false 1612748 I would characterize our age as an age of bad faith. We compound previous eras' disastrous clashes of religious-based ideologies with a special 21st century variant of Sartre's bad faith, whereby human psychology creates escape hatches for personal responsibility (as in, None of us is responsible for the invasion of Iraq, even though the United States is).
]]> 57 female Fort Valley, VA 10/2008 06/2009 1 9 9 true 5850503 read 0 true 3556413 currently-reading 0 true 3556412 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/58874576 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180144068s/1003981.jpg 1612748 Kitty http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto-F-50x66.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1612748-kitty Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:55:41 -0700 Netherland (Hardcover) by Joseph O'Neill]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/44659594 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255793924s/2615008.jpg 1612748 Kitty http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto-F-50x66.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1612748-kitty Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:28:52 -0800 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/42914165 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg 1612748 Kitty http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto-F-50x66.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1612748-kitty Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:43:57 -0800
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/41595844 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171163515s/89724.jpg 1612748 Kitty http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto-F-50x66.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1612748-kitty Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:23:40 -0800
The classic fairy tale is not as reassuring as the so-called happy ending might seem to promise. There's a recent style of children's literature where the old tale is perverted in an intentional way to cast doubt on the original meaning, but to me none of these efforts has succeeded where the originals did, which was in discomfiting the adult point of view about children (who are supposed to go from unruly to well aimed). In fairy tales, different from today's mostly pc kid lit, the psyche is not well defined, and the child is subject to all kinds of horror that never resolve themselves into the safety of normality, or the sentimental pleasures of eccentricity. The forest remains the forest dark and without rational comprehension or redemption.

I think it's not so much the character of a child that makes the impact - for instance, Dickens is excellent at creating child characters, but I don't think that is what the reviewer here is getting at. Rather I think it's the writer who can thrust the reader back into the experience of childhood in its rawest and most psychologically daunting form, a depiction of childhood straight on, where everything holds the possibility of shifting into something else. The safety of home protects some children from concretely experiencing their deepest fears, but still they need the stories, as argued by Bettelheim and others, to face their vulnerability and in whatever way possible to emerge able to live life with their fears held sufficiently in check. Other children live lives where their family members are their worst and closest enemies, and still they need them and perhaps even love them, as a beaten dogs loves her master. That we should ever imagine that childhood is easy.

I enjoyed this review very much.]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/38529911 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166505020s/12577.jpg 1612748 Kitty http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto-F-50x66.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1612748-kitty Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:48:23 -0800 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/38529087 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178231994s/774032.jpg 1612748 Kitty http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto-F-50x66.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1612748-kitty Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:43:12 -0800
I remembering liking A Fan's Notes and other Exley works at the time I read them (a long time ago, maybe 20 years ago) but they haven't stayed with me, and so I'm surprised to be reminded of A Fan's Notes. Maybe I put Exley along with Richard Ford, as a diarist of a certain kind of man that I need to pay attention to. I need fiction to point this out, then I need real life to proceed so I can see what they look like in real life. I'm not interested in going on with them very long in the depths of literature. ]]>