Children in Literature

In that previous entry, I was hoping the link would show up live. It didn't. I'm disappointed. I don't know how to insert a live link here. Let me try another one, though:
sgi-usa.org

We'll see.

The price of gas today was $3.66 at the big Bucky's the bus goes by. That's down from yesterday -- down! Will our kids be riding horses and stage coaches? Are they still making buckboards? Because if they don't soon -- immediately - start being serious about alternate fuel, what choice will be left. (And by "alternate fuel" I don't mean "oil dug up in America instead of in Arabia".)

Let's look at, not children's books, but some books about children.

The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini:
This is a very popular book, very famous, much loved -- and, I guess, on the whole, it deserves all that. Anything that introduces Americans to day-to-day life in other cultures is great, and I suspect an awful lot of these incidents actually happened. It's also good to remind ourselves of the utter depravity we, as humans, are capable of. I remember that a few years ago someone was making a movie about Hitler as a youth, and there were objections because the movie intended to portray him as a frail human being, rather than as a monster. But that's exactly the point: criminals aren't born with guns in their hands, society doesn't send some children to school and other to Monster Camp. We, all of us, have the capabilities for both great good and great evil: it wasn't a Space Alien who conceived the Holocaust, but one of us, one of our own. Thus here we have Amir as a loving husband, a good friend, a traitor and a redeemer. We have Amir's father embracing life with an expansive spirit, and the Taliban squeezing life out the earth they tread on. There is Hassan's unbreakable compassion, Aseff's unbridled hatred. All human beings. Which one am I?

I got into a small discussion on a writer's board about my one, huge problem with The Kite Runner. The consensus was that I was wrong. But, I still feel this: Hosseini goes too far in his despoilment of the boy Sohrab. Nothing good happens to this poor kid. Nothing neutral happens to him. Life is often cruel, okay, a valid theme. But the point had been made 50 pages or so before the cruelty stopped. And I don't mean just physical cruelty: the kid's parents are murdered, he's abandoned, he's molested, he gets his hopes up for a better life only to have them dashed by poor timing.... it just goes on. It becomes unbearable. The point was made, and in my opinion the book becomes just a little sadistic before it closes.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles:
From the perspective of 2008, there's an elephant between the pages of this book that may not have been so elephantine when it was written in the 50s. To wit: Gene, the narrator, and Phineas, his roommate are obviously deeply in love with each other. It was a big distraction for me: "Go on, guys, get on with it," I kept saying, expecting on every page that they'd be holding hands on the next page. Well, it didn't happen, wasn't even alluded to. Meanwhile, with the macrocosm of World War II influencing everything, there are misunderstandings and petty jealousies in the microcosm of the Devon school. It ends badly. Of the 3 books I'm doing here, I like this the best. Not crazy about it, though. And it beats out The Kite Runner only because of the prolonged cruelty mentioned above. All in all, The Kite Runner is a better book, but I liked A Separate Peace better. Savvy?

Beach Music by Pat Conroy
Sprawling is what this is. Pat Conroy is an acclaimed novelist (Prince of Tides), so I was happy to find one of his books at the Goodwill. And now, horribly, horribly disappointed.

Prime example of reason 1: At one point one character says to his brother: "My wife, Jean, commutes to Charleston..." If he had just said "Jean" his brother wouldn't know who he meant? The book is very badly written. It's a very long book for a doofus to read, but Conroy must have thought his readers would be doofuses.

Characters keep passing through the Rome airport. Hey, the Rome airport, in the 8os? Wouldn't it be something if there were -- golly, what do you know: there is a terrorist attack!

More egregious (apart from the bad writing and the cliches) is the underlying theme of the book, that the most important moments in a little girl's life happened during her father's childhood. That's right -- the adults in her life (and dad in particular) are teaching her that her life will be worthwhile only if she lives in her father's childhood. Does that sum up us baby boomers, or what??? It strikes me as a kind of..mmm, not quite abuse, but surely neglect.

There we go. Long one today, eh?