Month: June 2009

(No) Fear of Flying

Children's Literature
Notice anything interesting about the house and balloons?
Notice anything interesting about the house and balloons?

In Trumpet of the Swan, the “splendid sensation” of flight inspires Louis to say: “I never knew that flying could be such fun. This is great. This is sensational. This is superb. I feel exalted, and I’m not dizzy.” In Feeling like a Kid, Jerry Griswold has a wonderful chapter on “Lightness” and writes with expressive intensity about Peter Pan, The Light Princess, Mary Poppins, The People Could Fly, and other books. He recently reviewed the new Disney Pixar film Up for the LA Times.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-up7-2009jun07,0,7813918.story

Spike Jonze and “Where the Wild Things Are”

Children's Literature, Uncategorized

Anyone have more information on the test screenings?

http://pictureyear.blogspot.com/2009/06/weekend-video.html

Over a year ago, rumors began to circulate that the $75 million dollar film of “Where The Wild Things Are” was in trouble. Directed by Spike Jonze, with a script by Dave Eggers, monsters from the Jim Henson company, and music by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s), the film adaptation of the Maurice Sendak children’s classic had intriguing creative/hipster potential. But the word was that it too dark and scary and the actor playing the mischievous Max had failed to impress the brass at Warner Brothers. Test screenings were reputedly disastrous.

It’s now slated for an October 2009 release, but if the above trailer is anything to go by, it certainly looks visually impressive. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

“Stories are the best democracy we have.”

Storytelling

NYT, 6/15: Colum McCann writes movingly about meeting his grandfather at a nursing home in London–“for the first and last time.” Only when McCann read Joyce’s Ulysses later in life did he really get to know the grandfather, who “emerged” from the novel. McCann quotes Nabokov on storytelling (see below), but he draws some conclusions that move us away from the point made in the passage. Isn’t Nabokov telling us how words can turn into wands, transforming the ordinary into something exquisite, incandescent, and unforgettable? McCann tells us instead about how we can enter story worlds, breathing their air and inhabiting their reality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/opinion/16mccann.html

Vladimir Nabokov once said that the purpose of storytelling is “to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”

This is the function of books — we learn how to live even if we weren’t there. Fiction gives us access to a very real history. Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.

Maureen Dowd on Obama and “The Brave Little Tailor”

Brothers Grimm

Seen in the NYT on 6/20: Maureen Dowd knows her Brothers Grimm, although she might have used a more recent translation of the line about the tailor’s heart wagging like a lamb’s tail. Fearless is a good term for capturing Obama.

In the Grimms’ fairy tale, “The Brave Little Tailor,” a tailor brandishing a rag kills seven flies swarming around his jam-smeared bread. The little man admires his own bravery so much — “For joy his heart wagged like a lamb’s tail” — that he wants the whole world to know of it. So he stitches up a belt for himself embroidered with the legend “Seven at one blow!” and saunters out.

Protected by his legend, using brains rather than brawn, he dispatches two giants and captures a unicorn and a wild boar before winning a princess and living happily ever after as a king.

The president didn’t order up a “One at one blow!” belt. You don’t need such accessories in the era of YouTube viral videos. But he did admire his own ninja moves so much that he gave himself a shout-out: “That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker.”