Comments on: Children’s Literature Literature

By: Ray Davis

Ray Davis — Sun, 18 Jul 2004 14:37:24 +0000

I couldn’t agree more.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Sat, 17 Jul 2004 18:03:00 +0000

Oh, and Laura (Riding) Jackson's Progress of Stories should probably be tossed into the mix, especially the brilliant "A Fairy Tale for Older People," which I am completely unable to describe. Harry Mathews has a nice essay about Progress in his collection "Immeasurable Distances." I never did read the essay on Hans Christian Andersen contained within Progress, though.

By: Ray Davis

Ray Davis — Sat, 17 Jul 2004 14:58:18 +0000

My favorite Hans Christian Andersen stories explicitly embed zooms out of story, achieving much the same emotional affect as these later examples in a startlingly small space. In this context, I particularly recommend looking at “The Flying Trunk” (on the crippling effects of writing fairy tales) and “The Pine Tree” (on the crippling effects of reading fairy tales). (Note to self: finish that survey of Andersen metafiction, Davis, or you’re fired!)

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 20:35:57 +0000

On Spencers’ “Zod Wallop”. I preferred “Resume with Monsters”, ‘cos of the twist on the Lovecraftian mythos. And Azathoth phoning the hero at the end and asking how his kids were.

By: jholbo

jholbo — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 05:32:38 +0000

Thanks for the post, Henry. It occurs to me that in some sense the class of works I’m attempting to carve out is a bit more general: more of an innocence-and-experience thing. The clearest cases of these are children’s literature literature, as you very nicely it. But even the works I explicitly mention – Watchmen and Dark Knight, for example – are not so purely about childhood as they are attempts to invoke a sort of vertiginous ‘Well, how did we get here?’ mood (I invoke that old Talking Heads song). The fact that running around with your underwear on the outside really makes no sense greatly facilitates the generation of this mood.

By: novalis

novalis — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 22:18:35 +0000

Henry, perhaps you can explain the ending of The Least Trumps? [rot13 for spoilers] Vg frrzrq gb whfg raq, naq gung jnf ernyyl naablvat, orpnhfr hagvy gung cbvag, vg unq orra bar bs gur orfg fgbevrf V unq rire ernq. Jnf vg vagraq gb zvzvp gur Sbk abiryf (juvpu ner cebonoyl n abq gb Tbezratunfg, nygubhtu V unira’g ernq gur ynggre)? Be?

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 19:33:36 +0000

Was is overstuffed but good (I could have done without the Judy Garland chapters, the epilogue is lame, but the next-to-last chapter—which the book is building up to—is pretty amazing). I also thought of mentioning Moominvalley in November, on the theory that some people say it doesn’t count as a children’s book at all (and perhaps children’s books aren’t allowed to use the word “surreptitiously”). But that would be cheating. A lot of Toft’s story is about the transition from a naive children’s-book view of the world to something greater, though.

By: Henry

Henry — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 18:43:22 +0000

Apologies about the doppelganger. I thought about mentioning Was but decided not to, as I haven’t actually read it. I loved Ryman’s The Unconquered Country – I have an edition that he not only signed, but very kindly drew a house-tree on. Little, Big of course riffs off “Sylvie and Bruno” at several points. Two other pieces that I should have mentioned were Elizabeth Hand’s “The Least Trumps,” and Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol href=”http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/hand/hand1.html” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/hand/hand1.html. The former is in the same issue of Conjunctions as Crowley’s story – it’s the lesbian-politics-and-tattoos remix of “Little, Big,” and it’s wonderful. The latter is available on-line – I’m especially fond of it for its portraits of Joey Ramone and my local pub, the Childe Harold (lightly disguised in the story as the Childe Roland). Both stories are in her recent collection, Bibliomancy. Her “Mortal Love” arrived from Amazon yesterday – yum, yum.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 18:31:17 +0000

Geoff Ryman's Was is about the dark social forces behind The Wizard of Oz, kinda, and some other stuff as well. Jacques Roubaud's The Princess Hoppy is perhaps somewhere in the area (although it's more of a fake children's book which is all about the smallest non-cyclic group, or something like that). Maybe Sylvie and Bruno itself fits into this genre, though I find it hard to untangle its intentions from what it does, and also not worth the effort. (I think I tried to post this to the now-deleted doppelganger of this post--apologies if it shows up twice.)