wayfarers all

ChLA Conference

2006-04-12T23:11:00.000-04:00

I recently learned that JAMES KINCAID, my personal theory god and guru, my academic/critical/intellectual hero and role model, is giving the Francelia butler Lecture at the ChLA Conference in June.

i hadn't planned on attending, though I would have liked to, because I'm not presenting (didn't even submit a paper, stupid me). But now that James Kincaid is speaking....well. it's a whole different ballgame, now.

I really want to go. I had such a wonderful time last year - it was incredibly inspiring and invigorating, listening to the papers and talks. I'm still reeling from the starstruck moment of being in the same room with Peter Hunt! and from the unbelievable paper on Raggedy Ann given by a woman named Robin something (who is at Harvard, and I am a total jerk for my inability to recall her last name).

I'm not outgoing enough to really "network" but the possibility of meeting and chatting with people in the field is also really tantalizing.

anyway, i'm trying to find out if i can get any funding through the university to attend. even if they could cover the cost of airfare/registration, i could manage lodgings. but i can't afford it all on my own. i just can't.

maybe i should set up a paypal account and see if anyone(s) wants to sponsor me to attend? i promise full reports on whatever sessions i attend....and of course, a gushing report on James Kincaid's lecture.

any sponsors????

Bartimaeus: Ptolemy's Gate

2006-03-27T18:01:00.000-05:00

I finished reading Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy about a week ago. Due to unbelievable amounts of busy-ness I haven't been able to collect my thoughts and post them here...but now I'm taking time out from the busy-ness (stolen time, really) to do so.

I'm happy to admit to being wrong: my first impressions of the trilogy were incorrect. After reading Ptolemy's Gate, I have to say Stroud has created a really fantastic work of fantasy/fiction. My one remaining complaint - and I think it's a valid one - is that somehow all three books felt a little too long, too wordy. Tighter editing would have worked wonders, but in retrospect, the books are strong enough that even with this verbosity: they're still remarkable.

I'm currently taking a class on queer theory, so I'm on Heightened Alert for queerness. and Ptolemy's Gate has it. Probably all three books have it, really. The most exciting moment for this came late in Ptolemy's Gate, when Bartimaeus (as narrator) says "It was all a bit butch and male." I can't say more without Giving Away The Plot, but my goodness! a book "for children" that says something was butch!!!!!

incredible!

Stroud does a good job, I think, of making his main three characters - Nathaniel/Mandrake, Kitty and Bartimaeus - morally complex. This is no Manichean universe; these are good, bad, confused, complicated characters. The books refuse simple choices and predictability; the Other Place perhaps crystallizes this complexity. It was difficult for me (via Kitty Jones) to get my brain around a place so Other but it is an appealing Other Place, and one worth thinking about.

I'm certainly also a fan of the progressive - moderately progressive, anyway - politics of the book. any world where the ruling class is challenged is usually good with me.

So: recap. The Bartimaeus trilogy is definitely a keeper. I think eventually I'll re-read it, although I don't find it as intensely satisfying and in need of re-visiting as, say, Diana Wynne Jones's novels.

I have to say, though, I'm not sure how to deal with the ending of Ptolemy's Gate: in some ways, it was deeply satisfying. In other ways........I felt somehow cheated. I'm really not sure yet how I feel about this, but I do know the trilogy, as a whole, was definitely worth reading.

Bartimaeus

2006-03-11T18:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I finished reading Jonathan Stroud's first book in his Bartimaeus trilogy, The Amulet of Samarkand.

What to make of this book?

I admit I'm skeptical to snarly about the proliferation of glossily-packaged magic/fantasy novels for "children" since the breakout of Harry Potter. Fantasy is what I study, it's my favorite genre within children's lit and has been since I started working "professionally" on children's texts (fall 1998, for those keeping track at home).

The premise appeals: a more-or-less modern-day London, ruled by magicians who depend entirely on a vast array of enslaved magical creatures for their power. This is an alternate world with a different history - London is the center of the universe and capital of a vast empire. Prague is its erstwhile competitor for the claim of most powerful city in the magical world.

But Stroud doesn't do enough, I don't think, with his modern magical world. The Amulet of Samarkand is mainly about Nathaniel, a rather brattish - though brilliant - magician's apprentice who calls up and enslaves Bartimaeus, a pompous, self-important and rather snotty djinni. The cleverest bit here is Stroud's use of first-person narration for the Bartimaeus-focalized chapters. Bartimaeus as narrator is very conscious of his position as storyteller - his narration is littered with footnotes, a number of them very textually self-referential.

The problem with The Amulet of Samarkand, for me, is that I don't like either of its "heroes." Bartimaeus gets tedious with his wholly self-centered existence (although we do see glimmers of a kinder, gentler demon - and I hope these glimmers are expanded in the subsequent two books). Nathaniel initially appeals as the downtrodden genius apprentive/slave to a mediocre master, but his boundless desire for power and revenge is thoroughly unappealing.

I don't mind sarcasm at all, but I suppose I like my fantasy fiction to be a little more full of wonder. Samarkand is smart, cynical and, I suspect, a decent political allegory of sorts (conflict between commoners and magicians). I'm hoping the trilogy brings out these themes without being predictable or derivative, but I'm not too optimistic. I've started The Golem's Eye (the second book) and so far I'm curious but not enthralled. Stroud's a decent enough writer but for me, a good fantasy novel (see: anything by Diana Wynne Jones) is completely captivating. The fantasy needs to be believable, I think, to be good (Jane Yolen writes a nice short essay about this, "Turtles All the Way Down") and I'm not entirely sure that Stroud has created a believable fantasy world.

but i will reserve my Final Judgment until after the trilogy is complete.

the penultimate peril

2005-11-05T00:38:00.000-05:00

i just finished the penultimate peril (book 12 in the series of unfortunate events) and i have to say again that lemony snicket (aka daniel handler) is a genius. it's not very interesting or original to point out how delightfully postmodern the entire series is, but this is one of the things i love best about the books. i also revel in the self-referentiality, the attention to language and the very obvious love of literature the books reveal.

a few years ago, i wrote a not-very-good paper for a children's lit class that tried to talk about the carnivalesque and the series of unfortunate events (and weetzie bat). the main text i ended up looking at was book 9, The Carnivorous Carnival (weirdly coincidental; i wasn't discussing carnivalesque because the book actually features a carnival).

like i say, it wasn't a terribly good paper, although i suspect now I could write a better one. but what intrigued me about the carnivorous carnival is the way that disguise operated, and the way that the lines between good and bad became very, very blurred - which is what is happening (or so it seems) in The Penultimate Peril (and perhaps in the series as a whole?).

poorly defined good vs. evil is often interesting because it does raise extremely relevant questions about human nature. The Penultimate Peril sets up its binaries - noble and wicked, volunteer and villain - but then confuses and confounds these binaries to the point of irrelevance.

this is great. it's fascinating and makes for good reading but i think, just as importantly, it pushes on what's acceptable in children's literature. children's texts - fantasy perhaps most obviously - is often criticized for oversimplifying the struggle of good vs. evil (Harry Potter might be a good example of this). I hear the common remark that acquaintances don't enjoy children's texts because of this perceived simplification, the perceive lack of complexity of human behavior. And though it's cloaked in clever allusions and humor, i think the Series of Unfortunate Events is counteracting this by presenting us with a very complex meditation on the nature of good and evil, of nobility and wickedness - or, if you rather, the line between volunteer and villain.

it's been a long time

2005-10-17T02:54:00.000-04:00

and, unfortunately, I don't have much to say at the moment. I've been unbelievably busy with not my favorite things since school began; I haven't had time at all for my own academic pursuits. Instead, i've been teaching freshman composition, reading about composition theory and pedagogy and hunkering down with some of the classics of American lit (last week, we read Moby Dick - the whole book, in one week, for one class).

eventually, i'll bring my brilliant insights back here but for now - consider this blog temporarily in hibernation.

me & sybill trelawney - HP6

2005-07-17T13:16:00.000-04:00

Big Fat Spoilers Here! So stay away if you don't want to know. Here is a nice daylily to admire before getting to the spoilerpost.

My prediction was right! So far, anyway. My sister and I have often kicked around various predictions and ideas for how the series will end, including what will become of harry's love life. And I have suggested more than once that he will become a Loner-Hero, removed from those around him, pursuing his work in a self-imposed isolation. and his "breakup" scene with Ginny in HP6 proves me right!

although to be fair, I don't reckon Ginny is the kind of girl to take that very well. Ginny as I read her will Be There for Harry no matter what, and will likely save his ass on at least one occasion, thus proving herself worthy of partnership. Ginny's tough, and doesn't seem too keen to have boys tell her what to do - I like that about her.

Someone on my listserv has pointed out similarities between Ginny and Harry's mother, Lily - I'm assuming physical (the long red hair). This is creepy. I sincerely hope this wasn't intentional but I fear it might have been. the "becoming his father" plot is also a bit tiresome to me, although it doesn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the books.

anyway, I like it when I make predictions and they, at least temporarily, come true.

When does Book Seven come out??

HP6 - first responses (no spoilers)

2005-07-16T15:26:00.000-04:00

I stayed up all night reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - until about 6:30am, anyway (and then couldn't fall asleep for two more hours, but that's another story).

I'll have to read it again before I can do my really sharp, insightful literary analysis, but as of right now, my first impression is very positive. I have a feeling that a lot of the book could have been cut down - it's backstory, information-providing scenes that could have been written differently and more efficiently - but this doesn't really detract from the novel. The best and most surprising bit for me is how Rowling's writing (or her editors' editing) has improved, especially in casual dialogue. HP6 is funny - at times, though of course humor is not the prevailing tone. But the interactions between the kids - Harry, Ron & co - rang much more true to me - they joke, they're sarcastic. Harry doesn't waffle around with adults - he's gotten pretty defiant but comfortably so. His insistence on following his own dictates doesn't come off as it has in the past, as a kind of immature, childish contrariness; in HP6, he seems like a real human with a conscience and well-developed sense of right and wrong, a knowledge of what is the right thing for him to do, and an absolute (and admirable) unwillingness to deviate from that knowledge. He is not longer petulant, which is a huge relief, and finally Ron's been given some good lines (!).

My big disappointment is not very much Luna Lovegood, with whom I was absolutely delighted in HP5. She makes appearance here, of course, but not in the sustained way I was hoping for. But I can live with this.

There's a typo or misspelling within the first few pages which made me groan ("site" instead of "sight") but otherwise I think this was well-edited. A bit of a lack of continuity - some things felt a bit as if they were coming out of nowhere, and for the obsessive re-reader, Harry's sudden ability to swim rings false (remember in Goblet of Fire how he worried about the second task because he couldn't swim well??? evidently, Rowling and her editors didn't).

This was definitely not the book I expected, but at the same was precisely what I expected. A few of my personal predictions came true, which is always nice. I'm curious to see how the series will wind up - of course, I'll be waiting a jolly good long time for this to be revealed. In the meantime, I'll re-read HP6 and think it through more carefully, and there's a universe full of other (more?) brilliant books awaiting my attention.

Summary: HP6 a pleasant surprise. sharper, cleverer, smarter than i'd expected. flawed, certainly. but a hugely satisfactory read.

harry potter

2005-07-15T21:41:00.000-04:00

need i say more? i'm heading out soon to get my copy of the new Harry Potter book (hereafter referred to as HP6), and i'm psyched. i've been rereading HP5 and had forgotten about my new favorite character, Luna Lovegood. I'm eager to see what's happened with her.

i'll be blogging here about it probably once i'm done, or if anything strikes me as unusual or crappy or especially compelling. but i'll stick HP6 or spoiler or something in the post title if anyone wants to avoid spoilers.

what a weekend! charlie & the chocolate factory AND a new harry potter! and the new diana wynne jones book (Conrad's Fate) has been shipped to me from amazon.com!

hurrah!

wonkamania is sweeping my brain!

2005-07-14T00:14:00.000-04:00

i can't stop thinking about this movie...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
new brainstorm, from a conversation with someone else today (theatre manager/programmer who asked me to lead discussion post-screening this coming monday):

what if the ending is tongue-in-cheek? a poke at, say, the 1971 treacly ooky moralizing ending?

my wish right now: to sit down with tim burton, john august and johnny depp and find out what THEY think is going on in this movie.

then johnny depp would explain to me everything i want to know about Pirates of the Caribbean.

then perhaps he'd decided to leave his partner for me and we'd live happily ever after in france.

or not. i'd settle for writing a couple of really smart articles using my insider quotes from depp, burton & august.

late-night brainstorm: willy wonka edition

2005-07-13T11:56:00.000-04:00

Late last night, right before I fell asleep, I had a sudden revelation about the characterization of Willy Wonka in the new film version. It is this: Wonka here is utterly selfish and self-absorbed, which is, I think, quite a departure from the novel.

For example: upon meeting the five children, Depp's Wonka doesn't ask their names, and when the children introduce themselves, he reacts with revulsion, drawing back from them physically, and disinterest - after one of the girls says "I'm Violet Beauregard," Wonka looks down at her and says "I don't care."

The film hints as well that the demise of the four "bad" kids is premeditated - the children themselves wonder about the Oompa-Loompas' song-and-dance number after Augustus goes up the pipe, suggesting that it all seemed kind of rehearsed or planned. Wonka of course denies this, but in the squirrel room scene, Wonka is clearly scheming for the removal of both Veruca and her father. It's an oddly malicious side - Dahl's Wonka is clearly more concerned for his chocolate than for his guests, and isn't overly distressed at their mishaps, but he also never appears to have plotted out the various events.

The invention of the Wonka childhood backstory also gives the appearance of self-absorption - Wonka, lost in childhood flashbacks, is temporarily mentally absent from the tours. His reaction to Charlie's family and their poverty (he peeks into their bare cupboards) is to strip the family from Charlie, if Charlie wants the factory. In the novel, Wonka responds generously and sympathetically to Charlie and Grandpa Joe's obvious hunger and poverty - the scene where he gives them mugs of chocolate from the river saying "you look like you could use it" is preserved in the Burton film. But Depp's Wonka is not at all moved by the family's plight when directly confronted with it - he must first resolve his own "inner-child" issues.

This is reminiscent of James Kincaid's criticism at the end of his 1998 book Erotic Innocence, where he reprimands adult culture for taking care of itself and its own "inner child" better than it does actual children.

I'm thinking now that the vaguely sinister tone of the film, and focus on industrialization and mechanization, along with this kind of selfishness, really establishes Charlie again as the film's hero while casting Wonka as the corporate mastermind of a chocolate empire (in contrast to the 1971 film, where Wonka clearly takes center stage - the renaming of that film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory says it all).

I'll need to think this through more thoroughly, and I definitely need to see the film again, but there may be more smart stuff - really radically different than Dahl's novel or what one expects from a Chocolate Factory film - than I originally suspected.

greetings from mr willy wonka!

2005-07-13T00:05:00.000-04:00

I've been collecting my thoughts about Charlie & the Chocolate Factory for the last couple of hours. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it - time flew in the theatre. I laughed a lot, the audience laughed a lot, there was solid applause at the film's conclusion.

Johnny Depp is brilliant, truly brilliant. My not-too-thorough internet research suggests that Depp based the "look" of Wonka on Vogue editor Anna Wintour, but there seems to be some kind of critical agreement that there's an awful lot of Michael Jackson in his character. As someone who spent nearly two years working on Jackson (and JM Barrie), I have to say I see Jackson in this Wonka - the pale, pale skin and the high pitched voice are dead giveaways, but Wonka's skewed perception of what's "weird," and his vexed relationship with his father signalled Jackson as much as anything else.
But this is not necessarily a bad thing - I imagined Jackson giving tours of Neverland Ranch while Wonka tours the kids around his factory, and I think this is a reasonable and inoffensive parallel.

Freddie Highmore as Charlie was genius casting - allegedly Depp pulled for him after working with him in Finding Neverland. Highmore's Charlie has the right mix of winsomeness and eagerness that I see in the book's Charlie.

My essential take on this film: a great movie, but not faithful to Dahl's novel. The 1971 Wilder film isn't faithful to the book either, though Tim Burton's film is certainly edgier and less treacly, both films fall victim to an annoying need for sentimentality and moral resolution.

SPOILER HERE:
Burton's film ends with Charlie refusing the factory when Wonka tells him he can't bring his family. A new backstory for Wonka adds in childhood flashbacks, to his dentist father forbidding him candy. After Charlie's rejection of the factory in favor of staying with his family, Wonka's sales and imagination slip; he seeks out Charlie, who leads the way to reconciliation between the Wonka father and son. Parents, it seems, forbid children things because they're trying to protect them out of love. The film ends with a happy scene of the childlike Willy Wonka successfully incorporated into the Bucket household (now a house of plenty) as a kind of additional child: Mrs Bucket scolds Willy and Charlie with "no talking business at the table, boys."
The camera pulls back, and we see the Bucket shack transplanted to the fields of the Chocolate Room, where our narrator tells us everyone lived happily ever after - that Charlie has won the factory, but Wonka has won a better prize: a loving family.
Gag.

This slushiness is unnecessary and strangely out of place in a Tim Burton film (although the father-son bit is a kind of wink at Burton's 2003 film Big Fish), and certainly shares nothing with Dahl's original.

That said, the rest of the film is brilliant. Ignoring the Wonka backstory, the film is remarkably consistent with Dahl's novel, though Wonka is played down - he is far less wildly manic and hyper than in the book. But Depp gets Wonka's weirdness across quite effectively, and his disdain for the four revolting children is conveyed in fantastically executed brief facial expressions. The looks of disgust and revulsion Depp conjures up are truly stunning.

The non-narrative elements of the film - namely the sets and effects - are marvellously consistent with and evocative of the mad creativity of Dahl's novel. The Oompa-Loompas, restored to their (offensive) original brown, tiny selves, replicate the touchy worker-employer relations Dahl's novel has been criticised for. In this respect, I think Burton and the scriptwriter, John August, made a wise decision though probably a controversial one. The Oompa-Loompas here appear as some sort of African tribe of cocoa-bean-worshiping semi-savages before being brought to England and turned into factory workers. The Oompa-Loompas bow in response to Wonka's instructions, another oddly servile touch.

But the Oompas also get some of the film's funniest moments - the song and dance production numbers following the demise of each child. These are truly inspired - music by Danny Elfman, using Dahl's original lyrics - each song taking its cue from a particular era of music (80s metal, 70s disco, etc). The Gloop song is perhaps funniest - here, the Oompa-Loompas appear as Busby Berkeley style synchronized swimmers and chorus-line dancers.

The film's opening sequence really strikes a sinister note, in my mind. it's a highly mechanized, industrial image of the chocolate factory at work - bars of chocolate being produced and wrapped by machines. The clanging, repetive music and the images of shiny metal and high-tech machinery reinforces the mechanized, industrial nature of Wonka's corporation. The factory appears, to me, like the semi-chilling images in Van Allsburg's Polar Express, with the industrial North Pole dominated by a single controlling boss. The factory and Wonka are not benign philanthropists - Wonka's a businessman, a moneymaker - and one gets the sense, partly through the film's score - that the whole enterprise is a kind of mechanized behemoth, rolling on unstoppably. The inserted backstory that Grandpa Joe once worked for Wonka, but was then laid off at the factory's closing gives an implied criticism that Wonka's decision led to, or at least accelerated, the family's dire poverty.

There are some moments of utter brilliant referentiality - an Edward Scissorhands reference early on, an extended homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey -and one that my mom picked out after I described it: viewed from the elevator, fluffy pink sheep being sheared for their wool. Wonka mutters: "I don't want to talk about that one." My mom brilliantly suggested Ed Wood, the director Depp portrayed in another Burton film - Wood, the director of terrible sci-fi movies and cross-dresser favoring fluffy angora sweaters.

It's clear as well that the film nods to the 1971 film, directed by Mel Stuart - the tiny entrance to the Chocolate Room, the set of that same room are both wildly similar to the '71 film. But this is NOT a remake of that movie; this is a new adaptation of Dahl's novel. I want to stress this because Wilder has evidently criticized Burton's "remake" of what Wilder and many others perceive to be a classic film. Burton and August and this cast have done something quite different - funnier, edgier and I would argue darker or more sinister - than the '71 film (which is quite good in its own right).

Overall, this is a really good film. For purists of the novel - and Dahl's work in general - the conclusion and added backstories are a big letdown. But the sheer entertainment value of the rest of the movie - and the unbelievably fine acting from Depp and Freddie Highmore - are a sufficient counterweight to the needlessly sentimental conclusion. The children are so over-the-top appalling, as are their parents - and Charlie and the Buckets so clearly normal and decent (but not chokingly angelic) - and Wonka is so flat-out odd and entertaining that I think the film succeeds smashingly.

Though I do wonder at both film versions' need to include some kind of affirming, positive, sentimental conclusion, that is a topic for another day. There are many more things I could say about the film - small snippets of humor or cleverness or oddness - and many I probably missed, but I think this is one film where I will leave it at a strong recommendation to see the film. If nothing else, it's food for thought on the Dahl adaptation front; at best, it's a wildly peculiar and intensely funny smart and clever film.

the chocolate factory opens....

2005-07-12T16:40:00.000-04:00

so a bit of luck came my way - i've been asked to participate in a post-screening discussion (facilitate it, i suppose) of the new Charlie & the Chocolate Factory film on monday 18 july at the oaks theatre in oakmont, pa (near pittsburgh). since i agreed to do it - nervously but excitedly - i get a ticket to tonight's sneak preview screening of the film at the waterfront theatres.

tonight, 7:30 - me, johnny depp and the Chocolate Factory!

I am extremely excited about seeing the film and participating in the discussion next week (great opportunity to expand my cv, i guess). I've worked a fair amount on Dahl's novel, and this spring wrote a paper for a film adaptation class on the '71 gene wilder film. i would hardly call myself expert, but i've definitely read pretty extensively on both novel and film, and i know those texts inside-out. and i've gotten more and more interested in the possibilities of film and children's literature; i don't know if it's the direction i'll head in for things like my dissertation, but the fact that i'm considering it at all surprises me (and is strangely exciting because it's such a new direction for me, a person who otherwise is in love with victorian/edwardian era literature and culture, especially children's lit).

i will post about the film sometime tonight - i don't know how spoilers work with such a wellknown source text, but i'll try not to give away the best parts (i'm sure there will be some). i don't know if i'll love the film but i'm terribly curious to see how the novel has been adapted.

more after the film!

may i recommend...?

2005-06-07T01:57:00.000-04:00

Richie's Picks has become one of my favorite sources for YA recommendations. Richie - who I have never met, though i did physically see him at the ALA convention in Atlanta several years ago - is clearly one smart cookie who knows kids. i also confess to liking his politics very much - nice lefty liberal progressive green peaceful sort that i am.

anyway, Richie's Picks has lists of picks from the past few years along with reviews and some other bits and pieces. i've culled a long list of titles from richie's picks for my summer reading, and i haven't been disappointed yet.

so: plug for richie's picks, and thanks to richie for doing what he does, and doing it so well.

doing it - wow!

2005-06-07T01:42:00.000-04:00

on my listserv awhile back, there was quite a hubbub over melvin burgess's YA novel Doing It. which is about a bunch of teenagers and all the sex they are (or are not) having. when the cover blurb of a book advises you to get past the smutty parts, you know something's a bit sketchy....

BUT: i was surprised - really almost shocked - at just what a good book it is. the first maybe fifty pages is unrelentingly smutty (what a good word that is), and i was starting to feel anxious that there was no point to the book. several list members had commented that it was great to finally have a book that was very honestly sexual from a teenage boy's perspective, and i think i'll agree, though since i never was a teenage boy i can't speak to the book's veracity.

Jonathon and Deborah's subplot was the one that won me over. Ben's wistfulness and kindness was touching; Dino's angst over his family situation was interestingly handled, but Jon and Deborah - wow. I give burgess major props for including a "plump" girl in sex scenes, and having her plumpness be sexy to the boy involved. and not just any skunky skanky boy - jon's shyish but otherwise doesn't seem to be insanely geeky or hideous. jon likes deborah's curviness, and deborah's brief narration gives us the sense that, though she wishes she looked like a magazine model, she is tolerably comfortable with her own plumpish body - which is BLISS to encounter in a female teenage character.

i was also oddly touched (really, like moved to tears) by the scene where one of the boys (maybe Dino, but i can't recall, and the book's back at the library) asks the girl he's with if he can look at her genitalia. she replies yes, but it's gross; he looks, and is amazed, finds her and her parts beautiful, and tells her so.

something about this was just phenomenal to me - women and girls generally have such shame about their bodys, and this is the privatest, innermost tucked away part - but also the most public, in a way. the boy's reaction - wonder at the beauty of the girl's privates - is fantastic. and, i think, realistic.

so: at the outset, doing it looks pretty repulsive. the cover of my edition, sort of red and black and white cartoonish drawings, are pretty repulsive. but the book itself is truly astounding. and i've gotten two more burgess books from the library - that's just how impressed with doing it i am.

shifting my focus (?)

2005-06-04T01:00:00.000-04:00

i've been studying children's literature academically and officially for kind of awhile now - since fall of 1998, to be precise. for most of that time, my focus has largely been on fiction for children up to roughly age 12 or 13. my "major work" thus far (the work surrounding my master's thesis) has been on JM Barrie: Peter Pan and a novel for adults called The Little White Bird. So-called "golden age" children's fiction has appealed most strongly to me.

But now i'm finding myself increasingly interested in the problems of young adult (YA) literature. I've been reading up a storm of YA novels, surprisingly; i used to really dislike the teen problem novel. i still dislike many of the more formulaic ones, but my curiosity is quite piqued by YA novels and YA culture, and issues surrounding the two.

I wonder if this is part of a larger shift in my academic interest? will i end up writing my dissertation on YA texts, not the semi-obscure late victorian fantasies i had imagined i'd work on? although i still have a burning desire to do something with Christina Rosetti's utterly alarming and wonderfully brilliant trio of short prose, Speaking Likenesses - and someday hopefully i'll be able to motivate myself to do so.

but YA novels - problems of audience, of address, of social pressures on and in the texts. representations of adolescence, adolescence as a social and biological and psychological phenomenon - this all appeals to me quite vastly at the moment, and has since last summer's chance catch of an NPR show on adolescence (featuring jeffrey eugenides and jonathan lethem).

my "problem," or the roadblock i construct for myself as a procrastination device and/or something else, is that i know virtually nothing about adolescent lit. i haven't done any particular reading or studying on the subject; i couldn't tell you who works especially on YA novels. i'm sure someone does - several someones, many someones - but who they are - ? i don't know.

perhaps once the Children's Lit Association conference has passed (next week! i am a bundle of nerves and excitement - my first conference, my first conference paper) i'll be able to dive into the library and start doing some serious reading on the subject.

or perhaps i'll dive into a different library and simply do massive amounts of reading of YA novels themselves.

it's a win-win situation, either way.

the first part last

2005-06-02T03:07:00.000-04:00

more marathon reading today - can't kick the habit! pete hautman's sweetblood and angela johnson's the first part last.

sweetblood was interesting. i always like a good depressed protagonist. i'm not sure what to make of the ending, or if/what the moral message of the book is (don't be goth? you'll be happier as a blonde?) but overall - pretty good.

the first part last knocked my socks off. the shifting chapters - from "now" to "then" worked really well; johnson is really only concerned with capturing a relatively narrow chunk of time and events (nia's pregnancy, and then the first few months following feather's birth). the characters aren't overly fleshed out but they needn't be - the depths of feeling they experience around this baby are sufficient.

my favorite part may be bobby's parents, fred and mary. they're separated, and do not conform to traditional gender stereotypes without being ridiculous or obvious or commented on: Fred runs a restaurant, cooks, frets about the baby being warm enough; Mary is a photographer, in and out of town, very no-nonsense, less obviously warm fuzzy and nurturing. but johnson, via bobby, makes clear how successful as humans and parents they are. bobby's good relationship with his friends and especially his brother are also pretty fantastic in their subtlety and naturalness. this is a teen problem novel that doesn't really feel like a teen problem novel; there aren't a million issues spilling from every page. johnson has turned a very bright but still soft spotlight on one particular episode in the lives of her characters, and that is enough for one amazing novel.

whooping it up with YA

2005-06-01T20:04:00.000-04:00

i went to the library yesterday and returned with a nice stack of YA novels, of which i have already read three. THREE in about 24 hours. i am a quick reader. lucky for me.

i'm on some sort of strange YA kick - i can't get enough! i tried reading my "adult" novels last week and it just flopped. I have Fortress of Solitude started, and it's beautiful but in an almost-distracting way. Every other sentence feels like Beautiful! Meaningful! Deep! Important! Novel! and i can't see what the characters are thinking or doing or feeling. very frustrating.

which is why YA has been so rewarding. I need to go pick over another library - i'm thinking i'll try the squirrel hill, newly reopened branch of the carnegie public libraries. i'm compiling lists like a fiend, trying to find good stuff (the really good stuff as opposed to the merely good).

The 24-hour marathon included:

Rainbow Boys, Alex Sanchez - not bad, a nice teen highschool lovetriangle featuring gay boys in various stages of Out-ness
Donorboy, Brendan Halpin - bravo, brendan halpin! a really good book, good characters, a touch sappy but also aware of its sappiness. and a pretty interesting plot, i must add - Rosalind's moms die in a car/truck accident, her biological dad (aka sperm donor) who she's never met but who knew her moms, takes her in. single 35 year old lawyer guy, 14-year old grief stricken girl. watching rosalind come to like and/or appreciate sean - and the gradual process of that liking - is pretty amazing.
Jake, Reinvented, Gordon Korman. i love gordon korman for a semester in the life of a garbage bag which is quite possibly the funniest, most hysterical book i have ever read. jake...was a bit of a disappointment - it was pretty obvious to me what jake's "secret" was early on, and the whole thing was kind of predictable. moreover, our narrator/hero rick's motives for participating with this crowd of people he clearly dislikes is unclear. then again, korman has this gatsby/daisy thing going (jake/jay; didi/daisy) so perhaps i'll just read rick as nick and say it's Gatsby for the younger set. whether or not the younger set needs its own version of Gatsby is another issue which i will not touch with a ten-foot pole.

Traveling Pants

2005-05-30T22:45:00.000-04:00

I did a whirlwind weekend reading of Ann Brashares' Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Second Summer of the Sisterhood.

What did i think of these fluff-for-the-younger-set books?

I don't know. Honestly. At times, i found the girliness of the books - the worrying about being fat, the fretting over hair and clothes and boys - extremely distasteful, especially since Brashares lets us know early in the first book that all four girls are fairly slim and attractive, especially jock Bridget and artist/introvert/beauty Lena. the incessant optimism kind of irked me too - even when Bad Things Happen, the girls learn Valuable Life Lessons and come to appreciate their friends even more!

BUT - that said, i zipped through the two novels in less than 48 hours (not really record time, i know), but i found them compelling enough to not set them aside for other projects (like reconfiguring my study, which i did tonight. i'm running out of Good books to read).

the shifting perspective of the first book really appealed to my narratological interest. especially since the four girls were so distinctly isolated from one another - in greece, in mexico, in dc, in south carolina. i also must admit i like the setting - the girls' hometown is DC (actually, i think it might be bethesda but i'm not sure) and since i spent three years in the district, it was nice to run into familiar places (the nine thirty club!).

Isolating the girls this way also helped illuminate how very different from each other they are. in this sense, brashares has done quite a nice job of character-creation: four girls, similar enough you can believe in their friendship, different enough to keep things interesting and give them distinct personalities.

overall: i'm going to look for the third installment as soon as i can get myself to the library (possibly tomorrow, especially if i can make myself go over to school to swim). i'm also going to check out the Traveling Pants movie coming out this week - though i am braced for disappointment, the film/lit adaptation class i took this spring has given me some much-needed looseness of perspective on films "based upon" books i've enjoyed.

traveling pants + sequels = great summer reading!

In Memoriam

2005-05-26T02:30:00.000-04:00

i received terrible news late last week about a wonderful member of my listserv: Karen Sue Simonetti passed away.

I never met Karen Sue except through emails and the list, but i loved her sense of humor, her enthusiasm, her willingness to help with any and all requests i might have. late last fall i briefly emailed her offlist about georges perec's novel W, or the memory of childhood. i am crushed i never got the chance to have a full email discussion of it - i had been looking forward to hearing her thoughts.
She enlisted her partner from holland for dutch/flemish pronunciation help regarding a name in a novel. she signed off her emails with an ellipsis then a brief description of her current state, mood, occupation. I will miss her voice more than i can explain to myself or to others.

The Chicago Tribune obituary is here. Karen Sue's amazon.com reviews as the nonesuch librarian are here

Please consider giving to the organizations listed in the obit, or any other literacy or book-related organization you like, in Karen Sue's memory. In the meantime, or if you can't give, please make sure to spend some extra time reading good YA novels in her honor.

unsatisfactory endings

2005-05-17T00:10:00.000-04:00

i've read several pretty good YA (or YA-ish) novels this past week, but many of them have conclusions that i found pretty roundly unsatisfying.
The Offending Books:
Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; Spinelli's Stargirl; Gennifer Choldenko's Al Capone Does My Shirts; Neal Shusterman's The Schwa Was Here and David Chotjewitz' Daniel Half-Human and the Good Nazi.
all good books, for the most part - I found Choldenko's narrator really engaging, and the setting (1930s Alcatraz) pretty compelling. A strange coincidence - both Choldenko and Haddon feature autistic teenagers in their novels. Haddon's, of course, is remarkable because it is narrated by the autistic teenager in question, and as I think I've mentioned before, I'm a sucker for unusual, unreliable, naive or otherwise peculiar narrators.
But somehow the ends of all these novels just didn't do it for me. I can't be more precise than that, really - just nothing happened the way i wanted it to. All felt fairly abrupt, in a strange way that left me thinking: "what am i supposed to do with this?"
which may be the point, after all, but i don't really think so. The conclusions in them all felt too contrived and tidy but abrupt, like the point of the book was everything but the end; but then in all of them too i felt there was a Message i was supposed to get, and it didn't quite all hang together.
I'll look for more from Choldenko, because i was pretty caught up by her plot and style. Spinelli is kind of a no-brainer; i know he's great, and i need to psyche myself up for Wringer, which i recently acquired from a goodwill shop. i have real trouble reading about cruelty to animals, so i know Wringer will be a challenge.

The Schwa was perhaps the most unsatisfying at the end (other than Stargirl) - i loved the book right up until the last few pages. and then i felt really frustrated; i felt a real sense of loss (partly empathy for Antsy, but partly independently).

I need a bookclub or something, but one that plows through these books at my rate - so i can get some others' input on these books. i'm really feeling puzzled about Stargirl, and i'd really love to know what other readers thought.

i don't know what to think

2005-05-15T01:44:00.000-04:00

today i read stargirl by jerry spinelli. i loved maniac mcgee; milkweed was pretty good (actually, milkweed was brilliant, narratologically speaking. i love a good naive narrator. spinelli and christopher paul curtis are the world masters at naive narrators).

stargirl is - what? i don't know. i don't know how i feel about it. it has the epic/talltale feel that maniac mcgee has, in places, but then it's narrated in the first person (15 years retrospectively, we learn at the end). so the epic tone feels a little discordant.
spinelli is obviously making a point about valuing individuality. i mean, the back of the book says so, and the text isn't much less explicit. but what to do with the book's conclusion? i didn't feel uplifted in the least; instead, i felt depressed and cheated.

i also wonder why there are so many YA books that valorize the oddball - usually female - character. she doesn't wear makeup, rides bikes and eats vegetarian food, wears funky old vintage dresses and strange (or no) shoes. she sings, she dances, she acts. she has no regard for what those are her think.
stargirl, of course, first is loved then slammed for her individuality.

the creeping aftereffects of a forceful personality appear at the novel's end (in a very similar way to maniac mcgee's influence on his community).

but have we really embraced individuality? i always feel peculiar when characters like stargirl appear - because in The Real World (of high schools and anywhere else), people like that are not valorized and celebrated. often they are barely tolerated. stargirl's insularity and naivete are really difficult to manage in the real world. so i wonder how these characters "translate" - are they extremes from which we can place ourselves? Like, you don't have to be as out there as stargirl, but maybe you'd like to, say, bring your guitar to school and serenade people - go for it! or just wear funky old prairiegirl skirts.

i guess maybe i don't get the message of Stargirl, aside from stargirl is cool and everyone else, especially leo, is a fool for trying to get her to conform. but that doesn't offer me much to take away into my real life, though i feel like the book would like me take something away.

perhaps this will be one of those books that percolates around in my brain for awhile and makes itself meaningful in some way.

Question: to whom would you give stargirl? a person like stargirl, a person like leo, a person like hillari kimble?

i love hilary mckay

2005-05-12T00:46:00.000-04:00

last week i was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of hilary mckay's next casson family book, permanent rose. i read it the way i read all of mckay's books - in one sitting, quickly, getting thoroughly absorbed in her characters and plot and style.
hilary mckay, for those who don't know, is one of the best writers i've ever read. she's wonderful - witty and true and symapthetic and manages to craft the most interesting, believable characters. though her families and characters tend toward the unconventional or downright odd, they are still completely believable and real. her exiles books are marvellous, though i've yet to get my hands on the first (the exiles). because i'm a student, i don't have much money and for some reason i have yet to comprehend, i'm stingy with buying books for myself. i've gotten better about this in recent months, but it's still a rare treat to actually buy new books (used is another story altogether). mckay is english, and the exiles books seem a bit tricky to get here in the states (at least where i've looked). and then online is pricier because of shipping. but the two other exiles books - the exiles at home and the exiles in love are both phenomenal.

as are the casson family books - saffy's angel, indigo's star and now permanent rose.

permanent rose picks up more or less where indigo's star left off, following the story of rose's relationship with american tom, now that he's returned to the states. rose is an exquisite character, deep and bratty and intelligent and creative and stubborn, and i love that this book delves more deeply into her character. one of my major - or only - criticisms of the casson books has been bill, the family's absentee-artist father. permanent rose tackles bill more thoroughly and seriously, and resolves many of the issues i had with him.
aside from all the wonderfully mckayish stylistic choices, i think what i loved best about this book is the depth and realness and consideration it gives to rose (who is nine) around her love for tom. mckay's books always take their child/teenager protagonists seriously without feeling heavyhanded or didactic, and i cannot praise this enough.
i will most certainly be re-reading permanent rose (and probably saffy's angel and indigo's star) in the next few weeks. they're just that good.

sweet valley blog

2005-05-01T12:54:00.000-04:00

I've been wondering lately if anyone still reads the Sweet Valley books - I see sweet valley twins books in thrift stores and library sales all the time, but not as often do i see the longer more YA sweet valley high novels. If these books are not read any longer, what has replaced them? i need to learn more about contemporary teen fluff fiction.

i'm contemplating reading all of the sweet valley high books - all of them - over the summer. just to see if i can. and blogging it every step of the way!!!!

i'm also getting a lot more academically interested in adolescence - I have been for, wow, almost a year - and teen pop fiction has a legitimate place in that interest.

i would like to know if anyone does still read these books - or that other standby of my younger youth, the babysitters' club series - and if not, what are The Kids reading these days to get their serial fiction fix?

YA reading marathon

2005-04-30T13:48:00.000-04:00

I've been swamped with end of semester paperwriting, revising and insomnia, but in between that fun i've been running a marathon of YA novel reading. Titles I've zipped through in the last two weeks include:

Boy Meets Boy - David Levithan
How to Disappear Completely & Never Be Found - Sara Nickerson
Lizzie Bright & the Buckminster Boy - Gary Schmidt
The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Steven Chbosky
how i live now - meg rosoff
The Homeward Bounders - Diana Wynne Jones (a re-read)
Running Loose - Chris Crutcher
Multiple Choice - Janet Tashjian

I will write more about some of them - how i live now and Perks in particular - when i've had a chance to re-read, and think more deeply about them.
stay tuned - same bat time, same bat station.

Bucking the Sarge - brilliant!

2005-04-13T11:08:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I finished reading Christopher Paul Curtis's latest novel - Bucking the Sarge. It's a departure from his earlier historical fiction in a couple of ways: it's definitely, definitely a contemporary setting, and it's also more of a YA novel (Luther, the narrator and Hero, is 15).

Curtis is, in my opinion, a master of first-person narrative voice. In each of his three novels, the protagonist/narrators have utterly convincing, compelling voices and personalities, each different from one another. I LOVE Curtis's use of language in Bucking the Sarge - both in capturing Luther's teenage slang, and in some clever playing around with language (a pun on "Luther" and "Loser" made me laugh out loud). Luther is a wonderful mix of brains, street smarts and naivete, but I *never* felt the urge to laugh at him. Curtis manages to avoid winking over the heads of his characters, instead allowing them to be supremely human, good, bad, sad and funny.

It's a cleverly constructed book as well - flashback sequences interwoven with present-day sections, all leading up to the most subtly crafted climax.

I laughed out loud more than once while reading the novel - in particular, a scene with a very special character named Chauncey toward the end had me almost in laughing tears.

My only regret is that the book ended at all - although I have to wonder about the possibility of a sequel? I would be delighted to read more of the philosophical wisdom of Luther T. Farrell.

Owl in Love

2005-03-13T22:57:00.000-05:00

I had a spree of reading YA novels a few weeks ago - re-reading Chris Crutcher and being dazzled, among many other things - but one of them was my first read of Patrice Kindl's Owl in Love.
Wow!

Owl Tycho, first-person narrator and heroine, is a were-owl; she shifts between human and owl. and happens to be in love with a human (her biology teacher). I won't say too much here about plot, because it happens to be something of a suspenseful book, but what *did* boggle my mind was Owl herself, as a not-so-human narrator.

I expected her to be human, and occasionally owl - much the way i imagine werewolves to be humans who resist, or are resigned, to their animal shapes. But Owl is an owl - even as a human body, she eats owl food (mouse sandwiches), and seems much more attuned to her owl/animal self than to her human shape. It's a really peculiar narrative trick that makes her simultaneously easy to identify with and wonderously Other and different.

Quite a good book. A month and a half on, and I'm still puzzling over this animal-identification business - the sign, to me, of a provoking text.

Lemony Snicket movie

2005-03-13T22:48:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since I posted here due to an unexpected personal crisis in the form of being suddenly, deliberately and without warning broken up with by my boyfriend of five years.

To help me keep it together in the immediate aftermath, my nice mom came down from Buffalo (in a snowstorm!) to stay with me for a week. One night we went to see Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events (the movie).

And I loved it!!! I'm quite a fan of the books, and I was curious as to how the film would handle the literariness and smartness of them. Also, it squishes the first three books into one movie, and does it marvellously.

Jim Carrey was awesome as Count Olaf and his various disguised characters. We (my mom and I) especially liked him as "Stefano, an Italian man," one of the funniest lines in the film. Olaf's theatricality and general absurd repulsiveness is in very good hands with Carrey. The kids were good, too, even Sunny.

Sunny's lines were a little too smarty-pants and way too modern (in a bad attempt at a sort of hip sarcasm), but since they were subtitled (brilliant!) I cut the writers a little slack. Klaus was assigned too much power - the brains and agency of the Baudelaires is shared out pretty equally in the books, but let's face it: Violet is the mover-and-shaker of the three. The rearrangement of chronology was an excellent adaptive decision.
The costumes and sets were killer (and nominated, like the score, for an academy award, though sadly lost - they did get the award for makeup).

Go see this movie. It is very good. Watch all the way through the credits - amazing track from the score by Thomas Newman, and even more amazing background animation by some genius (or geniuses). Really, the credits sequence is practically worth the price of the ticket/rental (my mom and I agreed on this).

Normally I loathe adaptations from books I adore, but this one really did quite an excellent job. and i await the ominous omnibus (and the next snicket film installment) eagerly.

weird wet magic

2005-01-13T01:29:00.000-05:00

E. nesbit is one of my personal favorite writers (for children or otherwise). Over my winter break, at a fantastic bookstore in Sarasota, Florida called Main Bookshop (http://www.mainbookshop.com/ ), I discovered Wet Magic, nesbit's last fantasy novel for children. somehow i had never heard of this one before, or else blocked it from my memory. Either way, i snapped it up immediately.

and it was very peculiar. It's an underwater fantasy, featuring a variety of merpeople who have removable tails (legs underneath, i guess). but it was quite an odd little novel. In particular, Nesbit includes an exeedingly dismal description of a fair the children go to (on land) that rivals anything lemony snicket ever included in his Series of Unfortunate Events.

What i liked best about Wet Magic is its anti-war message. Nesbit was a member of the Fabian Society in england, a socialist organization, and most of her novels have some kind of socialist/progressive message. The Fabians still exist - their website is http://www.fabian-society.org.uk/int.asp.

I need to read Wet Magic a few more times to really process its oddness - there was something uncommonly grim and drawn-out in the Beachfield Fair scenes, and i really don't know what to do with it.

My favorite nesbit novel is The Magic City. it's absolutely marvellous and dreamy and wonderful. Go read it!

A Child's Christmas in Wales

2004-12-16T01:48:00.000-05:00

Dylan Thomas wrote a most wonderful short story (or perhaps poem) titled "A Child's Christmas in Wales." In the mid 80s, a film version was made - through some kind of Canadian/UK coproduction. It is one of the most blissful Christmas narrative experiences out there, and should not be missed by anyone with a remotely nostalgic/literary/christmassy soul.

My family watches it every year on christmas, at night, after the unwrapping and eating, when we're all a bit tired and quiet - and it's wonderful. Quite funny at times, utterly entertaining but also really pushes the nostalgia buttons (in a good way).

I cannot recommend this enough. reading the text is also wonderful - Thomas's lyricism is breathtaking. In the first paragraph, we get this:
"I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea..."

It's a beautiful text, a beautiful film (Denholm Elliott wonderfully narrates and acts as the grandfather) and not to be missed now (or any other time of year).

man/child

2004-11-21T01:35:00.000-05:00

I'm currently interested in adults who act like children (in literature, mainly). For instance: Mr Dick of David Copperfield - an adult man who is consistenty characterized as childlike. Mr Dick clearly has some kind of diagnosable condition (autism, maybe? i don't know enough to diagnose a fictional character), so his behavior is not a choice nor an act, a performance. but the special position given to him in the text intrigues me.

....because i am also interested in PeeWee Herman as a character. the man/child thing is something i find fascinating, especially the public's response to it. i haven't done thorough research - really just cursory searches - but haven't found any good criticism about old PeeWee.

I'm currently reading, with my nice boyfriend (we've made our own bookclub!) Paul Auster's novel City of Glass, which has an adult who was a feral child (I think - I've only read about 75 pages and the nature of the book makes everything uncertain). he hasn't quite "recovered" -he is still a childish man, having been discovered at something like age 11 and then "brought up" from a state of virtual developmental infancy.

there's something to all this adult/child stuff, but i haven't quite sorted it out yet. it's quite clear to me why all the cases i've found are of Man/children (women are already historically aligned with children and infantilized - woman/child is practically an oxymoron from a critical perspective - although it's used in reverse, to describe an overly sophisticated - sexually - female child or teenager). but the man/child "character" needs more thinking.....

a few words about pittsburgh

2004-11-21T01:28:00.000-05:00

i like pittsburgh. a lot. i never expected i would, coming from a similarly-situated rust belt town (buffalo - well, a suburb of it), but pittsburgh is pretty fabulous. lots of diversity. interesting shopping districts with independent shops (and larger plazas with all the chain retailers you could ever need). tons of interesting architecture, even in little apartment buildings such as my own. i passed a decrepit abandoned building today - it looked like maybe a small apartment building or a series of rowhouses) - broken, boarded windows, overgrown lawns, the works - but it was a beautifu building all the same. dark brick, porches, big bay windows, dormers, gables - gables, like you see in amsterdam and bruges. i wanted to buy and renovate. too bad i am merely a poor student with no plans to Settle Down in the near future.

but pittsburgh is culturally and intellectually alive, incredibly beautiful - hills and rivers and parks all over the place - cheap to live in, has a reasonably friendly population and blissfully little traffic (i moved here from Our Nation's Capital, a sinkhole of mean aggressive drivers with huge gas guzzling vehicles).

it is a Nice Place to Visit, and i might even want to live here (once i finish school, that is).

J.M. Barrie in the New Yorker

2004-11-17T23:10:00.000-05:00

Anthony Lane has a piece in the November 22 edition of the New Yorker titled "Why J.M. Barrie created Peter Pan." The piece is clearly piggybacking on the release of "Finding Neverland," the Barrie bio film starring Johnny Depp & Kate Winslet.

Lane's piece is all right, for the most part, but he (like nearly all the critics I've read on the subject) gets it wrong when he discusses Barrie's marvellous 1902 novel The Little White Bird (TLWB). TLWB is a good read all on its own, and of particular interest for being the source text for what became the play, then novelization of, Peter Pan. It also allows critics to misread and misquote to set of alarm bells of pedophilia. Lane manages to both ring those alarms and clear Barrie's name of any wrongdoing. But the quotes-out-of-context really irk me because they add to the sensationalism surrounding Barrie's friendships with the Llewellyn-Davies boys.
Lane quotes this paragraph from TLWB:
""I returned to David, and asked him in a low voice whether he would give me a kiss. He shook his head about six times, and I was in despair. Then the smile came, and I knew that he was teasing me only. He now nodded his head about six times. That was the prettiest of all his exploits."
What Lane does not tell us is that David, at this point, is still a small baby in a perambulator, and it is the narrator's first meeting with the baby. Lane's comment that the "sheer weirdness of Barrie" takes off in TLWB is ridiculous - honestly, has he read the whole book? The narrator invents and "kills" his own son in order to give baby clothes to David, whose parents are very short of money. Lane also wonders about contemporary reception - there is one often-cited review from the TLS that makes it clear that Barrie's contemporaries were not obsessed with the specter of child molestation. (For more on the subject of child molestation and pedophilia, and its connection to the construction of the child, please see James Kincaid's excellent Erotic Innocence).
The Little White Bird is one of the most heart-wrenching novels I've ever read. At its heart is the narrator's wish to have a child of his own, to be a parent with a family to love and be loved by. If you haven't read this novel, you really should, and then follow it up with Andrew Birkin's even more heart-wrenching Barrie biography The Lost Boys, which has recently been reprinted.

the youth vote

2004-11-04T01:25:00.000-05:00

(or lack thereof). Everyone, evidently, is disappointed by the low - or at least not-increased - turnout of young voters (ages 18-25). 17% in 2000; 17% in 2004.
I'm disappointed too. but i'm also pretty irked at the way both candidates and parties largely ignored real issues affecting young voters - plenty of words, words, words, about the Future of America! and Young People Need to Vote! but you know, I want to know about plans to help provide health insurance to the 18-24 set, the largest group of uninsured americans. I want to hear the candidates' ideas about creating federal scholarships or grants - NOT just loans - so teenagers can go to college or other training schools if they want to. I want to hear about the environment - people my age have been raised up thinking Reduce, Reuse Recycle - why not talk about initiatives for increased recycling - bins on every corner in America! Or the bigger issues, like protecting wildlife at home and worldwide; reducing emissions and maybe even signing on to the Kyoto Treaty. Or talking more about expanding options for alternative fuels - hybrid vehicles are just the beginning, and they're HERE.
How about addressing minor injustices, like higher car insurance rates for young drivers, or the fact that rental car companies charge a very large fee for renting to under-25s. How about pitching a plan to allow under-18 year old workers to not pay taxes on their earnings (they can't vote, after all)? Or to put those taxes into some kind of fund for helping with college education, or purchasing a home? That kids who can't vote STILL have to pay taxes is, in my mind, hugely unjust. Think about it - they pay into medicare and social security - those get taken regardless of income tax refunds - but don't get to vote for those who administer those programs.

Hint to the Democrats: spend the next three years seriously considering youth issues. do research. do studies. get out in the field and find out what matters to people in high school and college. don't refer to them as kids, either, or patronize them with semi-celebrities and the children of candidates. don't act like the Youth only appear every four years to disappoint you in the voting booth. For every concession you even consider for seniors, think of one for young people. find ways to engage with under 25s that aren't patronizing. There's a lot these kids have never had to think about before they turn 18, 20, 22 - help them, give them time, understand that the important issues to them may not appeal to old people or middle-class families, but are still important issues worth thinking about.

Neither Bush nor Kerry spoke to the 18-25 year olds. Any wonder they didn't come out to vote?

kansas charley

2004-11-01T23:36:00.000-05:00

I just finished Joan Jacobs Brumberg's book: Kansas Charley: The story of a nineteenth century boy murderer. Charley is a boy who murders, not a murderer of boys (although he is that, too). It was interesting but I do wish Brumberg had spent more time on a broader discussion of juvenile justice and juvenile death penalty cases/issues. The book really is about Kansas Charley, although oddly enough, there isn't much in there about Charley himself - he ends up being a kind of absence in the middle of the book. He evidently spoke very little during his trials; interviews with him are only excerpted in the book. Charley's voice, speaking for himself, is largely absent.
Otherwise, a fantastic case analysis that helps historicize the current anxieties over kids who kill.

His Dark Materials

2004-10-04T15:55:00.000-04:00

I'm re-reading the trilogy for - i don't know - the sixth time? more? and once again i'm jusy blown away by the skill with which Philip Pullman writes. The books are just breathtaking. In The Amber Spyglass, I'm particularly noticing what I guess is called pacing - the urgency of the text, the sense of great important things happening. I can think of only one other text with a similar feel, and that's Lloyd Alexander's last book in the Prydain series - The High King. I'm wondering if part of the reason for that sense of movement and urgency is the way the narrative is broken up - we keep shifting, following each character. For example, The Amber Spyglass starts by following Lyra and Mrs. Coulter, then shifts to Will, then to Iorek Byrnison, then to Ama, and on and on. You can almost SEE the way in which all these threads will weave together, until everyone is in the same place at the same time - you can sense the motion of the characters toward each other, toward the ultimate climax (climaxes) of the novel.

We will not mention the conlusion of this book. It is too distressing.

I'm with Mary and the mulefa at the moment, and for the life of me, I cannot visualize how they uses wheels - how exactly the wheels attach to the legs. wish there was an illustration.....