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The Greatest Adventure Story
Michael Chabon has a great essay in this week’s issue of The New York Review of Books about the inherent literary potential of childhood. Some of my favorite stories have children as protagonists or main characters, but I’ve been reluctant to wonder why that is, thinking that I probably like childhood stories because I am easily seduced by nostalgia. But no! Chabon articulates a more complex reason that childhood narratives are so appealing: “Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity.”
Another idea that Chabon brings up is about how childhood is a kind of wilderness and how overprotective parenting is a form of colonization and taming of that wilderness:
The endangerment of children—that persistent theme of our lives, arts, and literature over the past twenty years—resonates so strongly because, as parents, as members of preceding generations, we look at the poisoned legacy of modern industrial society and its ills, at the world of strife and radioactivity, climatological disaster, overpopulation, and commodification, and feel guilty. … our children have become cult objects to us, too precious to be risked. …What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children’s imaginations?…Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted—not taught—to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself.
Anyway, go read the whole thing if this bastardized chopped up version looks appealing to you. The essay in full is much better, of course.
There’s also something both lovable and disgusting about how many commas Chabon can cram into a sentence. On the one hand the over use of commas is endearing– like he’s just so excited to tell you something he ends up stammering it all out in semi-coherent fragments. On the other hand it can sometimes be grammatically uncomfortable to read.
It other child-related literary news, the reclusive Lorrie Moore has a story in last week’s The New Yorker titled “Childcare.”
Thanks for posting this, Catherine. Chabon nails it. This subject—the wilderness of childhood—has been a fetish of mine since I started writing stories. Childhood is its own landscape, a place of both menace and magic, fear and fascination. Get the adults pushed off into the margins as quick as you can has always been one of my mantras.
Thanks for posting this, Catherine. Chabon nails it. This subject—the wilderness of childhood—has been a fetish of mine since I started writing stories. Childhood is its own landscape, a place of both menace and magic, fear and fascination. Get the adults pushed off into the margins as quick as you can has always been one of my mantras.
See also Justine Kurland’s photgraphy.
See also Justine Kurland’s photgraphy.
Yeah I liked this essay. And just read Tom Sawyer for the first time a few months ago. It all adds up.
this was a great article
this was a great article
killer
killer
Also, Joshua Furst’s story collection, Short People.
Also, Joshua Furst’s story collection, Short People.
I think it may be because so many writers are still living their childhood, never got out so to speak. It’s all they know and they’re too tired or something to use their imaginations.
The Lorrie Moore is an excerpt from her new novel, A Gate at The Stairs, which I read this weekend and really liked. I hadn’t read anything like it in a long, long time, maybe since reading Moore’s last novel a few years ago. Anyway, she has an incredible knack for writing as a twenty-year old girl/woman, and for framing all the terrible/altering/epiphanic things that happen to girl/women when they’re that age.
The Lorrie Moore is an excerpt from her new novel, A Gate at The Stairs, which I read this weekend and really liked. I hadn’t read anything like it in a long, long time, maybe since reading Moore’s last novel a few years ago. Anyway, she has an incredible knack for writing as a twenty-year old girl/woman, and for framing all the terrible/altering/epiphanic things that happen to girl/women when they’re that age.
So are you saying that writers who write about “childhood” aren’t using their imaginations??? But writers who “got out so to speak” are?
So are you saying that writers who write about “childhood” aren’t using their imaginations??? But writers who “got out so to speak” are?
I’m saying a lot of you are pretty damned young. I’m also saying a lot of writers aren’t using much imagination these days. Oh the pity. Hope that clears it up.
oh the pity, indeed.
oh the pity, indeed.
Agreed. Need to get her new novel then.
Agreed. Need to get her new novel then.
But Chabon is 46 & he’s advocating for writing from a child’s eye and/or about coming of age…. that using that framework reaches larger issues. The essay does a good job explaining that, I think. I mean, think of Dickens and Twain and Fitzgerald and Henry James’s What Maize Knew. I don’t think you could say they aren’t using their imaginations…? I don’t know though. You might be talking about something different and I should be working anyway.
But Chabon is 46 & he’s advocating for writing from a child’s eye and/or about coming of age…. that using that framework reaches larger issues. The essay does a good job explaining that, I think. I mean, think of Dickens and Twain and Fitzgerald and Henry James’s What Maize Knew. I don’t think you could say they aren’t using their imaginations…? I don’t know though. You might be talking about something different and I should be working anyway.
Is it just me or were the first 3 pages or so of that story completely unnecessary?
Is it just me or were the first 3 pages or so of that story completely unnecessary?
Agreed, Rebecca. The absence of imagination AND language in most contemporary novels is a pity.
Agreed, Rebecca. The absence of imagination AND language in most contemporary novels is a pity.
maybe it’s necessary in terms of 20 year old girl psyche?
maybe it’s necessary in terms of 20 year old girl psyche?
chabon is right. childhood is universal and is the easiest way to get ideas across to a large audience. you shouldn’t need an essay to spell this minor epiphany out though.
patent to me at least.
chabon is right. childhood is universal and is the easiest way to get ideas across to a large audience. you shouldn’t need an essay to spell this minor epiphany out though.
patent to me at least.
Yeah, but the essay goes into exactly why… I liked the whole Childhood as Wilderness idea and the notion of overprotective parenting being damaging on a literary level….
Of course the idea is obvious, but he delves deeper into it and from a parent’s pov, which is something I don’t have.
Yeah, but the essay goes into exactly why… I liked the whole Childhood as Wilderness idea and the notion of overprotective parenting being damaging on a literary level….
Of course the idea is obvious, but he delves deeper into it and from a parent’s pov, which is something I don’t have.
[…] other night, just after I read that Chabon essay about the Wilderness of Childhood, I watched This Is England on a whim and I was positively floored. It’s about a twelve year […]
i wasn’t shitting on the essay. more of confirmation and head nodding with an obvious statement to drive home the point.
i wasn’t shitting on the essay. more of confirmation and head nodding with an obvious statement to drive home the point.
I agree. This was excellent, and I especially appreciated the section on maps: “Childhood is a branch of cartography.” It’s the physical landscape of place (wilderness), but it’s also the mental landscape of memory. For me, it wasn’t just about writing ABOUT childhood to reach some wide audience, but about using childhood as your map, your key, to get back to that mental place when everything was new and dangerous and exciting because you had just the tiniest bit of independence.
I agree. This was excellent, and I especially appreciated the section on maps: “Childhood is a branch of cartography.” It’s the physical landscape of place (wilderness), but it’s also the mental landscape of memory. For me, it wasn’t just about writing ABOUT childhood to reach some wide audience, but about using childhood as your map, your key, to get back to that mental place when everything was new and dangerous and exciting because you had just the tiniest bit of independence.
Disagree. Chabon’s essay is crap. He tries to reduce all storytelling — a pretty damn complicated social and cognitive endeavor — to a few recycled images of a pastoral childhood. Not only simplistic, the essay is dangerous to our understanding of narrative. Someone get him a babysitter so he can concentrate on real work again.
http://thefictionadvocate.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/back-in-my-day/
Disagree. Chabon’s essay is crap. He tries to reduce all storytelling — a pretty damn complicated social and cognitive endeavor — to a few recycled images of a pastoral childhood. Not only simplistic, the essay is dangerous to our understanding of narrative. Someone get him a babysitter so he can concentrate on real work again.
http://thefictionadvocate.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/back-in-my-day/