His Boy?) where Aslan claws the princess across her back to mimc the whipping that the slave got because she escaped, and how much I hated the ending, both on "They're all dead!" and "Susan got totally screwed over" grounds.
Is it spoiling to reveal an awful ending? I kind of wish someone had told me the ending of His Dark Materials so I could not have bothered with the last book.
You know what book I don't get? Green Eggs and Ham. I wouldn't eat those eggs either, they're fucking green! What the hell has to happen to an egg before it turns green? And how did that spread to the ham? And what kind of sociopath keeps pushing obviously diseased food on your after you have turned it down a billion times?
No, I won't eat them on a train! The goddamn train doesn't change the fact that those eggs are fucking green, and there's no fucking way I'm going to eat a goddamn green egg. What, are you trying to give me botulism or e-coli or something.
surely the message is the anti-environmentalist one that trees, fundamentally, don't mind being cut down? (and that presumably and plausibly their brain and ability to feel pain is in the root-system, meaning that the above-ground part of the tree is equivalent to hair or fingernails).
Would you like to come over and read to my children for five or six hours? Because, you know, they are totally up for being read to for that long. I honestly can't read to them for more than a half hour at a stretch before I just get too sleepy.
But if you are up for reading, we can always use more readers.
Don't get me wrong, sj, I'm all for darkness in children's books/films, but I got no sense of hope from The Red Balloon. I mean, his best fucking friend. And then all the other balloons are like, the world sucks, let's get you out of here.
I love reading to my kids, which is a good thing, considering that it's just about the only reading I get to do these days.
75: Totally man, I'd love to come up to the North Country and reading to your kids would be the perfect excuse. (For some values of "perfec".) Time alas does not permit such a journey right now.
The rough part about reading to Caroline is that if you stop reading for just a second--for instance because it is four AM, and she woke you up and demanded you read to her and you just fell asleep again--she starts poking you and yelling "Wead! Wead!"
Her R's still sound like W's, and she still prefers one word commands, despite all our lessons about politeness, so all I ever hear is "Wead! Wead!"
I get the damn phrase in my head. If there is something I need to read for work, I start to hear an irate three year old saying “Wead! Wead!”
I didn't like Dr. Seuss books as a kid because I thought the illustrations were so horrendously ugly (but I did like The Lorax).
We had The Red Balloon and I loved it because of the photographs. I read it a million times yet I have no memory of it at all (except for the part when he meets a little girl on the street who's wearing all white and carrying a blue balloon). I don't remember being depressed by it whatsoever.
The Red Balloon photographs are as da says, a treasure. I also think this about the photographs in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, another Cherished Childhood Memory for which you all despise me.
80: My daughters didn't get depressed by it either, apparently. We had some tired old balloons lying around a couple of days after a party, and the girls would proclaim "I'm the mean boy" and stomp on them.
I don't think you're allowed to substitute "Kobe!" for "100!" when it's not basketball season, Clownae. It's like wearing white after labor day, or something.
Total weirdness -- 103 came through on the RSS feed with a malformed link to the holder of Guiness Record for bug-eyed staring; no such malformed link is included in the comment on unfogged.com though.
Giving Tree and Narnia both suck. OTOH, the Red Balloon (which I knew first as a movie) always made me terribly sad, but in a good way. It just seemed to me that yes, these things happen, and that's a true but awful thing about the world.
I never read The Giving Tree to my kid. I just read it online. Not exactly my idea of a good relationship. I mean, hell, would the offer of a little watering and some fertiliser have been beyond the reach of the boy/ man?? Tree exploiter!
My son's favourite you've-only-read-it-20-times book was King Bidgood's in the Bathtub.
What I got out of the Narnia novels: There's a scene where one of the Calormene soldiers does A Good Thing. Aslan says something on the lines of 'when you do good, it's always in my name, when you do evil, it's always in Tash's name, no matter what you say it is.' I think that solidified my secular philosophy [all religion is bunk], which had been pretty much got to the gel state after living in the Middle East. There's nothing like seeing the results of a religious war to make one into a five-year-old cynic, especially when one still bears the scar from the flying debris of a grenade attack.
AND that fact that it's soon going to be an animated movie is likely terrible, terrible news. I love that book too much to see its characters splashed on the sides of Burger King kid's meals.
Fuck Narnia. Fuck Narnia and feed Narnia fishheads.
I was never able to make myself read the series. I'd read Tolkien by the time I was 9 or 10, and Narnia was so obviously half assed that I'd always quit in disgust.
Writers who have potential but decide to ignore shit like plot and consistency within their created worlds just to beat us to death with their message need a beating. (Terry Goodkind, I'm looking at you.)
(I actually really enjoyed the Narnia books as a child and am rather sentimentally attached to them. But not in a way that involves my wanting to argue that all of you are wrong about them.)
You know what's really good? The Chronicles of Prydain. Loved those as a kid.
You people are so confused. Jacob Have I Loved is objectively the best children's book ever, though The Bronze Bow competes. It's all about the naturalism.
First, Phantom Tollbooth is a "young reader" book, not a children's book (for ages 8-12ish vs. under 5). They're totally different animals. That being said, Amazon.com reviewers (the most objective possible measure) have given WTWTA a pure 5-stars, while TPT comes in with a mediocre 4.5.
Oh, well if you're going to draw those kinds of distinctions. I think of all the books I read as a child, unless they were grownup books, as children's books.
I once read The Ship's Cat to my first-grade class. The teacher was mighty embarrassed when I got to the part about "Jesuitical knavery," but I doubt any of the kids understood what was going on (least of all me).
128- Well, it is objectively better anyway, as the amazon reviews testify. [The same reviewers who collectively voted Ayn Rand the greatest author in history, I might add. Can their authoritative wisdom be contested?] But the only distinction I'm thinking of is between books that a child would typically read vs. have read to them. TPT looks like it a has a lot of words, in contrast to TGT or WTWTA. That's a meaningful difference, right? I'm not trying to create any very fine distinctions.
129- maybe. I don't know. I've never heard of it before now.
119 et seq.: I've probably bragged about this before, but I (and several other people) painted an 8'x10' mural of the Phantom Tollbooth map on a staircase wall at my MIT coop.
132 - No, no. The Phantom Tollbooth is a fun read. I keep a copy at work.
The Prydain books hold up to adult reading. I went back to them a year ago; simple plot, but the books are what you remember.
I was mesmerized by Jacob Have I Loved, but think it is pretty messed up. I re-read that recently too and was even more disturbed. I wouldn't even nominate it for best children's book ever.
Agreed, both the Prydain books and the Phantom Tollbooth hold up just fine. As does Young Adult Novel, for that matter.
I'm right there with LB on the Narnia books, both in terms of nostalgic fondness, and not feeling any need to defend them. What I really, REALLY don't want to try to defend, though, is my weird attachment to Lewis' profoundly problematic Out of the Silent Planet trilogy.
*Spoilers for Jacob Have I Loved, which you shouldn't read anyway.*
This is from memory, so I'll believe you if you tell me I have details wrong. But I was really creeped out by her attraction to the older-captain-guy and how they spent all that time together. And there was the constant comparison to her more beautiful twin, which I'm sorta remembering that the captain also participated in. The whole book was all dismal and grey and then she ended up living some compromise life, right?
You know, though, I am the wrong audience for naturalism. I like when underdogs overcome adversity and then it all turns out for the best despite difficulties.
***
I loved the Narnia books, and was disappointed when I re-read them. I can't defend them to grown-ups, but would still give them to any kid.
I never read the Narnia books as a kid, though knew the story of TLTWATW from a cartoon version. (Come to think of it, to my recollection I never really read anything as a kid, other than as-assigned for school. Sad.) That's the only one I'm familiar with to this day. I've heard very mixed things about them and don't know whether or not I should get them for my kid.
LB -- I mentioned to my friend Ed a little while back that the young'un and I are reading The Book of Three, and he said "Oh with Taran Wanderer? Those books totally fucked me up as a child, it took years to recover." His complaint was that they made it seem like everything you ever do or be in life was fated to happen, that you had to fulfil a particular destiny. (Also his upbringing was Mormon, I don't know if that plays into it.)
131, 134: Hey wait! How did I forget about my Gashlycrumb Tinies poster? Where is it? I was the one who ate lye by mistake.
I still have my Nutshell Library from when I was a kid, and now my daughters love it, especially Pierre. Of course, books about how not to behave teach toddlers exactly those behaviors they're trying to discourage, so the girls like to sit backwards in their chairs and pretend to pour syrup in their hair.
146: Naah. The whole point of the series, really, is that our preconceived notions of how we want things to to turn out is usually wrong, and the sign of being an adult is the ability to make the best of things and deal with what comes. They're great books for an eight year old (particularly a boy, as the girl-lessons happen entirely offstage), and I think it really got its roots into me in a way that the ethical brainwashing of Narnia didn't.
Isn't there technically speaking one of those which is among the best evar and then a bunch which are kinda lame? I guess on average the whole series is vera vera good but still.
I believe the third one (That Hideous Strength?) features a female English graduate student writing on Donne (ha ha, we Oxford dons snicker, as we know only uncreative dilettantes write on Donne!), but by the end of the book, she's realized that that's going against nature for her to think and so resigns herself happily to being female.
Lewis is a twit, but more importantly, his writing suffers from needing to beat the reader over the head with analogies and jolly-good-fellowship. His idea of an exciting adventure is being stuck in Narnia -- without sandwiches!
Lloyd Alexander's Prydain holds up entirely well to adult readers. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to young readers. The Phantom Tollbooth is objectively perfect, as well.
I refuse to all my early memories of adoring Narnia to be soiled by your... legitimate criticisms. *despair*
The gender politics all through That Hideous Strength are the big problem, yes. Jane's trajectory -- which is quite compellingly, even brilliantly written -- is to learn how to be a good, obedient wife and to stop pretending to be an academic and face the fact that really she likes buying hats and being obedient. Plus incidentally at the end you learn that she and Mark spoiled one of mankind's best hopes for happiness and peace by using birth control. The worst and best thing about it is that her path to salvation through good obedient wifedom is rendered both seductive and surprisingly interesting. The book's idea of what women ought to be is dreadful, but the way that it treats the domestic and traditional female spheres with real attention and seriousness is actually, weirdly... well, I sure don't actually want to say feminist, but strangely laudable.
Oh, and there's an amazingly awful sadistic lesbian fascist cop lady.
Oops, I guess I was sort of defending it there. But I want to be clear: the fact that I like a book that is all about (or, at least, half about) getting over your silly idea that you should think and resigning yourself to being female makes me feel very creepy.
It is an elevation of the traditional feminine roles; it's clear that it valued them. Placing them on a pedestal, even, but it's a pedestal inside a comfy gilded cage.
Another vote here for Pinkwater. Young Adult Novel, already mentioned, but also Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, Slaves of Spiegel, and The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death.
My kids love them and talk about them a lot, even after a few years have passed. I think my son has re-read them several times, and can regale you with what goes on and how things are described.
Well, I think one of the things that's interesting there is that the Pilgrim's Progresses of Mark and Jane alike are told as Big Stories that hinge on very mundane details and small choices. I think that's admirable, because it represents a real adherence to the theological points Lewis cares about, instead of throwing it over in favor of rah-rah jolly good times with shiny swordplay. I think it's good writing, too, in that it makes those mundanities compelling. And I think that the elevation of the domestic there isn't quite on a pedestal in a comfy, gilded cage -- for one thing, nothing in That Hideous Strength is nearly as comfy as in any of the Narnia books (even allowing for the latter's being written for children), and for another, a lot of it seems to come from a place of greater real knowledge and appreciation of domestic detail. Wasn't THS written after Lewis' marriage?
So I think in any number of ways, it's his finest writing, but that that makes it that much more of a bummer that it boils down to something so unfortunate. (Now I'm thinking of how Camilla Denniston isn't allowed to go out to the dangerous wood in search of Merlin because Britain needs her womb. I mean, REALLY.)
The Oz book I identified with was The Marvelous Land of Oz where Tip, a boy, is discovered to be Ozma, the ensorcelled princess of Oz. She resents having to give up boy stuff for fancy dresses and girly things. I empathised completely. On the other hand, I thought General Jinjur's army was silly.
Dianna Wynne Jones has written a whole lot of great books; the Kid liked Charmed Life best. He's had an odd exposure to kids' books, as I did my master's thesis on British children's fantasy. He kept confusing "Psamead" with "Sam I Am".
Young Adult Novel, already mentioned, but also Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, Slaves of Spiegel, and The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death.
<ronco>Conveniently collected in a single volume, Five Novels. Operators are standing by!</ronco>
Ms Wynne Jones is fabulous. Shame about what Miyazaki took away from Howl's Moving Castle, as I would have thought that he would have enjoyed the spunky feminism and not turned it into a formulaic anti-war tract.
This is from memory, so I'll believe you if you tell me I have details wrong. But I was really creeped out by her attraction to the older-captain-guy and how they spent all that time together. And there was the constant comparison to her more beautiful twin, which I'm sorta remembering that the captain also participated in. The whole book was all dismal and grey and then she ended up living some compromise life, right?
You know, though, I am the wrong audience for naturalism. I like when underdogs overcome adversity and then it all turns out for the best despite difficulties.
I went back and reviewed some plot details by perusing the Amazon reviews. Her crush on the captain is certainly weird, but it's not like it's either consummated or God forbid consummated and then celebrated for being so. I think teenage girls and boys, and people in general, develop weird passions for bizarre objects, and it's great to write about that in a sympathetic way for children. It was especially understandable given her situation; she was so totally socially isolated precisely at the time she was having a sexual awakening that it kind of makes sense that she would fixate on the one person who was giving her a sense of power and freedom by introducing her to her own ablities as a fisherwoman.
And yeah, the whole point of the book is that she's in the shadow of her beautiful twin, and it's extremely unpleasant and constricting for her, but she doesn't lead a compromised life at the end--she becomes a doctor or a nurse depending on which Amazon review you read, and in the end delivers twin babies, sees that one of them is weaker and more frail, and is forced to care for the weaker while she puts the stronger one aside, and she realizes for the first time what other people have told her--that some, though not all, of what she experienced as abandomnent was actually a recognition that she was strong. I think, not having the book in front of me, that you could make a case that this is kind of fucked--I mean, who is strong and who is weak really, Louise certainly felt lonely enough and her family could have spared the resources for both children, if not in money, in love, and also it's slightly conveniently cliched that the pretty girl who was the good singer was also physically ill--it's an easy amalgamation of femminess and debility to sort of get around the question of just why it is Caroline is so weak so it's not just blond hair that makes her so, but on the other hand the book, as I remember, that Louise wasn't seriously wronged in some ways, just that she might not have understood what Caroline suffered at all times, and the main point is that what can look to you like ease and favor isn't necessarily, and you can fail to know someone as close to you even as your own twin sister. And the very end of the book (as I recall) is her hearing the sound of her sister singing as she walks through the night and being able to recognize it as beautiful for the first time. It's really a book about overcoming solipsism.
*************END SPOILERS**********************
I do rather like naturalism, especially for children. I always liked my characters suffering, and not in a way that any pterodactyl would rescue them from, even when I was nine. Everyone should read Jacob Have I Loved
That Hideous Strength also features non-representational art being used as a Satanic recruiting tool.
Which is perfectly in keeping with the book's premise that modernism itself is a vast demonic conspiracy. It may be better-written and more entertaining than most of the books in the Christian paranoia genre (see for example This Present Darkness, where public school officials are possessed by demons who fiendishly conspire to indoctrinate children in the dark arts of evolutionary theory, sex education, and transcendental meditation), but it's still wildly overwrought and shlocky in a way that makes it impossible for me to appreciate.
Most of the Narnia stuff, at least, still works pretty well as children's fantasy, even under the layers of religious symbolism. The grossly conservative gender politics is harder to get around, obviously. I probably can't rationally justify my continued fondness for Narnia, and even one of my favorite scenes from my favorite one (Puddleglum fighting the Emerald Queen's hypnosis) turns out to be a thinly-veiled screed against materialism in retrospect. But there you have it.
Pinkwater! Lizard Music might be one of my favorite books in the universe. I was Pinkwater-deprived as a child, and only introduced to him relatively late in life by a Pinkwater-loving friend, but I've decided to make up for this by feeding them to my young nieces and nephews.
165 - Don't read it! There's no pterodactyl to save everyone in the end! There isn't a contest that they win by banding together, so that all their strengths contribute and they learn to appreciate each other FOR their differences! Things just happen and then they just adapt. Sometimes, it is ambiguous! Or sad! Don't read it! There's no point!
I love C.S. Lewis, but I have to admit that Cala's comment in 154 ("His idea of an exciting adventure is being stuck in Narnia -- without sandwiches!") is devastating.
Freaky kids book to make toddlers weep: Nintje/Miffy, Dutch antecedent to Hello Kitty. In which Mr. & Mrs. Rabbit enjoy gardening and shopping respectively (ugh), but are sadly childless. Until an angel (!) appears and tells them that that Nintje will arrive. Then the animals show up. But cows and chickens can't play with newborn Christ-analogues, so they have to leave. And the family goes to bed. And my child cries, and begs us to read it again.
Had to hide that motherfucker.
79: Wow, I hadn't appreciated how nice "Pease read the book pease" is until I heard the alternative.
As always, commenting last on a dead thread... but still, try Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang out on your kids. It's like a young child's precursor to Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events.
count me among the deeply conflicted narnia-lovers.
Would we like them so much if they hadn't got to us early? Is it just that they were our first exposure to the genre?
But, yeah, rereading doesn't flatter them.
Hey, among my favorite picture-books is a series by Tim Wynne-Jones: Zoom, Zoom Away, and Zoom Upstream. About a talking cat and his hubba-hubba friend Maria. Gorgeous drawings, and some of the most beautifully laconic, lapidary dialogue this side of Mamet. (not so many f-words, luckily).
Anyone know if Tim is related to Dianne W-J?
Oh, and can't forget Maira Kalman. 'Max in Love' is pure genius.
Pinkwater... I was given The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death when I was a kid, and tried to read it as a pulp adventure fiction, which left me turned off of Pinkwater for a good long while. Didn't really get him until I read the five novels collection when I was 25. Over and over again. I probably would have reacted better to Young Adult Novel, which didn't have any of the slightly confusing trappings of science fiction.
Lewis: Till We Have Faces (his retelling of the Psyche myth) is a very good book. Never read the Space Trilogy.
I made myself quite unpopular with the teachers in Oklahoma when they were encouraging us to read those Prydain books, because I had been taught the Mabinogion (the series of Welsh folk tales that they are ripped off from) in school in Wales the previous year and could not be stopped from explaining what a travesty they were. I have no idea of their merits as books but it really was quite irritating to my ten-year-old Nashie self. It didn't help that my main complaint about the books is that they tended to leave out the massacres and rapes in the original.
171: One of the Dutch Nijntje/Miffy books has her grandmother dying, complete with dead body. You can tell she's dead because her eyes are little Xs. In the end Nijntje is happy because she gets to put flowers on the grave.
I love the narnia books despite everything. I remember once when I was 7 and had already read the lion the witch and the wardrobe a million times I decided to see how quickly I could read it if I went as fast as possible...30 minutes! I think it might take me longer now. the prydain books (that's the black cauldron etc., right?) are more problematic than you remember princess eilonwy is actually an extraordinarily passive figure. I too find the lewis trilogy strangely appealing. really, though, for depressing kids stories HC anderson wins the prize. it's one of the cornerstones in my hatred of disney that they turned the little mermaid into some bullshit razzle dazzle with cheerful negro crabs. where's the part with how it's like walking on knife blades?
cala's comment on the missing sandwiches in narnia is devastating indeed--very good snark
It wins her a +15 snark-mistress, and means she will prevail in any contest with an opponent armed only with High Church Anglican Earnestness, provided they have an HCAE rating of less than +30. (Luckily no one has ever received a rating over +10. and yes I know he was a papist, but the mind-rays are pure anglican.)
But here's the thing: the juxtaposition of alternate worlds and missing sandwiches--the fabulous and domestic--that was actually a brilliant invention when E. Nesbit first came up with it. (Did I mention she was the greatest children's author of all time?)
It's the way to make magic more magical, not less, more vivid, because you can see it happening to kids like you, right here in a life like your own life.
When the kids meet the psammead, their reaction modulates from wonder and astonishment very quickly into negotiating with a new, caricature adult--a very powerful, very vain grownup (and here's the crucial bit) who can be manipulated with ordinary methods available to kids, like wheedling and flattering.
If it was all fantastic strangeness and no missing sandwiches, there'd be no way for the kid to buy in. (How many kids thrill to the myths of William Blake? How did Pullman adopt them to try to get their buy in?)
Sure, it can be twee and cloying, but in Nesbit's hands it is genius. And yes, she is the greatest author of children's books of all time.
I'm not denying that the juxtaposition of the fantastic and the mundane is a great way to draw children into literaure. I'm denying that Lewis it did it particularly well.
I also think it's much older than Nesbitt. Or at least there's then another reason that fairy tales generally introduce the Hero as the youngest son of the poor but honest woodcutter who defeats the evil goblins/witch queen/monster with pluck, hard work, and luck.
I hated Narnia with a passion when I was a kid, because I felt it was dishonest in a way I couldn't put my finger on at the time, but in retrospect I think was down to a feeling that the whole scenarion failed as an allegory of the Christian story, so that it didn't work for me either as an adventure (too contrived) or as religious propaganda.
I entirely endorse the kid's plug for Nesbit, though.
But here's the thing: the juxtaposition of alternate worlds and missing sandwiches--the fabulous and domestic--that was actually a brilliant invention when E. Nesbit first came up with it. (Did I mention she was the greatest children's author of all time?)
Oh, absolutely. Although it's a shame that her domesticity -- the groundedness in detail -- makes her somewhat less accessible to modern kids. I found The Story Of The Amulet in third grade or so, and loved it, but was completely lost and confused in the normal bits that happened in London. I think that was the right age to read the book if I'd had the background for it, but I had an easier time with the rest of her books that I didn't come across until I was older and knew a little more about the period.
I think it might take me longer now. the prydain books (that's the black cauldron etc., right?) are more problematic than you remember princess eilonwy is actually an extraordinarily passive figure.
Yeah. She's described as powerful and independent, but gets very little time actually as the focus of the book. I still loved them, I just identified with Taran.
185: I read all those books around age 10, and there were about 500 things that I had to ask my parents what were, and they knew about half of them (because my mom had read all 145,000 Wodehouse books and books about royal history). None of us were able to understand what was so funny about confusing the words "antiquary" and "antiquity", though.
I feel like it's not exactly that Eilonwy is passive, but that her vigor is almost all offstage, as per 149. Like hey, maybe there's some Shadow Chronicles of Prydain where we actually get to see all of her interesting development and ass-kicking. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference, though.
Speaking of children's literature, much of Oxford around Exeter college has been surrounded by film crews the past few days. They're making the first film from the Pullman trilogy (Northern Lights/the Golden Whatever)..
Kiki is strongly recommended by everybody at the Clownæ house. The young'un and I liked Spirited Away a lot, if not quite as much; Mrs. Clown&aelg; was not too enthusiastic about it.
Didn't like Kiki at all. Howl's is pretty good. Spirited Away is great. Somehow I don't really remember Princess -- I think I feel asleep or something.
It must kill Apo to have the power to win so readily within his grasp. He could easily just un-archive the innocence thread, leave a final, glorious comment, and then seal it back up forever. I assume only his magnanimity and greatness of soul have prevented him.
Also, I am in awe of the technical prowess that produced 1435 and 1436.
It must kill Apo to have the power to win so readily within his grasp. He could easily just un-archive the innocence thread, leave a final, glorious comment, and then seal it back up forever. I assume only his magnanimity and greatness of soul have prevented him.
Actually, he couldn't, for two reasons:
1. Un-archiving a thread is not as simple as you might think.
2. I put some perl in the MT code that checks to see if you're leaving a comment on Innocence, and if you are displays a snarky message saying that I've won.
218: really, JM, I won it, for while I did not leave the last comment, I am lord and master over the prospect of further last comments.
Indeed, before it was archived, the message that you got when you tried to leave a comment was "Sorry, wolfson won". And the text of your comment was changed to "I submit to wolfson's authority". And your name to "A humble peon".
Good thing I wasn't around for a 3 o'clock beating - I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I'm hoping the Ahem: Innocence link will provide some clue, but it's taking an awful long time to load. That's a bad sign. Ah, there it is... and an awful long thing it is too.
As to the Miyazaki films, there's not one that my kids don't thrill to. Highly recommended!
BTW LB, on the subject of with whom to identify when reading of Prydain, throughout Book of 3 and Black Cauldron, my young daughter has been identifying with Gurgi -- I'm so proud...
On the subject of Kiki vs. Spirited, she says to tell you "I like both."
224 -- totally -- the first thing she noticed about him is that like Elmo, he refers to himself in the third person. She decided Elmo and Gurgi should get married -- they are both boys but "they can have a boy family, and no girls allowed".
My parents didn't believe in Sesame Street. And it was one of the weaker children's television shows on when our kids were little, so they didn't watch much either. There's nothing missing in a life without Sesame Street.
Woo-hoo! BTW Teo, I am curious to know whether my description of Mark Rubinfine's take on the Judaic experience as being like yours comes through in the bit I excerpt. -- Rereading my excerpt I am not so sure -- but in the context of the book the resemblance is striking.
I haven't read the book, so I don't know how the excerpt you quoted fits into the rest of the story, but it's definitely typical of a certain kind of attitude toward Judaism. I would need more information to know if it's precisely the same attitude I have (it probably isn't, actually).
Well the first part is about 4 friends who have various relationships with Judaism, Alex-Li Tandem (main character of the book) is an atheist and neglectful of observance, Mark is a rabbi but does not believe strongly in God, Adam is a mystic and kabbalist, and Joseph is -- not sure, he's a bit of a cipher -- but he's definitely on Mark's side in terms of chiding Alex-Li to be more observant -- and he interacts with Adam in Adam's visionary mode -- but he seems to be an atheist. But I'm not sure about him, I'll need to reread it to get what's going on with him.
My theory is that Silverstein woke up one day and said "How come there aren't any children's books that make you feel like shit? I'll think I'll write one!"
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 3:09 AM
yeah, but it's not like Hans Christian Andersen is a laff riot. my fave: the girl who trod on a loaf. but the giving tree, that shit is just wrong. and mimes make it worse.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 3:18 AM
Mime + The Giving Tree: two great tastes that taste great together!
Funny coincidence: I was just thinking about SS's "Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too" in the context of a LanguageHat post which mentions Eugene Field's "Wynken, Blynken and Nod".
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 3:57 AM
like all good children's literature, it's about death.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 4:26 AM
I need to search the archives for it, but I've said here previously that you're absolutely right -- it's a sick, screwed up book.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:16 AM
1 seems entirely plausible.
Posted by redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:28 AM
Essay assignment: compare and contrast The Giving Tree and Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince."
Posted by plashch | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:58 AM
The Giving Tree came up recently on this thread.
LB came out against The Giving Tree here.
As I said here I am convinced Silverstein wrote a fucked up book on purpose, but what that purpose is, I don't know.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:15 AM
"I abominate The Giving Tree"?
Anyway, I think you're right about it being a metaphor for never-failing abundant (self-sacrificial) love, whether of God or just those trying to emulate him.
I don't understand all the hate on this book -- I remember thinking it was nice/touching as a kid. I haven't read it in 20+ years, so maybe I'm forgetting something (though the plot is pretty simple, IIRC).
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:09 AM
Oops... the dictionary tells me abominate turns out not to mean what I thought it meant, so I retract the query that begins 9.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:12 AM
??? Abominate means "loathe", which meaning is perfectly consistent with my reading of 9. What did you think it meant?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:23 AM
As a child, there were two stories that made me cry. The Fox & the Hound, and The Giving Tree.
To this day I love them both dearly.
But mimes are freaky, and I can't imagine how one would mime The Giving Tree.
Posted by Stroll | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:31 AM
Well, here's the thing -- it's a fucking tree. It can't assert itself. Yet it's so self-righteous about how giving it is. That's what I hate.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:36 AM
Yeah the subtext of that book (as I remember it) is that the tree is laying a guilt trip on the man, is why he can't ever really feel at peace til he has used up the tree and himself. Yes, sexist.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:38 AM
1: I've never read The Giving Tree, but The Last Battle made me feel like shit when I read it as a child.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:39 AM
1: Somebody gave us a pretty non-descript Disney book when Keegan was a baby that was meant to teach shapes. Baby Mickey has lost his ball and his friends are helping him look for it. Baby Goofy brings a boat, but that not it, the boat is a triangle, etc. Goes through all the shapes until they find the ball and everybody's happy and the friends go home.
Keegan would bring that book to be read to him frequently and every single time would burst into tears at the end of it because all of Baby Mickey's friends had gone away and now he was alone.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:45 AM
There was a book called 'Lentil' that terrified me as a child because a character sucked on a lemon and his lips puckered.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:47 AM
15: Which part? Lewis depiction of all those nasty working-class atheists spending eternity in locked in a midden of their own minds, the train wreck that lets everyone (except Susan) go to Heaven tra-la-la, or the problem of Susan itself?
House of Stairs gave me nightmares, but that's a book for a slightly older audience.
Posted by Steve | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:56 AM
Shel Silverstein was a songwriter too who wrote mostly country songs, including "A Boy Named Sue". He was the brains behind "Dr. Hook". He lived in the Playboy mansion and did a lot of writing for Playboy, starting in 1956. Seems to have been a very odd fish.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:59 AM
18: The train wreck. Everybody died!
That upset me so much I actually removed The Last Battle from the Narnia box set on my bookshelf, and hid it away in a drawer where I wouldn't see it.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:01 AM
No book upset me until I read The Trial as a teenager. Just to speed things up, I plan on reading it to my children as early as possible.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:03 AM
20: Hey, Zadfrack -- you're Battlepanda Brock? Or am I all confused?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:05 AM
I thought the point of The Giving Tree was so we'd think, "That kid is one twisted fucker. Poor tree, I need to grow up to be a conservationist."
No?
Posted by FTB | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:13 AM
22: Yes.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:13 AM
23: I got something like that, too. The "you should hate and dismember your mother" message is completely new to me.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:15 AM
25: Though not, of course, a new message altogether.
Posted by FTB | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:18 AM
yeah, I've always thought Silverstein was a sick, sick fuck for writing that book.
I remember a friend of mine telling me that she dumped a boyfriend early on because he gave her a copy of it. Good move; if his views on romance are based on that book, better to get shut of him right now.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:33 AM
and Alameida
I don't want to go all grumpy and complaining on you, but.
A pen? You were going to throw a pen at this guy's head?
Could you make sure, the next time you go to a mime performance, that your pockets contain something with a little more heft, a little more mass?
I mean, I'd a took and bounced a rock off his head. Which is why I always keep a good rock in my pocket.
At the very least, bring a sword. Cause I don't know about mighty and shit, but the sword is definitely heavier than the pen.
(All is forgiven if it was a poison pen, with tip unbated).
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:42 AM
I guess I didn't really think far enough ahead on that one. chance favors the prepared mime.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:54 AM
Coincidentally, I just re-read The Giving Tree about a week ago in the waiting area of a local barbershop while waiting for a haircut. The tree doesn't try to guilt trip the boy, she just keeps on giving and giving until finally the sociopathic boy, now an old man, has no other choice but to spend his final days sitting on her stump. And this makes her happy.
I like a lot of SS's other books, but this one, not so much.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:59 AM
The tree doesn't try to guilt trip the boy
Yeah right. Just gives and gives, not trying to make him feel guilty at all. Fuckin passive aggressive tree.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:02 AM
(I got issues with trees.)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:03 AM
Be nice to mimes.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:08 AM
As much as I dislike The Giving Tree, I don't hate it nearly as much as that fucking Little Prince.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:09 AM
Be nice to mimes.
As long as they are not trying to interpret "The Giving Tree"
A-and hey! No hating on St.-Exupery!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:10 AM
by the way, all this uncertainty about the right interpretation (is it environmentalism? is it God?)--drop that stuff.
SS made it clear with just one word: her.
That immediately made it an issue in gender politics. And that's what he intended: a depiction of das ewige Weibliche in all of its self-sacrificing, masochistic glory.
Sick fuck.
And, yeah, I haven't forgiven Lewis for his treatment of Susan, either. It's a legacy from Lewis Carroll, really: male British authors of childrens fiction are okay with girls, sorta, as long as they're *really* pre-pubescent.
And as long as they know their place. Then they're even allowed to be feisty now and then, for contrast. But not too much.
Even E. Nesbit, bless her heart, is more fair to her boys than her girls. Conversely, Arthur Ransome did pretty well by the Blackett girls. Pretty well for a male British author, anyhow.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:12 AM
When I was a kid, I thought Susan was the lucky one. She didn't die in a freakin' train wreck!
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:17 AM
The story would have been a little different if instead of a train wreck, the children had been eaten by a lion in a zoo whom they had mistaken for Aslan and tried to get close to.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:20 AM
Even E. Nesbit, bless her heart, is more fair to her boys than her girls.
"Bless her/his heart!" That's such a great Southern expression, mingling pity with contempt.
"Cousin Billy cussed at the judge and got thrown in jail. Bless his heart!"
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:24 AM
16: I hate that book. Every time I read it to Thing 1 and Thing 2, I made a mental note to be sure and instill in them a deep hatred of the Disney Corporation later on.
I always thought of The Giving Tree as an illustration of the Wallace Stevens line, "The world is ugly and the people are sad." You know, for kids.
The ultimate number one awful story? The Red Balloon. I saw that when I was nine or so, and I remember thinking "OH MY GOD! THEY JUST MURDERED HIS BEST FRIEND!" Just the thought of it fills me with dread.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:24 AM
I liked the part in The Last Battle where the Muslim analogue gets into heaven. But pretty much everything else was just awful.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:25 AM
What the hell, they die in a trainwreck? I've never read that book but I recently considered watching the movie when I was sick.
Also, did SS write that many country songs? I'm aware of two.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:26 AM
Silverstein also wrote "Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz", which makes up for a lot.
Posted by Tom Scudder | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:26 AM
No hating on St.-Exupery
Oh, I've got nothing but love for St.-Ex. He was cool. But for some reason The Little Prince really creeped me out when I was a kid. There was something ghostly about him. Maybe it was the baobab trees. I can't even remember now. But I still feel a slight thrill of disgust whenever I see the book.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:27 AM
Man, threads like this make me feel unutterably white-bread and lame. All the books people are mentioning (except the Disney one about shapes and the Fox & Hound, both of which are previously unknown to me) are cherished childhood memories. I mean I had a pretty unhappy time of it as a kid but books like "The Red Balloon" and "The Little Prince" and Narnia were uplifting. But now I come to find out the Intelliwhatsitia despises them and by extension me.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:29 AM
Every time I read it to Thing 1 and Thing 2
If you actually named your kids after Dr. Seuss characters, you'd be the most awesome person in history for like at least two minutes.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:29 AM
stras--yeah, that was a slightly redeeming bit of universalism peeking out around the edges of Lewis' theology.
But not too much. Point being, it is easier for a worshiper of Baal to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a pubescent girl. Esp. one who actually *likes* lipstick.
Oh yeah, Red Balloon--horrible, black, depression. Screening that film for children is just pure child abuse.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:30 AM
43: And the delightfully twisted "Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book."
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:30 AM
clown, dude, don't fret about it.
Fact is, if you have the emotional stability of a happy 40 year old and a psychic keel deeper than a racing yacht's, Red Balloon and all ain't going to rock you and shock you.
It's no hit on you to say that most infants are just a lot more susceptible than you were.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:33 AM
But now I come to find out the Intelliwhatsitia despises them and by extension me.
And not just the Intelliwhatsitia. Thing 2 hates clowns, too.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:34 AM
But not too much. Point being, it is easier for a worshiper of Baal to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a pubescent girl. Esp. one who actually *likes* lipstick.
Yeah, that's what gets me. The key to eternal life is following rigid, puritanical purity codes - and the good part is supposed to be that they're the same rigid, puritanical purity codes for every race, color and creed!
The ending was always the worst part, though, because it's supposed to be this joyously happy ending, but they're all dead and Narnia is destroyed and they'll never see Susan again. I mean, what the hell?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:38 AM
Books that made me feel like shit, in chronological order:
Pale Green Pants With Nobody Inside Them
The Last Battle
The Great Gilly Hopkins
That last one takes the cake. I love it, but it really is kind of mindboggling that someone wrote a children's book about a girl who is at least partially to blame (to the extent that children can be to blame for anything) for her own desolation and loneliness. And there isn't any reprieve, or redemption, or suggestion that things might look up in a few years. The book just ends.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:40 AM
Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan", for those who are interested; I suspect the case of Susan is one of the major contributing factors in Pullman's decision to write "His Dark Materials".
42: Yeah, I was worried that was going to be a spoiler for someone, but I figured there was a 50-year exemption rule.
Posted by Steve | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:40 AM
Uncle Shelby's ABZ book renewed my faith in the human condition.
Posted by dob | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:43 AM
I mean I had a pretty unhappy time of it as a kid but books like "The Red Balloon" and "The Little Prince" and Narnia were uplifting. But now I come to find out the Intelliwhatsitia despises them and by extension me.
I loved the Narnia books as a kid, but The Last Battle really, really used to depress me even then, and looking back there's a lot of screwed-up stuff in most of them.
What's wrong with The Red Balloon, other than that it's sad?
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:44 AM
And Clownae, how like shit I felt upon the train wreck in TLB is one of my cherished childhood memories.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:46 AM
Pale Green Pants With Nobody Inside Them
But you were just as strange to them as they were strange to you!
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:48 AM
What's wrong with The Red Balloon, other than that it's sad?
Well, first there's the vicious murder of the title character, and then all the other balloons come and whisk Pascal away, which suggested to me that the world is a horrible, lonely, violent place where the best you can hope for is to go to heaven following some catastrophic, soul-rending sacrifice. But then, I was a sensitive kid.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:52 AM
I suspect the case of Susan is one of the major contributing factors in Pullman's decision to write "His Dark Materials".
Yet another thing to hold against Lewis. (If he hadn't written the third book...)
Posted by Tom Scudder | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:56 AM
42: The two big hits were "Boy Named Sue" (Johny Cash, of course) and "One's On the Way" (Loretta Lynn).
Silverstein also wrote "25 Minutes to Go," which is about a hanging, also recorded by Johnny Cash. And "Boa Constrictor," which is a country song only because it was recorded by Cash.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:04 AM
I agree with Kid Bitzer that The Giving Tree is about gender politics--it has to be, even if it wasn't intended as such, because self sacrifice is so gendered a concept.
I'm not sure that TGT is making a misogynist statement, though, because it is not clear to me that Silverstein is endorsing anyone's behavior here. He is depicting a relationship where one person only gives, and the other person only takes. We know such relationships exist. If Silverstein is saying anything about this relationship, he is saying something negative about it, because he makes you feel so sad for the tree.
When I read it to my kids, I use it as a negative example. You mother is like this tree; don't be like the boy.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:06 AM
Trees aren't all bad. It was a tree that killed Sonny Bono.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:08 AM
58: Is there no value in children's stories that show the world as a horrible, lonely, violent place, but one in which hope still exists? I don't think the movie is presenting that hope in as explicitly Christian a package as you seem to think, either: the balloon doesn't die to atone or save the boy; the boy is rewarded for his kindness with the kindness of others (in this case, the kindness of a bunch of other magical balloons).
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:17 AM
the trees got a Kennedy, too.
Red Balloon--basically it's Lord of the Flies in French. Maybe that's useful--it's good to learn early on that if you put a lot of boys in a pack, they all turn into Hutus.
You know, Bush is always driveling on about these universal human values. And he's right about that stuff. It's good to learn early on that, no matter what their accent is, no matter whether they are French villagers, British public school boys, or AIDS-infested Africans, if you put boys in a pack, they will seek out and destroy objects of beauty and of value.
And JMcQ is right that the Red Balloon is made much worse by the salvation at the end. It's enough to make a confirmed Nietzschean out of anyone--the afterlife as slim, implausible consolation for powerless and abuse at the hands of toddlers without conscience.
(Toddlers Without Conscience actually sounds like a good match for Doctors Without Borders. In a way.)
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:17 AM
You know what isn't nearly as fun as you think it will be?
Reading to kids. Videos rule.
Posted by joeo | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:24 AM
It's enough to make a confirmed Nietzschean out of anyone
And yet somehow the set of confirmed Nietzscheans remains smaller than the set of people who watched The Red Balloon as children.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:24 AM
yeah, okay, you've got to read a bit of Nietzsche to get full membership rights, and that's kind of a bar for a lot of kindergartners.
I was actually a baptised Nietzschean, but I screwed up too much during the classes preparing for confirmation, so they wouldn't let me get confirmed.
Now I'm pretty much lapsed, you know, just sort of a social thing, community, do it for the kids and all.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:31 AM
I think I mentioned on a previous thread that I remembered about three things from the Narnia books: the bit in Dawn Treader where Lucy casts the magic spell and hears her friends being mean to her, the bit (in Horse and His Boy?) where Aslan claws the princess across her back to mimc the whipping that the slave got because she escaped, and how much I hated the ending, both on "They're all dead!" and "Susan got totally screwed over" grounds.
Is it spoiling to reveal an awful ending? I kind of wish someone had told me the ending of His Dark Materials so I could not have bothered with the last book.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:32 AM
they will seek out and destroy objects of beauty and of value
Or, failing that, humiliate you on Craigslist.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:32 AM
You know what book I don't get? Green Eggs and Ham. I wouldn't eat those eggs either, they're fucking green! What the hell has to happen to an egg before it turns green? And how did that spread to the ham? And what kind of sociopath keeps pushing obviously diseased food on your after you have turned it down a billion times?
No, I won't eat them on a train! The goddamn train doesn't change the fact that those eggs are fucking green, and there's no fucking way I'm going to eat a goddamn green egg. What, are you trying to give me botulism or e-coli or something.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:34 AM
You know what isn't nearly as fun as you think it will be? Reading to kids. Videos rule.
I disagree really really strongly with this assertion.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:36 AM
surely the message is the anti-environmentalist one that trees, fundamentally, don't mind being cut down? (and that presumably and plausibly their brain and ability to feel pain is in the root-system, meaning that the above-ground part of the tree is equivalent to hair or fingernails).
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:37 AM
You know what book I don't get? Green Eggs and Ham. I wouldn't eat those eggs either, they're fucking green!
Nazi.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:37 AM
surely the message is the anti-environmentalist one that trees, fundamentally, don't mind being cut down?
The only children who have ever cheered the boy in The Giving Tree have gone on to join the Cato Institute.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:42 AM
71:
Would you like to come over and read to my children for five or six hours? Because, you know, they are totally up for being read to for that long. I honestly can't read to them for more than a half hour at a stretch before I just get too sleepy.
But if you are up for reading, we can always use more readers.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:46 AM
Don't get me wrong, sj, I'm all for darkness in children's books/films, but I got no sense of hope from The Red Balloon. I mean, his best fucking friend. And then all the other balloons are like, the world sucks, let's get you out of here.
I love reading to my kids, which is a good thing, considering that it's just about the only reading I get to do these days.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:48 AM
Oh, and Toddlers Without Conscience could kick Doctors Without Borders' ass.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:51 AM
75: Totally man, I'd love to come up to the North Country and reading to your kids would be the perfect excuse. (For some values of "perfec".) Time alas does not permit such a journey right now.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:54 AM
The rough part about reading to Caroline is that if you stop reading for just a second--for instance because it is four AM, and she woke you up and demanded you read to her and you just fell asleep again--she starts poking you and yelling "Wead! Wead!"
Her R's still sound like W's, and she still prefers one word commands, despite all our lessons about politeness, so all I ever hear is "Wead! Wead!"
I get the damn phrase in my head. If there is something I need to read for work, I start to hear an irate three year old saying “Wead! Wead!”
WEAD! WEAD!
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:59 AM
I didn't like Dr. Seuss books as a kid because I thought the illustrations were so horrendously ugly (but I did like The Lorax).
We had The Red Balloon and I loved it because of the photographs. I read it a million times yet I have no memory of it at all (except for the part when he meets a little girl on the street who's wearing all white and carrying a blue balloon). I don't remember being depressed by it whatsoever.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:03 AM
Clownae, you may not understand that his kids want you to read the same fucking book over and over again for 2-3 hours. Kids love traditions.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:05 AM
The Red Balloon photographs are as da says, a treasure. I also think this about the photographs in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, another Cherished Childhood Memory for which you all despise me.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:06 AM
Emerson, I'm pretty well acquainted with the reading-to-kids routine.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:07 AM
80: My daughters didn't get depressed by it either, apparently. We had some tired old balloons lying around a couple of days after a party, and the girls would proclaim "I'm the mean boy" and stomp on them.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:09 AM
84 -- Did you read her Lord of the Flies yet?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:12 AM
(Or Animal Farm
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:13 AM
)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:13 AM
85: Funny you should ask. This is from my dormant blog; look at the photo and scroll down to the last paragraph.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:18 AM
Speaking as we were of St-Exupery
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:25 AM
And, 88: cool. Just keep an eye on her around her smaller, weaker friends.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:26 AM
green eggs and ham--
I actually like that one a fair bit.
But here too (as with giving tree), you just can't pretend not to know what that book is about. It's about deviant sex.
Could you, would you, in a boat? Could you, would you, with a goat?
Could anyone, would anyone, spell it out more plainly?
It's the attraction/repulsion of sexual tittilation.
Now myself, I'm not much into goats, boats, foxes, or boxes. But I did like the book.
Not so for the Cat in the Hat, which is all about the violation of the purity-taboo, esp. being smeared with feces. Not a nice book.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:58 AM
91 wins.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 12:01 PM
dare I ask, "what?"?
(note that both '?'s are required)
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 12:03 PM
Any contest it gets entered into.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 12:09 PM
I imagine all of you, as children, dressed in gray flannel suits on the playground and scowling about mortgage rates.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 12:12 PM
95 might win if it were not so fucking hostile.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 12:13 PM
Now myself, I'm not much into goats, boats, foxes, or boxes
You do not like it, so you say --
Try it, try it, and you may!
Try it and you may, I say!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 12:15 PM
(The above lifted from "To his Reluctant Mistress")
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 12:16 PM
nope. now 98 wins.
who knew that Dr. Suess stole his prosodic instincts from Andrew Marvell?
Had we but world enough and shoes on our feet
we could do with all of the creatures that bleat!
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 12:21 PM
Kobe!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 1:13 PM
I don't think you're allowed to substitute "Kobe!" for "100!" when it's not basketball season, Clownae. It's like wearing white after labor day, or something.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 1:25 PM
95 might win if it were not so fucking hostile.
I would contend that my comment was not, in fact, hostile, but I fear that any attempt to do so would only be perceived as hostile.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 1:55 PM
Green Eggs and Ham was the book that I demanded my parents read to me over and over and over.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 2:01 PM
Total weirdness -- 103 came through on the RSS feed with a malformed link to the holder of Guiness Record for bug-eyed staring; no such malformed link is included in the comment on unfogged.com though.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 2:07 PM
Yeah, and when we did so, he would scream out, after each line, gleefully, "and green BACON!!!!". Totally threw off the rhyme scheme.
Posted by apostropher's parents | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 2:07 PM
Will you eat it in Macon?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 2:10 PM
Isn't Green Eggs and Ham composed solely of 1-syllable words? So "bacon" would not fit that way either.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 2:11 PM
(Or rather "1-syllable words + "anywhere"".)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 2:12 PM
104: That was due to an errant paste command on my part that I went in and fixed.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 2:14 PM
My favorite Dr. Seuss book was On Beyond Zebra.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 2:47 PM
Giving Tree and Narnia both suck. OTOH, the Red Balloon (which I knew first as a movie) always made me terribly sad, but in a good way. It just seemed to me that yes, these things happen, and that's a true but awful thing about the world.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 4:35 PM
Then there's this Silverstein song...
I never read The Giving Tree to my kid. I just read it online. Not exactly my idea of a good relationship. I mean, hell, would the offer of a little watering and some fertiliser have been beyond the reach of the boy/ man?? Tree exploiter!
My son's favourite you've-only-read-it-20-times book was King Bidgood's in the Bathtub.
What I got out of the Narnia novels: There's a scene where one of the Calormene soldiers does A Good Thing. Aslan says something on the lines of 'when you do good, it's always in my name, when you do evil, it's always in Tash's name, no matter what you say it is.' I think that solidified my secular philosophy [all religion is bunk], which had been pretty much got to the gel state after living in the Middle East. There's nothing like seeing the results of a religious war to make one into a five-year-old cynic, especially when one still bears the scar from the flying debris of a grenade attack.
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 4:48 PM
My son's favourite you've-only-read-it-20-times book was King Bidgood's in the Bathtub.
I loved that book when I was a kid.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 4:50 PM
You know what has a fucking awful ending? The Dark is Rising series. I loved those, and felt absolutely betrayed by the end of the final book.
Posted by redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 4:51 PM
As long as everyone agrees that "Where the Wild Things Are" is objectively the best children's book ever, I don't think we'll have any problems.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 4:51 PM
MOOMINVALLEY IN NOVEMBER
(Actually, WTWTA is probably a superior child's book, while Moominvalley in November is just the greatest book that happens to be a child's book.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 4:55 PM
AND that fact that it's soon going to be an animated movie is likely terrible, terrible news. I love that book too much to see its characters splashed on the sides of Burger King kid's meals.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 4:58 PM
Fuck Narnia. Fuck Narnia and feed Narnia fishheads.
I was never able to make myself read the series. I'd read Tolkien by the time I was 9 or 10, and Narnia was so obviously half assed that I'd always quit in disgust.
Writers who have potential but decide to ignore shit like plot and consistency within their created worlds just to beat us to death with their message need a beating. (Terry Goodkind, I'm looking at you.)
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:02 PM
115: No, The Phantom Tollbooth is objectively the best children's book ever.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:02 PM
(I actually really enjoyed the Narnia books as a child and am rather sentimentally attached to them. But not in a way that involves my wanting to argue that all of you are wrong about them.)
You know what's really good? The Chronicles of Prydain. Loved those as a kid.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:04 PM
Zadfrack has a point.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:04 PM
I really didn't intend to inspire so much hatin' on Narnia. I loved the books, except for The Last Battle.
J. K. Rowling better not pull any bullshit with the final Harry Potter book, that's all I'm sayin'.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:08 PM
Everyone goes to heaven except Hermione is what I heard.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:10 PM
123: Yeah, the little tramp was starting wear lipstick and nylons, I hear.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:11 PM
You people are so confused. Jacob Have I Loved is objectively the best children's book ever, though The Bronze Bow competes. It's all about the naturalism.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:11 PM
First, Phantom Tollbooth is a "young reader" book, not a children's book (for ages 8-12ish vs. under 5). They're totally different animals. That being said, Amazon.com reviewers (the most objective possible measure) have given WTWTA a pure 5-stars, while TPT comes in with a mediocre 4.5.
Also, to my knowledge I've never read TPT.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:13 PM
You know what children's (not young reader) book was great? Sheep in a Jeep.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:15 PM
Oh, well if you're going to draw those kinds of distinctions. I think of all the books I read as a child, unless they were grownup books, as children's books.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:16 PM
126: maybe you should remedy that.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:17 PM
I once read The Ship's Cat to my first-grade class. The teacher was mighty embarrassed when I got to the part about "Jesuitical knavery," but I doubt any of the kids understood what was going on (least of all me).
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:18 PM
You people are on crack. The greatest children's book ever is The Gashlycrumb Tinies.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:24 PM
128- Well, it is objectively better anyway, as the amazon reviews testify. [The same reviewers who collectively voted Ayn Rand the greatest author in history, I might add. Can their authoritative wisdom be contested?] But the only distinction I'm thinking of is between books that a child would typically read vs. have read to them. TPT looks like it a has a lot of words, in contrast to TGT or WTWTA. That's a meaningful difference, right? I'm not trying to create any very fine distinctions.
129- maybe. I don't know. I've never heard of it before now.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:25 PM
I loved the Prydain books too as a kid. I'm kind of afraid to go back and read them now in case they actually suck.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:25 PM
I wish I still had my Gashlycrumb Tinies poster.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:25 PM
I was also profoundly affected by Pinkwater's Young Adult Novel.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:27 PM
My wife bought me a copy of Green Eggs and Ham in Latin for Christmas last year.
Quovis loco tuam pernam,
Semper ova tua spernam.
Non mi placent, O Picerna.
Virent ova! Viret perna!
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:27 PM
134: I hope you don't die of ennui, ben.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:28 PM
119 et seq.: I've probably bragged about this before, but I (and several other people) painted an 8'x10' mural of the Phantom Tollbooth map on a staircase wall at my MIT coop.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:29 PM
132 - No, no. The Phantom Tollbooth is a fun read. I keep a copy at work.
The Prydain books hold up to adult reading. I went back to them a year ago; simple plot, but the books are what you remember.
I was mesmerized by Jacob Have I Loved, but think it is pretty messed up. I re-read that recently too and was even more disturbed. I wouldn't even nominate it for best children's book ever.
Posted by Megan | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:34 PM
Why is it messed up?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:40 PM
Agreed, both the Prydain books and the Phantom Tollbooth hold up just fine. As does Young Adult Novel, for that matter.
I'm right there with LB on the Narnia books, both in terms of nostalgic fondness, and not feeling any need to defend them. What I really, REALLY don't want to try to defend, though, is my weird attachment to Lewis' profoundly problematic Out of the Silent Planet trilogy.
Posted by redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:49 PM
This is me standing right here next to you also failing to defend them. Weird, aren't they? But fun.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:51 PM
I never read Jacob Have I Loved, but Bridge to Terebithia, by the same author, is one depressing kid's book.
But not in a bad way, like The Last Battle.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:56 PM
*Spoilers for Jacob Have I Loved, which you shouldn't read anyway.*
This is from memory, so I'll believe you if you tell me I have details wrong. But I was really creeped out by her attraction to the older-captain-guy and how they spent all that time together. And there was the constant comparison to her more beautiful twin, which I'm sorta remembering that the captain also participated in. The whole book was all dismal and grey and then she ended up living some compromise life, right?
You know, though, I am the wrong audience for naturalism. I like when underdogs overcome adversity and then it all turns out for the best despite difficulties.
***
I loved the Narnia books, and was disappointed when I re-read them. I can't defend them to grown-ups, but would still give them to any kid.
Posted by Megan | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 5:58 PM
Bridge to Terebithia
Also soon coming to a theatre near you.
I never read the Narnia books as a kid, though knew the story of TLTWATW from a cartoon version. (Come to think of it, to my recollection I never really read anything as a kid, other than as-assigned for school. Sad.) That's the only one I'm familiar with to this day. I've heard very mixed things about them and don't know whether or not I should get them for my kid.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:06 PM
LB -- I mentioned to my friend Ed a little while back that the young'un and I are reading The Book of Three, and he said "Oh with Taran Wanderer? Those books totally fucked me up as a child, it took years to recover." His complaint was that they made it seem like everything you ever do or be in life was fated to happen, that you had to fulfil a particular destiny. (Also his upbringing was Mormon, I don't know if that plays into it.)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:10 PM
131, 134: Hey wait! How did I forget about my Gashlycrumb Tinies poster? Where is it? I was the one who ate lye by mistake.
I still have my Nutshell Library from when I was a kid, and now my daughters love it, especially Pierre. Of course, books about how not to behave teach toddlers exactly those behaviors they're trying to discourage, so the girls like to sit backwards in their chairs and pretend to pour syrup in their hair.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:12 PM
The Oz books are the best children's books ever.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:20 PM
135: Well, it is a dada story. (Note my URL, yo!)
146: Naah. The whole point of the series, really, is that our preconceived notions of how we want things to to turn out is usually wrong, and the sign of being an adult is the ability to make the best of things and deal with what comes. They're great books for an eight year old (particularly a boy, as the girl-lessons happen entirely offstage), and I think it really got its roots into me in a way that the ethical brainwashing of Narnia didn't.
Posted by Steve | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:22 PM
the Oz books
Isn't there technically speaking one of those which is among the best evar and then a bunch which are kinda lame? I guess on average the whole series is vera vera good but still.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:32 PM
149: Noted. I myself have thought than any soloblogging I might engage in in the future would be at a blog named Lizard Music.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:34 PM
Lewis' profoundly problematic Out of the Silent Planet trilogy.
I loved those books, but the last time I read them I was 12 so I'm not really up on the subtext.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:38 PM
150: Personally, I loved them all. They're like one big book to me.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 6:38 PM
I believe the third one (That Hideous Strength?) features a female English graduate student writing on Donne (ha ha, we Oxford dons snicker, as we know only uncreative dilettantes write on Donne!), but by the end of the book, she's realized that that's going against nature for her to think and so resigns herself happily to being female.
Lewis is a twit, but more importantly, his writing suffers from needing to beat the reader over the head with analogies and jolly-good-fellowship. His idea of an exciting adventure is being stuck in Narnia -- without sandwiches!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:12 PM
Lloyd Alexander's Prydain holds up entirely well to adult readers. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to young readers. The Phantom Tollbooth is objectively perfect, as well.
I refuse to all my early memories of adoring Narnia to be soiled by your... legitimate criticisms. *despair*
Posted by NBarnes | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:23 PM
The gender politics all through That Hideous Strength are the big problem, yes. Jane's trajectory -- which is quite compellingly, even brilliantly written -- is to learn how to be a good, obedient wife and to stop pretending to be an academic and face the fact that really she likes buying hats and being obedient. Plus incidentally at the end you learn that she and Mark spoiled one of mankind's best hopes for happiness and peace by using birth control. The worst and best thing about it is that her path to salvation through good obedient wifedom is rendered both seductive and surprisingly interesting. The book's idea of what women ought to be is dreadful, but the way that it treats the domestic and traditional female spheres with real attention and seriousness is actually, weirdly... well, I sure don't actually want to say feminist, but strangely laudable.
Oh, and there's an amazingly awful sadistic lesbian fascist cop lady.
Posted by redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:35 PM
Oops, I guess I was sort of defending it there. But I want to be clear: the fact that I like a book that is all about (or, at least, half about) getting over your silly idea that you should think and resigning yourself to being female makes me feel very creepy.
Posted by redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:37 PM
Oh, I'd forgotten about the birth control screed.
It is an elevation of the traditional feminine roles; it's clear that it valued them. Placing them on a pedestal, even, but it's a pedestal inside a comfy gilded cage.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:40 PM
That Hideous Strength also features non-representational art being used as a Satanic recruiting tool.
Posted by Steve | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:45 PM
Another vote here for Pinkwater. Young Adult Novel, already mentioned, but also Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, Slaves of Spiegel, and The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death.
My kids love them and talk about them a lot, even after a few years have passed. I think my son has re-read them several times, and can regale you with what goes on and how things are described.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:50 PM
Well, I think one of the things that's interesting there is that the Pilgrim's Progresses of Mark and Jane alike are told as Big Stories that hinge on very mundane details and small choices. I think that's admirable, because it represents a real adherence to the theological points Lewis cares about, instead of throwing it over in favor of rah-rah jolly good times with shiny swordplay. I think it's good writing, too, in that it makes those mundanities compelling. And I think that the elevation of the domestic there isn't quite on a pedestal in a comfy, gilded cage -- for one thing, nothing in That Hideous Strength is nearly as comfy as in any of the Narnia books (even allowing for the latter's being written for children), and for another, a lot of it seems to come from a place of greater real knowledge and appreciation of domestic detail. Wasn't THS written after Lewis' marriage?
So I think in any number of ways, it's his finest writing, but that that makes it that much more of a bummer that it boils down to something so unfortunate. (Now I'm thinking of how Camilla Denniston isn't allowed to go out to the dangerous wood in search of Merlin because Britain needs her womb. I mean, REALLY.)
Posted by redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:51 PM
Oh god, yes, the evil Surrealism.
Posted by redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:52 PM
The Oz book I identified with was The Marvelous Land of Oz where Tip, a boy, is discovered to be Ozma, the ensorcelled princess of Oz. She resents having to give up boy stuff for fancy dresses and girly things. I empathised completely. On the other hand, I thought General Jinjur's army was silly.
Dianna Wynne Jones has written a whole lot of great books; the Kid liked Charmed Life best. He's had an odd exposure to kids' books, as I did my master's thesis on British children's fantasy. He kept confusing "Psamead" with "Sam I Am".
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 7:58 PM
Young Adult Novel, already mentioned, but also Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, Slaves of Spiegel, and The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death.
<ronco>Conveniently collected in a single volume, Five Novels. Operators are standing by!</ronco>
Ms Wynne Jones is fabulous. Shame about what Miyazaki took away from Howl's Moving Castle, as I would have thought that he would have enjoyed the spunky feminism and not turned it into a formulaic anti-war tract.
Posted by Steve | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:00 PM
*********SPOILERS***********
This is from memory, so I'll believe you if you tell me I have details wrong. But I was really creeped out by her attraction to the older-captain-guy and how they spent all that time together. And there was the constant comparison to her more beautiful twin, which I'm sorta remembering that the captain also participated in. The whole book was all dismal and grey and then she ended up living some compromise life, right?
You know, though, I am the wrong audience for naturalism. I like when underdogs overcome adversity and then it all turns out for the best despite difficulties.
I went back and reviewed some plot details by perusing the Amazon reviews. Her crush on the captain is certainly weird, but it's not like it's either consummated or God forbid consummated and then celebrated for being so. I think teenage girls and boys, and people in general, develop weird passions for bizarre objects, and it's great to write about that in a sympathetic way for children. It was especially understandable given her situation; she was so totally socially isolated precisely at the time she was having a sexual awakening that it kind of makes sense that she would fixate on the one person who was giving her a sense of power and freedom by introducing her to her own ablities as a fisherwoman.
And yeah, the whole point of the book is that she's in the shadow of her beautiful twin, and it's extremely unpleasant and constricting for her, but she doesn't lead a compromised life at the end--she becomes a doctor or a nurse depending on which Amazon review you read, and in the end delivers twin babies, sees that one of them is weaker and more frail, and is forced to care for the weaker while she puts the stronger one aside, and she realizes for the first time what other people have told her--that some, though not all, of what she experienced as abandomnent was actually a recognition that she was strong. I think, not having the book in front of me, that you could make a case that this is kind of fucked--I mean, who is strong and who is weak really, Louise certainly felt lonely enough and her family could have spared the resources for both children, if not in money, in love, and also it's slightly conveniently cliched that the pretty girl who was the good singer was also physically ill--it's an easy amalgamation of femminess and debility to sort of get around the question of just why it is Caroline is so weak so it's not just blond hair that makes her so, but on the other hand the book, as I remember, that Louise wasn't seriously wronged in some ways, just that she might not have understood what Caroline suffered at all times, and the main point is that what can look to you like ease and favor isn't necessarily, and you can fail to know someone as close to you even as your own twin sister. And the very end of the book (as I recall) is her hearing the sound of her sister singing as she walks through the night and being able to recognize it as beautiful for the first time. It's really a book about overcoming solipsism.
*************END SPOILERS**********************
I do rather like naturalism, especially for children. I always liked my characters suffering, and not in a way that any pterodactyl would rescue them from, even when I was nine. Everyone should read Jacob Have I Loved
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:11 PM
That Hideous Strength also features non-representational art being used as a Satanic recruiting tool.
Which is perfectly in keeping with the book's premise that modernism itself is a vast demonic conspiracy. It may be better-written and more entertaining than most of the books in the Christian paranoia genre (see for example This Present Darkness, where public school officials are possessed by demons who fiendishly conspire to indoctrinate children in the dark arts of evolutionary theory, sex education, and transcendental meditation), but it's still wildly overwrought and shlocky in a way that makes it impossible for me to appreciate.
Most of the Narnia stuff, at least, still works pretty well as children's fantasy, even under the layers of religious symbolism. The grossly conservative gender politics is harder to get around, obviously. I probably can't rationally justify my continued fondness for Narnia, and even one of my favorite scenes from my favorite one (Puddleglum fighting the Emerald Queen's hypnosis) turns out to be a thinly-veiled screed against materialism in retrospect. But there you have it.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:16 PM
Pinkwater! Lizard Music might be one of my favorite books in the universe. I was Pinkwater-deprived as a child, and only introduced to him relatively late in life by a Pinkwater-loving friend, but I've decided to make up for this by feeding them to my young nieces and nephews.
His picture books are pretty amazing, too.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:23 PM
Toothgnasher Superflash and Doodle Flute are special favorites here.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:40 PM
165 - Don't read it! There's no pterodactyl to save everyone in the end! There isn't a contest that they win by banding together, so that all their strengths contribute and they learn to appreciate each other FOR their differences! Things just happen and then they just adapt. Sometimes, it is ambiguous! Or sad! Don't read it! There's no point!
Posted by Megan | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 8:56 PM
I love C.S. Lewis, but I have to admit that Cala's comment in 154 ("His idea of an exciting adventure is being stuck in Narnia -- without sandwiches!") is devastating.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 9:33 PM
Freaky kids book to make toddlers weep: Nintje/Miffy, Dutch antecedent to Hello Kitty. In which Mr. & Mrs. Rabbit enjoy gardening and shopping respectively (ugh), but are sadly childless. Until an angel (!) appears and tells them that that Nintje will arrive. Then the animals show up. But cows and chickens can't play with newborn Christ-analogues, so they have to leave. And the family goes to bed. And my child cries, and begs us to read it again.
Had to hide that motherfucker.
79: Wow, I hadn't appreciated how nice "Pease read the book pease" is until I heard the alternative.
Posted by JRoth | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 10:35 PM
As always, commenting last on a dead thread... but still, try Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang out on your kids. It's like a young child's precursor to Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events.
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:25 PM
commenting last
Says you.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:25 PM
If you kids don't stop bickering I am going to turn this thread right around and head home, do you hear me?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:33 PM
count me among the deeply conflicted narnia-lovers.
Would we like them so much if they hadn't got to us early? Is it just that they were our first exposure to the genre?
But, yeah, rereading doesn't flatter them.
Hey, among my favorite picture-books is a series by Tim Wynne-Jones: Zoom, Zoom Away, and Zoom Upstream. About a talking cat and his hubba-hubba friend Maria. Gorgeous drawings, and some of the most beautifully laconic, lapidary dialogue this side of Mamet. (not so many f-words, luckily).
Anyone know if Tim is related to Dianne W-J?
Oh, and can't forget Maira Kalman. 'Max in Love' is pure genius.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-18-06 11:43 PM
Pinkwater... I was given The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death when I was a kid, and tried to read it as a pulp adventure fiction, which left me turned off of Pinkwater for a good long while. Didn't really get him until I read the five novels collection when I was 25. Over and over again. I probably would have reacted better to Young Adult Novel, which didn't have any of the slightly confusing trappings of science fiction.
Lewis: Till We Have Faces (his retelling of the Psyche myth) is a very good book. Never read the Space Trilogy.
Posted by Tom Scudder | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 12:03 AM
I made myself quite unpopular with the teachers in Oklahoma when they were encouraging us to read those Prydain books, because I had been taught the Mabinogion (the series of Welsh folk tales that they are ripped off from) in school in Wales the previous year and could not be stopped from explaining what a travesty they were. I have no idea of their merits as books but it really was quite irritating to my ten-year-old Nashie self. It didn't help that my main complaint about the books is that they tended to leave out the massacres and rapes in the original.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 12:39 AM
171: One of the Dutch Nijntje/Miffy books has her grandmother dying, complete with dead body. You can tell she's dead because her eyes are little Xs. In the end Nijntje is happy because she gets to put flowers on the grave.
Posted by Nakku | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 1:43 AM
I love the narnia books despite everything. I remember once when I was 7 and had already read the lion the witch and the wardrobe a million times I decided to see how quickly I could read it if I went as fast as possible...30 minutes! I think it might take me longer now. the prydain books (that's the black cauldron etc., right?) are more problematic than you remember princess eilonwy is actually an extraordinarily passive figure. I too find the lewis trilogy strangely appealing. really, though, for depressing kids stories HC anderson wins the prize. it's one of the cornerstones in my hatred of disney that they turned the little mermaid into some bullshit razzle dazzle with cheerful negro crabs. where's the part with how it's like walking on knife blades?
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 2:12 AM
cala's comment on the missing sandwiches in narnia is devastating indeed--very good snark
It wins her a +15 snark-mistress, and means she will prevail in any contest with an opponent armed only with High Church Anglican Earnestness, provided they have an HCAE rating of less than +30. (Luckily no one has ever received a rating over +10. and yes I know he was a papist, but the mind-rays are pure anglican.)
But here's the thing: the juxtaposition of alternate worlds and missing sandwiches--the fabulous and domestic--that was actually a brilliant invention when E. Nesbit first came up with it. (Did I mention she was the greatest children's author of all time?)
It's the way to make magic more magical, not less, more vivid, because you can see it happening to kids like you, right here in a life like your own life.
When the kids meet the psammead, their reaction modulates from wonder and astonishment very quickly into negotiating with a new, caricature adult--a very powerful, very vain grownup (and here's the crucial bit) who can be manipulated with ordinary methods available to kids, like wheedling and flattering.
If it was all fantastic strangeness and no missing sandwiches, there'd be no way for the kid to buy in. (How many kids thrill to the myths of William Blake? How did Pullman adopt them to try to get their buy in?)
Sure, it can be twee and cloying, but in Nesbit's hands it is genius. And yes, she is the greatest author of children's books of all time.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 6:27 AM
I'm not denying that the juxtaposition of the fantastic and the mundane is a great way to draw children into literaure. I'm denying that Lewis it did it particularly well.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 7:01 AM
spot on. jolly good. complete accord, expressions of respect.
Posted by kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 7:05 AM
I also think it's much older than Nesbitt. Or at least there's then another reason that fairy tales generally introduce the Hero as the youngest son of the poor but honest woodcutter who defeats the evil goblins/witch queen/monster with pluck, hard work, and luck.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 7:17 AM
I hated Narnia with a passion when I was a kid, because I felt it was dishonest in a way I couldn't put my finger on at the time, but in retrospect I think was down to a feeling that the whole scenarion failed as an allegory of the Christian story, so that it didn't work for me either as an adventure (too contrived) or as religious propaganda.
I entirely endorse the kid's plug for Nesbit, though.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 7:19 AM
But here's the thing: the juxtaposition of alternate worlds and missing sandwiches--the fabulous and domestic--that was actually a brilliant invention when E. Nesbit first came up with it. (Did I mention she was the greatest children's author of all time?)
Oh, absolutely. Although it's a shame that her domesticity -- the groundedness in detail -- makes her somewhat less accessible to modern kids. I found The Story Of The Amulet in third grade or so, and loved it, but was completely lost and confused in the normal bits that happened in London. I think that was the right age to read the book if I'd had the background for it, but I had an easier time with the rest of her books that I didn't come across until I was older and knew a little more about the period.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 7:43 AM
I think it might take me longer now. the prydain books (that's the black cauldron etc., right?) are more problematic than you remember princess eilonwy is actually an extraordinarily passive figure.
Yeah. She's described as powerful and independent, but gets very little time actually as the focus of the book. I still loved them, I just identified with Taran.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 7:44 AM
185: I read all those books around age 10, and there were about 500 things that I had to ask my parents what were, and they knew about half of them (because my mom had read all 145,000 Wodehouse books and books about royal history). None of us were able to understand what was so funny about confusing the words "antiquary" and "antiquity", though.
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 8:05 AM
Further on the Question of Susan: Kung Fu Monkey gets email.
Posted by Tom Scudder | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 10:36 AM
I feel like it's not exactly that Eilonwy is passive, but that her vigor is almost all offstage, as per 149. Like hey, maybe there's some Shadow Chronicles of Prydain where we actually get to see all of her interesting development and ass-kicking. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference, though.
Posted by redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 4:56 PM
We just got to meet Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch, and are big fans of the three.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 6:42 PM
Says me, nyah nyah.
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 7:20 PM
Oh yeah?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-19-06 8:08 PM
Parking lot. 3.
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 8:09 AM
I'll be there.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 8:20 AM
Speaking of children's literature, much of Oxford around Exeter college has been surrounded by film crews the past few days. They're making the first film from the Pullman trilogy (Northern Lights/the Golden Whatever)..
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:08 AM
Nobody rang for you. We're in a last comment contest here, mate.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:09 AM
"mate" s/b "etam".
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:12 AM
They're making the first film from the Pullman trilogy
Too bad it'll be live-action and effects. I'd hoped that by some miracle it would turn into a Miyazaki film.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:14 AM
That Miyazaki "totally changing the ending" magic would also be welcome. (I've only seen Howl.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:16 AM
(I've only seen Spirited Away.)
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:20 AM
Kiki is strongly recommended by everybody at the Clownæ house. The young'un and I liked Spirited Away a lot, if not quite as much; Mrs. Clown&aelg; was not too enthusiastic about it.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:27 AM
aelg!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:28 AM
Didn't like Kiki at all. Howl's is pretty good. Spirited Away is great. Somehow I don't really remember Princess -- I think I feel asleep or something.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:29 AM
We're in a last comment contest here, mate.
Ahem.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:31 AM
And who has the only comment 1435 on this blog?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:35 AM
Answer: Not you.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:38 AM
Ain't over 'til it's over, Weiner.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 9:57 AM
That's a good point, Weiner.
Posted by: Giant Mutant Cockroach | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:00 AM
_______________________________________________________
1435
208 makes a well thought out and persuasive argument.
Posted by: Cockroach Sprezzatura | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:02 AM
______________________________________________________
1436
I win!
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:04 AM
That thread is over.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:04 AM
OK, the cockroaches win.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:05 AM
And by some miracle I won it!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:09 AM
For now.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:28 AM
Say, what proportion of the posts in the "Innocence" thread were purely vieing for last-comment status? 20? 40? 85?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:31 AM
It must kill Apo to have the power to win so readily within his grasp. He could easily just un-archive the innocence thread, leave a final, glorious comment, and then seal it back up forever. I assume only his magnanimity and greatness of soul have prevented him.
Also, I am in awe of the technical prowess that produced 1435 and 1436.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:35 AM
That's "vying", bitch.
It must kill Apo to have the power to win so readily within his grasp. He could easily just un-archive the innocence thread, leave a final, glorious comment, and then seal it back up forever. I assume only his magnanimity and greatness of soul have prevented him.
Actually, he couldn't, for two reasons:
1. Un-archiving a thread is not as simple as you might think.
2. I put some perl in the MT code that checks to see if you're leaving a comment on Innocence, and if you are displays a snarky message saying that I've won.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:37 AM
I play the long game, Brock.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:43 AM
Wait, so what you're suggesting is that And by some miracle I won it! should be And by the grace of Wolfson I won it!?
That takes some of the joy out of my victory, I must say.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:54 AM
218: really, JM, I won it, for while I did not leave the last comment, I am lord and master over the prospect of further last comments.
Indeed, before it was archived, the message that you got when you tried to leave a comment was "Sorry, wolfson won". And the text of your comment was changed to "I submit to wolfson's authority". And your name to "A humble peon".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 10:57 AM
Because the referees hold the power of winning and losing in their grasp, do they thereby win the game? Nay.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 12:21 PM
Matt, let Wolfson believe in his omnipotence. It's adorable.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 12:30 PM
Good thing I wasn't around for a 3 o'clock beating - I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I'm hoping the Ahem: Innocence link will provide some clue, but it's taking an awful long time to load. That's a bad sign. Ah, there it is... and an awful long thing it is too.
As to the Miyazaki films, there's not one that my kids don't thrill to. Highly recommended!
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09-20-06 4:43 PM
BTW LB, on the subject of with whom to identify when reading of Prydain, throughout Book of 3 and Black Cauldron, my young daughter has been identifying with Gurgi -- I'm so proud...
On the subject of Kiki vs. Spirited, she says to tell you "I like both."
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-21-06 3:56 AM
My kids are split on those.
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09-21-06 8:01 AM
identifying with Gurgi
You know who Gurgi is? Grover gone wild.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-21-06 8:08 AM
224 -- totally -- the first thing she noticed about him is that like Elmo, he refers to himself in the third person. She decided Elmo and Gurgi should get married -- they are both boys but "they can have a boy family, and no girls allowed".
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-21-06 8:18 AM
(Actually that was the second thing -- first thing was that he talks in rhymes, also quite a Muppet-y attribute.)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-21-06 8:20 AM
My parents didn't believe in Sesame Street. And it was one of the weaker children's television shows on when our kids were little, so they didn't watch much either. There's nothing missing in a life without Sesame Street.
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09-21-06 6:32 PM
But maybe it's a little poorer without Jim Henson.
What *would* he have done given the advances in technology since his death?
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09-21-06 6:36 PM
Maybe?!
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09-21-06 6:43 PM
Maybe not maybe.
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09-21-06 11:48 PM
Was (Not Was)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:00 AM
Not only do I not get the meaning of 231, I do not know how to type the 'ae' in Clownaesthesiologist.
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 5:48 PM
æ
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 5:52 PM
Was (Not Was)
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:06 PM
Btw, to make 233 type
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:08 PM
But how do I type 235???
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:12 PM
I saw Was (Not Was) in concert, opening for the Neville Brothers. They were both awesome. I shall now go walk the dinosaur.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:19 PM
236: type @#% without the shift key.
(Yes, I'm committing a use-mention error.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:21 PM
...and I'm off to shul.
Feel free to try for the last comment, heathens.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 6:31 PM
Shanah tovah!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:52 PM
Wrong thread, CÆ.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:54 PM
What are you talking about? Weiner said he was going to shul so I wished him a happy new year. (Shouldn't you be in temple yerself?)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 7:57 PM
Rosh Hashanah greetings belong in the escort thread. I mean, come on.
(Services ended hours ago in this time zone.)
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:00 PM
Oh right. Happy NY!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:03 PM
(I am Becks-style on this holy night, and I am watching The Pink Panther.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:06 PM
)
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:06 PM
)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:06 PM
Woo-hoo! BTW Teo, I am curious to know whether my description of Mark Rubinfine's take on the Judaic experience as being like yours comes through in the bit I excerpt. -- Rereading my excerpt I am not so sure -- but in the context of the book the resemblance is striking.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:09 PM
I think the resemblance is indeed striking even outside of its context.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:13 PM
Oh -- that's good to know.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:14 PM
I haven't read the book, so I don't know how the excerpt you quoted fits into the rest of the story, but it's definitely typical of a certain kind of attitude toward Judaism. I would need more information to know if it's precisely the same attitude I have (it probably isn't, actually).
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:20 PM
Well the first part is about 4 friends who have various relationships with Judaism, Alex-Li Tandem (main character of the book) is an atheist and neglectful of observance, Mark is a rabbi but does not believe strongly in God, Adam is a mystic and kabbalist, and Joseph is -- not sure, he's a bit of a cipher -- but he's definitely on Mark's side in terms of chiding Alex-Li to be more observant -- and he interacts with Adam in Adam's visionary mode -- but he seems to be an atheist. But I'm not sure about him, I'll need to reread it to get what's going on with him.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-22-06 8:29 PM
Sounds like none of them are straightforward theists, then. Interesting.
Posted by