Escape
"Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?"
-J.R.R. Tolkien, from On Fairy Stories
I finished Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It was a pleasant companion for the past two weeks, providing me with a bit of escape during the end of a stressful semester.
The constant refrain of escape, so evident on every page, often explicitly so, finds a pure expression in two 20th century Jewish comic book creators.
Last night I began reading Jimmy Corrigan. Holly kindly gave me a hardcover copy as a gift over a year ago, for which I am grateful to her, but, for whatever reason, I have been unable to start this story, until now.
It is a dark story. I had to stop reading and open up a Krazy Kat collection instead. I'll read a dozen or so pages each night, though, I think, interspersed with some Krazy.
"The newspaper articles that Joe had read about the upcoming Senate investigation into comic books always cited "escapism" among the litany of injurious consequences of their reading, and dwelled on the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life."
-Michael Chabon, from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
"Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?"
-J.R.R. Tolkien, from On Fairy Stories
I finished Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It was a pleasant companion for the past two weeks, providing me with a bit of escape during the end of a stressful semester.
The constant refrain of escape, so evident on every page, often explicitly so, finds a pure expression in two 20th century Jewish comic book creators.
Last night I began reading Jimmy Corrigan. Holly kindly gave me a hardcover copy as a gift over a year ago, for which I am grateful to her, but, for whatever reason, I have been unable to start this story, until now.
It is a dark story. I had to stop reading and open up a Krazy Kat collection instead. I'll read a dozen or so pages each night, though, I think, interspersed with some Krazy.
"The newspaper articles that Joe had read about the upcoming Senate investigation into comic books always cited "escapism" among the litany of injurious consequences of their reading, and dwelled on the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life."
-Michael Chabon, from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
posted by trawlerman at 2:53 PM
1 Comments:
Two related quotes, culled without shame from my windbag comments to Matt (Grain and Salt):
C.S. Lewis, speaking about The Wind in the Willows and Story in general:
To that extent the book is a specimen of the most scandalous escapism...It might be expected that such a book would unfit us for the harshness of reality and send us back to our daily lives unsettled and discontented. I do not find that it does so. The happiness which it presents to us is in fact full of the simplest and most attainable things....And in the same way, the whole story, paradoxically enough, strengthens our relish for life. This excursion into the preposterous sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual.
G.K. Chesterton:
Human beings cannot be human without some field of fancy or imagination; some vague idea of the romance of life and even some holiday of the mind in a romance that is a refuge from life.
And now my husband's stressful semester has come to an end! Three cheers! (The only hardships with which he must now contend will spring from his shrewish wife and unruly urchins. Poor bloke.)
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