There Are People in this Story

I have to admit I was a little surprised when you decided to drop a little opera knowledge on me in that last post. At first I was shocked by your in-depth knowledge of the great sopranos of the world, and say what you will about Wikipedia, don’t think that I’ve forgotten all those childhood afternoons when I wanted to play a rousing game of tag or freeze tag, or windmill tag, and you instead forced me to play Live from the Met! for endless hours. (Although in the interest of full disclosure  memories of your 8-year old Rigoletto still brings a tear to my eye. You always had a knack for Verdi.)

In my reading yesterday I was shocked to learn that the animals that inhabit the riverbank world of The Wind in the Willows live side-by-side with humans. Quite frankly, I found the idea quite disconcerting, especially when Rat and Mole stop during their walk in the forest to look into the windows of people’s homes and mock them.

I guess I was still thinking about that this morning as I walked from my apartment to my car. I crossed paths with a small rabbit with a condescending, holier-than-thou look on its face. As I passed the rabbit, I swear I could have heard it snicker at me. So, I of course, do what any logical person would, after passing the rabbit I quickly turn around and say “Who are you to judge me!” 

I know that probably sounds a bit “paranoid” but that rabbit ran away. And do you know why it ran away? 

Because it knew I was right.*

*Portions (and by “Portions” I mean all) of the preceding may have been fabricated to illustrate a point. That point being, I think I’m funny.

Okay, seriously though, I did read what might be the funniest line in the book so far:

“‘On the contrary, I faithfully promise that the very first motor-car I see, poop-poop! off I go in it!”

This makes me laugh even still.

Well, I am making progress Twinner, and I think I should be able to finish this book up in the next few days. 

Until later,
Justin

Intervening with Mole and Rat

I take it from your last post that

a.)  You haven’t read anymore of the book

and

b.)  You don’t like great theatre.

Well there’s nothing I can do about the latter, but perhaps I can shame you out of the former.

For you see I have been reading, and K8 has a point when she mentions the addict-like qualities of Toad…for chapter six reads very much like a woodland version of A&E’s Intervention (Or if you’re like me and have never seen this program–then it may remind you of that very special intervention episode of The Sopranos.  You know the one:  Beverly Sills and Renee Fleming deliver some hard truths to Lucia Popp about her performance as Pamina in The Magic Flute.  Spoiler:  Hard Truth:  You were fantastic!  Bravissima!).

That last “joke” was brought to you by research done on Wikipedia…because I know very little about opera.

Anywhosit…Toad’s manipulations of poor Rat kind of reminiscent to me of the way Emma/Charles relationship in Madame Bovary…so an unexpected connection!  I just hope it doesn’t all end with blue vomit.

And his need for car driving was reminiscent to Ray Milland’s need of “just one more drink” in The Lost Weekend.

Well twin keep on truckin’–the end is in sight!  And then Middlemarch!

Jon

Don’t Be Absurd(ist)

Really.

Don’t.

Please.

Yours,
Justin

Waiting for Toadot with Mole and Rat

So on my car ride back home this afternoon I got to thinking about how excited I was for the return of Toad and how it seems like I’ve been waiting forever for him to come back into the story and that got me to thinking about other famous waiters and who’s more famous for waiting than those two Frenchmen on the road to Nowhere–Vladimir and Estragon.  In there honor I present, Waiting for Toadot.

MoMo:  I say RaRa what are we doing here?

RaRa:  Silly MoMo we’re waiting.

MoMo:  Waiting?  Waiting for what?

RaRa:  Silly MoMo we’re waiting for Toad

Momo:                                                       Oh.

Badumbumbing!

And, of course, Badger is Pozzo…I could go on but this is getting absurd (!)

…And thank you very much.

So a reminder, in “print” for all to see…Wind in the Willows ends this week.  We are plowing away to the finish (if we don’t, as punishment, I shall put the characters into another Samuel Beckett play…and you haven’t seen awkward till you’ve seen Mole in Endgame.).

And to sweeten the pot (as if it needs sweetening!)….after we finish this book we get to start a new book.  And for our next selection I’ve chosen the Victorian tome Middlemarch by George Eliot.  I don’t know what that books about, but as long as the pages aren’t all blank…my guess is that it should be more exciting than Willows (but not Willow–adventure at every turn!).

Good luck finishing and we’ll talk soon,

Jon

A Correction, a Link, and a Mole and a Rat

It seems that perhaps I should have read the two remaining pages in Chapter 4 before making my bold Planet of the Apes parallels. No sooner do I type my previous post than Badger explains away his description of the former city with a much more Lion King-ish “Circle of Life” sort of cities come and cities go, but Badgers remain constant line of reasoning. Lame, Badger, pretty lame.

How many times do I have to remind myself that I need to read something through before putting my thoughts into writing. I had a flashback to college when I started drafting what would have surely been a pivotal piece of Jane Eyre scholarship: “Home is Where the Heart Is: Representations of Love and Domestic Happiness in Thornfield Hall” after reading only part of the book. Well, Mr. Badger, this time you can consider this lesson learned.

It dawned on me Twin Brother, that people who read this blog (if indeed there are people who actually read this blog) may tire of us complaining about this classic of children’s literature, but who may potentially be interested in actual insight into the topic might enjoy Jill Lepore’s recent New Yorker article on the publication of Stuart Little and the evolution of children’s literature.

Well, that’s that for now. Talk to you again soon.

Justin

Inspired with Rat and Mole

Interesting hypothesis twin…where you saw Grahame painting a horrifying picture of a post-apocalyptic world where animals act like people. I saw Grahame exploring the cyclical nature of history (for more on this topic explored in literature please see my paper “Here She Comes Again: Historical Cycles in the works of H. Rider Haggard.”). People come, the animals rise to power, people return, etc.

So I don’t know about you but I’m going to go and hunt me some critters before they get any ideas.

You inspired me to keep moving…let’s get this book done. Chapter 5: Dulce Domum–Rat and Mole stop by Mole’s house…feel free to skip. It looks like Chapter 6 brings back Mr. Toad and hopefully with him comes some excitement (but how could it not?).

Jon

Slow on the Update

Hey Twinner,

It has dawned on me that I have not been carrying my weight lately in the update department. Apologies, I know you are eager to know my every thought on this pastoral classic, and I have been depriving you of many a thoughtful “nugget.” Well, I will attempt to be a bit more timely in my thoughts over the coming days, and perhaps we can make short work of the rest of this novel.

Please, I beg you, do not dig up your old college papers. I remember editing “Salt of the Earth: Tolstoy’s Inherent Criticism of the Dietary Habits of the Aristocracy in Anna Karenina,” and while there is not debating your insights into Tolstoy, it was a bit dry. Perhaps you should you keep those papers in a drawer for another day.

I too just took back up the book, and entered Badger’s abode. Badger is not quite the shot in the arm for the book I was hoping he might be, but he did make an interesting comment toward the end of his chapter. He talks about how this wood used to be a major city.

I was quite intrigued, perhaps the book is about to take a sort Planet of the Apes twist, and at the end we will find out that the forest has been a futuristic London all along, and in the distant future it has been overrun with anthropomorphized animals.

That alone will keep me reading. I’ll be back when I’ve read some more.

Happy trails,

Justin

On the Defensive with Rat and Mole

I guess I figured in a world where Mole becomes Moly, hole could become holy. I’m just following the rules, I didn’t make them up. For that you’ll need to talk to Mr. Grahame…and good luck with that because he’s long dead.

Well I’ve been introduced to Badger and he ain’t no Bucky. But I did enjoy his almost Tolstoyian disdain for society (if you’d like specific examples I’ll see if I can dig up the papers I wrote for my Tolstoy class “War and Peace and Society, Anna Karenina and society, “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and Sexual Repression (Just joking…Ivan and Society)–when I find a theme I really like to explore it…that and I’m lazy and uncreative.

But I was less than impressed with the narrator’s attempt to debate Badger’s belief that societal customs were unimportant:

We know of course that he was wrong, and took too narrow a view; because they do matter very much, though it would take too long to explain why.

Really narrator? We don’t have time? Not even for one? How about we cut out one woodland visitor to Badger’s cave or cut a paragraph out of the your paean to the snow and you give some support to your hypothesis. All of a sudden the narrator’s all about keeping the story moving.

So that’s what I liked about Badger…what I dislike–he builds fires underground (now there’s a recipe for disaster).

And now to you and Wall-E. This is the movie about a robot stranded on a deserted planet in space right? Yeah sounds real scintillating…why are you trying to introduce nothing but boring culture into my life…first this book, then a movie about a lonely robot? Thank you very much, but I believe I’ll go and see Mamma Mia! instead. Any movie with an exclamation point in the title is bound to be exciting! (And how dare you say Short Circuit 2 is an improvement over Short Circuit. If the sequel was so great then how do you explain the absence of the Gutenberg? Answer me that?

Well I’m off to the races (and by “the races” I mean “the couch”). Until next time,

Jon

Some Thoughts on Badgers

I hate to poke holes in your “moly” hypothesis, but if things played out as you describe in your last post that would make Moly “hole-y” and not “holy.” We may be splitting hairs here but I think its out.

I agree with you on the issue of plot (or perhaps more accurately, lack thereof). I am willing to make a lot of allowances for a book when it includes charming talking animals (who needs a plot when you’re caught in whimsy of a poetry spouting elephant or a wallaby with aspirations of being a stand-up comic*), but quite frankly our riverbank friends need to either get a lot more charming fast or something needs to happen.

I would be equally happy with either.

I was just about to pick up The Wind in the Willows tonight, and begin my new acquaintance with Mr. Badger, but then it struck me that tomorrow night I will be in the great state of Wisconsin (in Madison, no less), and where better to be introduced Mr. Badger than in ol’ Mad-town, home of perhaps the world’s most famous badger, Bucky. So, I will rejoin the world of the riverbank then.

Now a note that has nothing to do with the wind in or out of the willows: I saw Wall-E last weekend, and I’ve been meaning to highly recommend it (pardon my split infinitive) since I saw it. Even if Wall-E does look disarmingly like Johnny-5 from Short Circuit and, perhaps more famously, from Short Circuit 2, if you can get past that it’s one very good movie. Also, the Pixar short that runs before it is very entertaining.

Okay, enough on topics that do not relate to talking (thinking, feeling) wildlife animals.

Justin

*Neither of which appear in The Wind in the Willows, but they might spice things up a bit before they sadly die because they have been dropped in the middle of an incompatible climate without a reliable food source–yeah, maybe it’s a good idea they aren’t in the book after all.

Somewhere with Mole and Rat

How’s this for a hypothesis: Maybe your much anticipated “Holy Moly” comes when at the end Mole is riddled by arrows from encroaching hunters (hunters hungry for sweet, sweet Mole meat). When Rat finds his friend punctured with a quiverful of arrows he exclaims “Oh No! My poor Holy Moly!”

And then he cradles Mole’s head in his lap and sings through his tears in a tremulous soprano

There’s a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us.
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us
Somewhere.

And then, maybe, Toad comes into the glen and sings “Officer Krupke”

And the arrows represent Progress, just FYI.

Anyway…I’m coming clean. I really find this book boring. That’s why I’m moving so slowly through it. There’s just no drive in the narrative. Now I know many people hold this book dear and they are probably finding themselves recoiling in disgust. But that’s because they probably have fond childhood memories of this book. When I was a kid my imagination could do a lot more heavy lifting, but my imagination at 28, just like my knees, can’t carry as much burden (my knees hurt, I have the knees of a sixty-five year old charwoman). So I plod along, wishing I’d read this book when I was a tot, and wish the book had a slightly more compelling storyline.

That and I bet a lot of the people that remember the book from their childhood probably had it read to them as they were going off to sleep at night. It was being used as a soporific–well it’s barbituate-like qualities still hold strong. I get sleepy just thinking about it.

Maybe I’ll get to Chapter 4 tonight (I, too, am curious about Badger). But I wouldn’t put money on it.

Jon