Liars and Saints

  Having a child can be a wakeup call. One hundred years ago, literary theorists began to speak of "defamiliarization," the alien gaze. This is where you describe an ordinary object from the perspective of a non-human. A famous example involves Ariel from "The Little Mermaid": "LEGS are required for jumping, dancing....strolling along down the.... what's that word .....STREET!" Well, having a child can be like living alongside Ariel. My son is disturbed--in every sense of the word--disturbed by the existence of insects. Intrigued, alarmed, excited, flustered, enchanted. This is my wakeup call. Insects: They're really strange! We all tend to forget. For a long while, I thought my son used words in the way adults tend to use them: Words were a vehicle for thought. But now I'm realizing that words are (sometimes) more like a placeholder for Josh. They aren't always meant as a means of communication. They're a sound that pops out of his mou...

  Maurice Bailey was ill in childhood, and he spent a great deal of time alone. He grew up with a low opinion of himself; he avoided parties and dates. When he did find himself on a date, he forgot his wallet; he was mortified to ask for money. Although one part of Maurice was committed to a conventional understanding of success, another part had eccentricities. On some level, Maurice understood that his life was boring. He had an interest in flight and in travel by sea. His wife, Maralyn, shared his interest; because the two were childless by choice, they had some options. They talked each other into a crazy plan: they left their dull British stage set and began sailing toward New Zealand in a small boat. Here we get to the present tense action. All is well, until it isn't. A bloodied whale collides with the boat. A shipwreck seems inevitable. Maurice and Maralyn jump onto a raft--and Maurice starts to prepare himself for death. (Maralyn--more optimistic--thinks that a rescue...

 Thinking about Apu, I'm led to recall Charles Dickens. Dickens invented Fagin, a famously antisemitic caricature in "Oliver Twist." Then, confronted with the truth of what he had made, Dickens did a 180. It's widely believed that Riah--the saintly Jewish character in Dickens's final novel--is a kind of "apology" for Fagin. We can still read "Oliver Twist" while wishing that a bit more thought had gone into the recipe. The story of Apu is complicated and lengthy. Writers of "The Simpsons" have been weirdly defensive about their error. One notably said, "This is an era in which people like to pretend to be offended." Another described Hari Kondabolu's work as vicious and small-minded. It does not seem difficult to concede, "Times change. There is a world of difference between 1990 and 2015. We're flawed, we've tried to grow up. End of story." From what I've read, it's Hank Azaria, the actor, who ...

  At times, with the special needs counselor, my spouse and I just want to rend garments and gnash our teeth. Yes, we *know* there are steps to take to limit a child's physical aggression. But we don't always need to hear the steps. Sometimes, it's useful just to shout to the heavens. "If you tell a child to stop, that's provocative. The end result is that the child will continue to do the obnoxious thing, and will just *amplify* the intensity of the obnoxious thing." No shit. But here's a question. Sometimes, physical proximity is not a reasonable choice. Let's say you're at a hotel, and your children have raced away--so that there are several football fields between the kids and the adults. You see your kids, but they are just little stick figures against a sea of beige carpeting. One child puts an arm in the air--violence is on the agenda. If you were Mary Poppins, you might hurl yourself down the length of the hallway; you might intercede. You ...

 In a way, "Dear Mr. Henshaw" is a companion novel to the Ramona Quimby series. Leigh Botts doesn't meet Ramona, but Leigh's issues remind me of Ramona's issues. When Ramona's father loses his job, he struggles with depression and begins smoking. When Leigh's father has his own existential crisis, there is a related string of bad decisions. Beverly Cleary doesn't mince words. Adults make errors all the time. Children have to cope with the messy behavior of loved ones. Bill Botts is so lost--so inadequate--that Leigh Botts needs to invent his own surrogate parents. He is like the bear in a Henshaw novel--when the bear's mother dies, the bear begins eating only sugar, so much sugar that he cannot hibernate properly. It's a friendly ranger who intervenes and teaches the orphaned bear to feed himself properly. One of Leigh's surrogate dads is Mr. Fridley, the observant janitor, who drums up tasks for Leigh and sings the praises of a well-develo...

 Anthony Horowitz speaks about the construction of "the twist" in a mystery novel. A good writer has to play fair--all the clues need to be available to the reader just as they are to the detective. In a well-done mystery, the clues seem to lead you down one particular path--but another path is just as plausible. In the new Horowitz novel, an actor playing Daniel Hawthorne is murdered. We first think that the actor was the intended victim. But what if the killer was going after the real-life figure the actor was playing--the killer saw the name "Daniel Hawthorne" on a trailer and became confused--? The killer then killed the actor, thinking that the actor was Daniel Hawthorne. We accept this conjecture. But the question is this: *Should* we accept the conjecture? I was raised on Agatha Christie. In college, I discovered PD James, who is like the upgraded iPhone version of Agatha Christie. Depending on the day, I might tell you that PD James is my all-time favorite w...