I suppose it can now be adequately assumed that I don’t really think that hordes of small children are reading my blog (as if my discussion of nudity and profanity – replete with a few video clips – hadn’t already made this clear).
So why, one might ask, am I going to mention Roald Dahl, famous author of children’s books?
Because he was a good writer, darn it. And because I’m being random here.
That said, Dahl did, when you get down to it, write some children’s books that are possessed of a surprisingly surreal, dark, and occasionally adult sense of humor. His fiction frequently took the side of the underdog, and his plots often meted out horrifying methods of revenge to characters Dahl deemed to be particularly vile or annoying - see the fates of many of the characters in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
and the characters of Aunts Spiker and Sponge in James and the Giant Peach for evidence. He was often politically incorrect, though this only infrequently marred a story (indeed, his willingess to be impolite often made his work even funnier).There’s been a big boom in books for kids in the last decade or so (thanks in part to the Harry Potter craze, I’m sure), but many of them are fairly forgettable. Dahl died in 1991, and yet his body of work is still far more memorable and worthwhile than many books that get to press today. He wrote children’s books that are simultaneously really well written, really strange, and really fun.
But there are better writers than I who have tackled the subject of this really good author and really imperfect man. You will find one such (a lengthy 2005 New Yorker article by Margaret Talbot) here.
The following list includes the titles of Dahl books that I found to be really enjoyable when I was young:
James and the Giant Peach
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Danny, the Champion of the World
The BFG
The Witches
Matilda
3 comments:
I've read the giant peach, matilda and the witches and loved them, as did my children. I don't know much about Dahl's life but it seems safe to assume from the themes of his books that he was either abused as a child or had total contempt for adults. Some of the most nefarious adults in charge of children can be found in his books.
He did have what sounds like a rather difficult childhood, and as an adult he doesn't really sound like a man I would have wanted to meet. The New Yorker article points out one or two of his less charming qualities. And yet he somehow wrote really good books (albeit with, as The Pagan Sphinx pointed out, some seriously sadistic adults).
Thanks for referring me back to The New Yorker article. I thought it was excellent.
I was interested to read Ursula K. LeGuin, a writer I admire, comment negatively on how Dahh's books caused her otherwise docile child to become a brat. I think I see what that was all about, especially after reading the NY article. Peculiar that such a brilliant writer would consider that a bad thing when I, as a mother, consider it to be rather telling of the power of Dahl's writing on kids: kids resent the authority of adults. As a teacher and as a parent, I see it daily. Regardless of how far we've come in treating children fairly, like it or not we are still the authority figures and children are at our mercy, even if the consequences for chidren are no longer abusive as they once were.
Thanks for posting about Raol Dahl.
P.S.
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