When I first encountered real hunger in Appalachian Tennessee, having read “Pinocchio” helped me understand what I was seeing.
Tag Archives: Childhood
Pinocchio and Appalachian Hunger
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Appalachian poverty, Carlo Collodi, Hunger, Pinocchio Comments closed
My Brilliant Friend, Cure for Loneliness?
The child perspective in Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend” creates a special bond with the reader.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Angus Fletcher, Charlotte Bronte, Company We Keep, Elena Ferrante, Emily Bronte, first person point of view, Hamlet, Jane Eyre, John Knowles, My Brilliant Friend, opera, penny dreadfuls, Separate Peace, Wayne Booth, William Shakespeare, Wonderworks, Wuthering Heights Comments closed
Thrown by Proust into the Past
Reading about Gilberte in “Swann’s Way” has had me thinking a lot about a girl I knew in childhood.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Chris Mayfield, Gilberte Swann, In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust Comments closed
Larkin’s Attack on Nostalgia
Larkin’s “I Remember” is an attack on Coventry for not having given him an idealized childhood.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "I Remember I Remember", Nostalgia, Philip Larkin, Thomas Hood Comments closed
See, This Coal Has Touched Your Lips
The image of God touching the lips of Isaiah and Jeremiah shows up in C.S. Lewis’s “Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged C.S. Lewis, Isaiah, Jeremiah, prophets, Resurrection, Voyage of the Dawn Treader Comments closed
Bright Shoots of Everlastingness
In “Retreat” Henry Vaughan’s childhood self is closer to God than his adult self, perhaps reflecting Christ’s admonition to receive the kingdom of God as a child would.
Becoming Clever at Age Six
A. A. Milne’s poem about turning six gets the age just right.
What Tennis Meant to Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy picked up tennis late in life, even though at one point seeing it as symbolic of bourgeois decadence. A look at the novel “Resurrection” explains why he changed.
Childhood, Space of Terror & Enchantment
Norman Finkelstein’s wondrous poem “Children’s Realm” (in “The Ratio of Reason to Magic”) examines child’s play spaces and says that the poet also needs play spaces within.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Children's Realm", Norman Finkelstein, William Wordsworth, wonder Comments closed
