I had my birthday party on Sunday afternoon. The Rin Tin Tin movie was a big hit with my classmates. I got two brooches, a bookmark, and two books. I'll start by saying a few things about my school and my class, beginning with the students.
Betty Bloemendaal looks kind of poor, and I think she probably is. She lives on some obscure street in West Amsterdam, and none of us know where it is. She does very well at school, but that's because she works so hard, not because she's so smart. She's pretty quiet.
Jacqueline van Maarsen is supposedly my best friend, but I've never had a real friend. At first I thought Jacque would be one, but I was badly mistaken.
D.Q. is a very nervous girl who is always forgetting things, so the teachers keep assigning her extra homework as punishment. She's very kind, especially to GZ......
Did you know there's a new graphic novel version of "The Diary of Anne Frank"? I always resist graphic novels, because I'm a grumpy old man and I believe (on some days) that words should speak for themselves. But, as I wither and age, I also find myself more and more moved by visual art--by all the feeling you can convey in a single line--and I'm aware I'm missing out on "Fun Home," among other treats, so maybe things will change.
Anne Frank is regarded by many as a genius; critics argue that she wasn't simply celebrated for having had an extraordinary story to tell, but also celebrated because her writing was so strong. Francine Prose makes this argument; she also points out that Frank went back and reshaped the diary entries, in the final days in the annex, to make the diary a more successful literary work. We aren't taught this in grade school. We just imagine that the diary we're handed is a series of short pieces, off the cuff.
Philip Roth was also a great admirer of Anne Frank, and he wrote this famous passage about her (and made her a character in more than one of his novels):
She was a marvelous young writer. She was something for thirteen. It's like watching an accelerated film of a fetus sprouting a face, watching her mastering things . . . Suddenly she's discovering reflection, suddenly there's portraiture, character sketches, suddenly there's long intricate eventful happenings so beautifully recounted it seems to have gone through a dozen drafts. And no poisonous notion of being interesting or serious. She just is . . . The ardor in her, the spirit in her always on the move, always starting things . . . she's like some impassioned little sister of Kafka's, his lost little daughter.
You can see what Roth is talking about when you consider Frank's assessment of school. The coolness and curiosity: DQ's nervousness leads to "forgetting things" (isn't this just like life?), Betty "looks poor, and lives on some obscure street in West Amsterdam." (There isn't too much hand-wringing about being politically correct in that passage, and the writing is more potent because of that. Do you know what it means to "look poor"--? And to do well not because of intelligence, but because of labor? I'll bet you do.)
I have put off reading Francine Prose's Anne Frank book because I've wondered if I have enough interest to sustain me through three hundred pages. But whom am I kidding? Prose is at her best when writing about other writers (if you ask me). And I very much enjoy thinking about how artists make the choices they make. Frank has been an inspiration to me for years, because she cultivated an intellectual life for herself in the annex. She read at length, and she thought deeply about her reading. Also, she enjoyed drama: the mysterious non-starter friendship with Jacque, the tension between appearance and reality ("everyone thinks one thing, but it isn't so"), the pseudo-romance with the van Daan boy. A good book can allow you to see yourself in a stranger--even across decades, across contents. "Anne Frank" has that quality. Food for thought.
Betty Bloemendaal looks kind of poor, and I think she probably is. She lives on some obscure street in West Amsterdam, and none of us know where it is. She does very well at school, but that's because she works so hard, not because she's so smart. She's pretty quiet.
Jacqueline van Maarsen is supposedly my best friend, but I've never had a real friend. At first I thought Jacque would be one, but I was badly mistaken.
D.Q. is a very nervous girl who is always forgetting things, so the teachers keep assigning her extra homework as punishment. She's very kind, especially to GZ......
Did you know there's a new graphic novel version of "The Diary of Anne Frank"? I always resist graphic novels, because I'm a grumpy old man and I believe (on some days) that words should speak for themselves. But, as I wither and age, I also find myself more and more moved by visual art--by all the feeling you can convey in a single line--and I'm aware I'm missing out on "Fun Home," among other treats, so maybe things will change.
Anne Frank is regarded by many as a genius; critics argue that she wasn't simply celebrated for having had an extraordinary story to tell, but also celebrated because her writing was so strong. Francine Prose makes this argument; she also points out that Frank went back and reshaped the diary entries, in the final days in the annex, to make the diary a more successful literary work. We aren't taught this in grade school. We just imagine that the diary we're handed is a series of short pieces, off the cuff.
Philip Roth was also a great admirer of Anne Frank, and he wrote this famous passage about her (and made her a character in more than one of his novels):
She was a marvelous young writer. She was something for thirteen. It's like watching an accelerated film of a fetus sprouting a face, watching her mastering things . . . Suddenly she's discovering reflection, suddenly there's portraiture, character sketches, suddenly there's long intricate eventful happenings so beautifully recounted it seems to have gone through a dozen drafts. And no poisonous notion of being interesting or serious. She just is . . . The ardor in her, the spirit in her always on the move, always starting things . . . she's like some impassioned little sister of Kafka's, his lost little daughter.
You can see what Roth is talking about when you consider Frank's assessment of school. The coolness and curiosity: DQ's nervousness leads to "forgetting things" (isn't this just like life?), Betty "looks poor, and lives on some obscure street in West Amsterdam." (There isn't too much hand-wringing about being politically correct in that passage, and the writing is more potent because of that. Do you know what it means to "look poor"--? And to do well not because of intelligence, but because of labor? I'll bet you do.)
I have put off reading Francine Prose's Anne Frank book because I've wondered if I have enough interest to sustain me through three hundred pages. But whom am I kidding? Prose is at her best when writing about other writers (if you ask me). And I very much enjoy thinking about how artists make the choices they make. Frank has been an inspiration to me for years, because she cultivated an intellectual life for herself in the annex. She read at length, and she thought deeply about her reading. Also, she enjoyed drama: the mysterious non-starter friendship with Jacque, the tension between appearance and reality ("everyone thinks one thing, but it isn't so"), the pseudo-romance with the van Daan boy. A good book can allow you to see yourself in a stranger--even across decades, across contents. "Anne Frank" has that quality. Food for thought.
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