Tag: J. M. Barrie

Books As Objects

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations8 Comments

I’ve lost track of how many conversations I’ve had over the subject of e-books.  Wonderful new revolution in books?  Horrible travesty attacking the very nature of reading?  Well, I’m not sure I’d come down quite at either of those extremes.  But it has made me think about books as books.  Not as keepers of stories, though they’re that of course, but books as objects.

Books, by their very nature of being books and not e-books, function in a completely different way.  And I don’t mean function in the sense that you turn pages.  I mean their physical shape, what they look like, the space they take up, the markings they hold, and all that means.

Looking over my bookshelves, some are very marked-up.  Not marked by me–I rarely write or highlight in books–or even marked by anyone else trying to note favorite passages.  But I love buying used books and I’m a frequenter of my library’s sale section, so I have quite a few books that look as though I ought to be paying late fees on them.

This isn’t true of every book I’ve bought from the library, but a number have been sold with all their library stickers and designations still intact.  So I can look along the shelves and tell you that this book used to belong to the Rancho Library, and that one came from McKinley.

I enjoy that, maybe because 95% of the books I read come out of a library.  With the volume of books I read, I would be very poor if it weren’t for the institution of libraries.  Since most of the books I’m holding from day to day have stickers on their spines and stamps on their tops, somehow I feel fond of the ones I own that look that way too–even though I’m sure it would lower their resale price.

This also says something about books as remembering objects.  Somewhere I read a quote–and I can’t remember where–about objects having value for their ability to connect us to the past, and to the future.  Books are the main objects I own that give me that feeling.  I like being able to hold a book and know that it has existed through past years.  Most of my books were bought used, so they’ve been read by other readers before me.

Those library stickers give the books history.  Rancho was my library growing up.  McKinley is my library now.  I don’t have any books with stickers from the libraries I went to in college, but I wish I did.

I love books with history, either mine or their own.  Whenever I’m buying an old book, I try to find the oldest edition I can (provided the prices are reasonable!)  I always hope to find a used book with an interesting inscription written on the flyleaf, especially something with a very old date.  I have two that are particularly good.

I have a copy of Poems by Robert Browning.  It was my grandma’s, and from the inscription I know one of her best friends gave it to her on her 18th birthday.

I also have A Window in Thrums by J. M. Barrie, published in 1897.  The inscription reads, “For Grandma from Mary Eunice, December 25th, 1898.”  I’d so love to know who Mary Eunice was, and who else owned the book in the last century.

Those are my most extreme “books as pieces of history.”  Most of my books don’t have such a colorful past.  But most have some story behind them, if only “I bought this/received this as a gift/somehow acquired it at this time for this reason and I wanted it because…”  And I like it enough to carry it around with me ever since, and here’s the history of my life during the time I’ve had it.

I gave thought to the physical appearance of a lot of my books before I bought them.  Do I like the cover, or does the main character not match my image of her?  I just passed up a very cheap copy of a book at a library sale because it was the movie cover edition, rather than the original cover (and it’s not a very good movie).  I’ve bought new copies of some books because all my other books in that series are new, and bought used copies of other books because all my books in that series are used.  I once gave away a new copy of a Burroughs book and bought a used edition because the new copy was disrupting my set of battered 1960s paperbacks.  I’ve created my own covers for paperbacks that have cover images I don’t like, and discarded the dustjackets of hardbacks that look better without them.

I went searching for a beautiful copy of Peter Pan when I already owned a battered paperback, and bought the edition with illustrations by Scott Gustafson.  When I bought copies of Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows, they had to meet the same criteria of beauty.

I’m not against e-books to a 100% extent.  I think they’re a nice idea for text books, for travel, and for anyone who doesn’t feel any of the things that I’ve written about today.  And not everyone does.  If you hold on to your history another way, then perhaps you don’t need physical books.

But I, and I think a lot of readers, do need physical books.  Because I can’t imagine any way that e-readers will ever duplicate what I’ve been writing about.  It’s hard to imagine scrolling through an e-book collection on a Kindle or a Nook or an iPad and thinking, oh, I remember I bought this back when…and I’ve transferred it from device to device…  Maybe.

But I’m never going to look at inscriptions in e-books and wonder what little girl gave it to her grandmother more than a century ago.  I doubt my granddaughter will be keeping an e-book that belonged to me as an heirloom.  An e-book will never connect me to the past or to the future.  I’ll never line e-books up on a shelf and feel satisfied with how nice they look.  Can I choose an e-book based on its illustrations?  Maybe, but not for the weight of its paper, the shininess of its pages, or the size of it.  I can’t buy an e-book that was published in 1902, or a 1914 copy of Anne of Green Gables (same cover as the first edition).  You can’t ask an author to sign an e-book.

It’s true an e-book will give you the story.  But a book will give you so much more.

Floriat Etona!

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews2 Comments
Eton College

Sometimes we don’t want to find out that our favorite villain had a troubled childhood.  Sometimes we don’t want those shades of gray.  It’s better to just have black be black and white be white, and good is good and bad is bad.

But Captain Hook was always an elegant and melancholy sort of villain anyway.  And I’ve read that in the earliest version of the play he went to his death shouting “Floriat Etona!” so all the historical grounding is there besides.

Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth by J. V. Hart rounds out my series on Peter Pan-related books with another prequel–a non-Barrie but successful one.  This gives us the boy who becomes Hook while he was at school at Eton, the prestigious school for boys.

Like Geraldine McCaughrean, J. V. Hart demonstrates a clear knowledge of the material he’s drawing from.  Hook’s first name is firmly established as James, which he signs Jas.  Hart tells us that his name is James Matthew B, and that he is the bastard son of a never-named Lord.  The name sounds to me like a none-too-subtle reference to James Matthew Barrie.  James’ best friend is Roger Peter Davies–again with the reference in the name, since Peter Pan was named after Peter Davies.  Roger swiftly acquires the nickname of Jolly Roger, and gives us the origin for the name of Hook’s pirate ship.

I find James a fascinating character.  He’s not exactly likable, yet I have to keep reminding myself that he’s the villain.  Hart has given us a character who can be dashing and gentlemanly, but also send a poisonous spider to inflict illness on an enemy.  James will go into the dark places the heroes won’t go, and perform the dastardly deeds a hero won’t do, and yet he also possesses the charm and the dashing airs that are usually reserved for the characters you want to cheer on unreservedly.  Hart has given us a villain who can fall in love, show deep loyalty to his best friend, and have dreams about a magical island–and yet who still has a dark side.  I don’t feel like he’s tried to make Hook out as a good guy…but he’s written about a very complex dark character.

He’s actually made me feel sad to know that, even though James will find his magical island one day, he’ll never get to rule it.

And then I have to stop and remind myself that I’m on Peter’s side.  That when it came down to it, I would root for Peter.  Because I would still root for Peter.  But I have to remind myself.  And I feel a little sad for Hook.

The first section (and majority) of the novel is set at Eton, where adventures center around conflicts with upperclassmen, the Wall Game (an extremely bizarre tradition), and James’ forbidden attraction for a foreign princess.  Later in the book James goes to sea, setting up his career as a pirate.  On the one hand, the adventures become in some ways more adventurous at that point, more in the style of Peter Pan, but I also think some of that conflict of James as the dashing villain is lost, as he becomes almost too much like a straightforward hero once he goes to sea.

This book makes me want to visit Eton one day.  I’m not exactly sure what I want to see there, aside from the memorial to Lawrence “Titus” Oates.  Apparently it’s good luck to rub his nose.  I swear I’m not making that up.  Anyway…even though I don’t know what I want to see, I would rather like to see the alma mater of Captain Hook.  Also the Davies boys, incidentally.

I’ve been hoping for a sequel to this novel.  The book itself sets you up to expect one.  Although there isn’t exactly a cliffhanger, much is left unresolved.  So far, nothing, and I haven’t been able to find any word on whether one might be expected.  Maybe one day…  This is J.V. Hart’s first and so far only novel, but he has written many screenplays, including Hook.  Less relevantly but most excitingly for me, he also wrote the screenplay for Muppet Treasure Island, which I have to say is the best version of the story I’ve ever found–even above the original.  Sorry, Robert Louis Stevenson.

If you’ve read Peter Pan and wondered about that scene where Hook’s wandering around the Jolly Roger and sighing because no little children like him, or noticed that Hook has this strange obsession with good and bad form, or wondered what Barrie was getting at when he made these veiled comments about Hook attending a very prestigious school…or even if you’ve never thought about any of that but just thought Hook was a pretty good character, Capt. Hook is a book worth looking into.

The Story That Didn’t Come Before Peter Pan

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews6 Comments

I might like Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson much better if it didn’t claim to reveal the story that came before J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.  As an independent adventure/fantasy story, it’s perfectly decent.  As a prequel to Peter Pan, it’s a lot of claptrap and nonsense that at no point convinces me anyone anywhere involved in the project ever so much as read J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

There is a wonderful story that comes before Peter Pan.  It’s called The Little White Bird and J. M. Barrie wrote it himself in 1902.  To come along a century later and claim you’re writing a prequel without apparently doing any research is ridiculous, and insulting to Mr. Barrie.  Especially when the only research really required would be to read two books.  That’s hardly an exhaustive amount.

Mr. Barrie didn’t include a lot of details about Peter’s past life, but he did include some.  As far as I can tell, Peter and the Starcatchers ignores all of them.  The basic premise of the novel is that there is something called starstuff (strongly resembling fairy dust) loose in the world.  Peter is a member of a group of orphan boys.  The orphans, the starstuff, and a couple of factions fighting over the starstuff end up on an island somewhere.  When the starstuff gets loose, the island begins to transform into a magical place, not to mention changing Peter so he’ll never grow up.

If you’re not already spotting why most of this is an utter travesty on the original book, allow me to explain.  One–Peter was not an orphan.  It is clearly related that he ran away from home very shortly after he was born because he didn’t want to grow up to be a man–and he knew he would if he stayed because he heard his parents talking about it.  Two–Peter doesn’t grow up because he doesn’t want to.  You can take it two ways: either he forever rejected the idea of growing up the day he ran away, or he continues to reject it daily and his imagination is strong enough to make it actually happen.  Either way, it’s about Peter’s choices and his imagination.  Three–it’s pretty clear that the magical dust floating around is a byproduct of fairies, not the other way around.

These are central ideas to the Peter Pan mythology, and to ignore them from the onset creates overarching problems with the entire concept of the book.

It doesn’t get better in the details.  In Peter and the Starcatchers, Peter cuts off Hook’s left hand.  Whoops–in the original, Hook’s right hand was cut off.  Perhaps that’s nitpicking, but I’d say it demonstrates something about the amount of care taken.  If the rest of the book was true to the original I’d forgive the wrong hand, but when the rest of the book isn’t, all it does is exemplify the problems.

But you know what possibly annoys me the most?  There’s a scene in Peter and the Starcatchers where starstuff is put in a bag along with a bird, and out pops Tinker Bell.

The problem?  There is NO NEED to reveal how fairies came to be.  Because Mr. Barrie already told us that!  “When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”  Now, when every baby laughs for the first time, its laugh becomes a new fairy.  Given the choice between the charming whimsy of laughter becoming fairies, and the painful practicality of smothering a bird with starstuff…well, that’s not much of a choice.  And you can’t claim to be in Mr. Barrie’s magical world and then just disregard every rule he wrote for it.

I know from looking at the bookshelf at the bookstore that there are two or three more books in the series.  I haven’t read them, so I can’t comment on them.  But after reading the first, I’d be shocked if the later ones did any better at drawing from J. M. Barrie’s books.

There is room in the world for a new prequel to Peter Pan.  There’s a gap between The Little White Bird and Peter Pan, and in that gap Peter learned to fly, went to Neverland, and met Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys.  I would love to see a well-done book that reveals that story.  But Peter and the Starcatchers is not that book.

A Tale Told By Mr. Barrie

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews3 Comments

All children, except one, grow up.

Peter Pan Statue in Kensington Gardens

I’m going to assume that most people are familiar with the premise of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie.  In brief: Peter Pan flies with Wendy and her brothers to Neverland, where he lives with the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell the fairy, and has adventures fighting pirates and Indians.  And, of course, he never grows older.

Peter Pan (originally titled Peter and Wendy) is the ultimate celebration of childhood.  Neverland is the best parts of childhood, and the best parts of a child’s imagination, all rolled in together with none of the bad parts.  Even the bad things–say, villainous pirates–are only exciting adventures.

The peculiar thing about Peter Pan is that I don’t actually think much of the main characters.  Tink is a nasty brat, Peter is horribly arrogant (though oddly appealing in that, I must admit), John and Michael are fairly non-entities, and as for Wendy…well, I have no use at all for a girl who goes to Neverland and spends all her time cooking and cleaning and darning socks.  Hook, actually, is a more interesting character–dastardly but elegant, and rather melancholy (not sad–melancholy).  But it’s actually all right that the characters leave something to be desired as people, because the concept is so fantastic and the book is so charming.

More on the concept in a minute, but first on the charm.  That actually brings me to my favorite character: Mr. Barrie.  He doesn’t overtly appear in Peter Pan, not even in an fictionalized role like the kindly old gentleman in The Little White Bird, and yet he is very present as the narrator.  Every so often throughout the book “I” and “you” come into the narration–“I” who’s telling the story, and “you” the reader.  There’s a clear feeling that “I” is Mr. Barrie, and that you is you personally, you reading.

(On a side note, I always felt a bit smug in some of my writing classes in college, when the discussion turned to how wonderful experimental writing is, such as addressing the reader directly–experimental, maybe, but Mr. Barrie was doing it a century ago!)

My favorite part of the book is near the end of chapter seven–everyone is on the island by now, and Mr. Barrie is debating which of their many adventures to tell (because there isn’t possibly time for all of them).  Perhaps this battle with the Indians, or perhaps that prank of Tink’s…

Which of these adventures shall we choose?  The best way will be to toss for it.

I have tossed, and the lagoon has won.  This almost makes one wish that the gulch or the cake or Tink’s leaf had won.  Of course I could do it again, and make it best out of three; however, perhaps fairest is to stick to the lagoon.

I love it.  I know he’s not sitting in a study tossing a coin.  And yet, Mr. Barrie telling you the story is almost another level of the story.

Then of course the story of Peter Pan is exciting, dramatic and endlessly appealing…because who hasn’t occasionally wished they could escape to Neverland?  Even if most of us, most of the time, are reasonably happy about being grown-ups, Neverland is a place of youth and joy and innocence, free from cares or worries.  Sometimes a little fairy dust and a trip past a star looks very good.

Besides recommending the book itself, I also have to recommend a particular edition of Peter Pan.  I decided some while ago that I wanted to buy a really beautiful copy.  After looking at different versions in different bookstores, I fell completely in love with Scott Gustafson’s illustrations.  Every picture is an incredible work of art.  Lovely.

But so is the book.

With the Fairies in Kensington Gardens

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews1 Comment
J. M. Barrie

As I’ve said elsewhere, J. M. Barrie (best known for Peter Pan) is one of my favorite authors.  Peter Pan is not a series, but I have been able to track down several related books, by Mr. Barrie and others–prequels and sequels and so on.  So that I don’t overwhelm anyone with a steady stream of Peter, I’m going to spread some related posts out over the next several weeks, to explore the good, the great, and the simply dreadful.

To begin at the beginning–that’s actually not Peter Pan.  It all began in the The Little White Bird.  It’s very possibly my favorite J. M. Barrie book, even over and above Peter Pan. 

The Little White Bird; or Adventures in Kensington Gardens is a tale about a man who befriends a little boy, and has adventures with him in London and Kensington Gardens.  If you’re not already suspecting the autobiographical nature of this novel, the little boy’s name is David.  Historically, J. M. Barrie befriended the Davies brothers in Kensington Gardens.  Not too subtle!  He also has a dog named Porthos, as did Mr. Barrie.  The man in the story is left unnamed.  He’s referred to as Captain W–.  I somehow picked up the habit of calling him the kindly old gentleman.

A review in The Times said of the book when it was first published, “The peculiar quality of The Little White Bird…is it’s J.-M.-Barrie-ness…whimsical, sentimental, profound, ridiculous Barrie-ness…Mr. Barrie has given us the best of himself, and we can think of no higher praise.”

I couldn’t put it better.  The Barrie-ness is often the best part of Mr. Barrie’s books.  The charm, the whimsy, the flights of fancy, the sweet sadness…the book is funny and tragic, absurd and heartbreaking, and sometimes all at the same time.  The tragedy, for the kindly old gentleman at least, is that David doesn’t really belong to him, and will one day grow up and leave him.

And there we come to the Peter Pan connection.  Besides thematic connections, there are also four chapters in the middle of the book that are about Peter.  They’re almost oddly unrelated to the rest, other than by geography, but I think they’re meant to be stories that the kindly old gentleman tells David.  In Peter Pan, Peter tells Wendy, “I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.  So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long, long time with the fairies.”  And this is that story.

We read about Peter’s running away from home, find out why he doesn’t grow up, see him meet the fairies, and also meet a girl he knew long before there was Wendy.  This is before Peter went to Neverland (although an island features) and the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell are yet to come on the scene, but there are other wonderful magical creatures and adventures.  The four chapters about Peter, along with one chapter giving a Grand Tour of the gardens, have been excerpted and published as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with lovely illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

The Baby's Walk

The Grand Tour (and map) is especially wonderful, because if you’re ever in London, I highly recommend spending an afternoon in Kensington Gardens with The Little White Bird in one hand.  It’s what I did, and I spent a couple of hours going, “Oh, there’s Mabel Gray’s gate!  And the Round Pond!  And that must be the Baby Walk!  And this is probably the weeping beech where Peter sat!”  Even a century later, I was able to find almost everything J. M. Barrie described.  And it’s a little easier to get to Kensington Gardens than to figure out which star is the second one to the right.

One more note on The Little White Bird–George Davies, who was the chief inspiration for David, took a copy of the book with him to the trenches in World War I.  I think that’s one of the saddest and sweetest things I ever heard.

Even in much less dire reading circumstances, it’s a lovely, sweet and enjoyable book–and, of course, a bit magical too.