so, i read a newsweek review of the newest incarnation of a cultural touchstone that i am too young to remember myself (save for the illustrated classics version of moby dick playing an important part in one of my favorite childhood movies, “major league.”)
the whole point of the “classics illustrated” series was to take dusty classics and make them not just accessible, but exciting to modern kids. go ahead and be an elitist prick of you want; i, for one, am more interested in the story itself than in the exact methodology of its telling. (like, sometimes – with all apologies to my hero stephen king – the movie is better than the book.) it presented classic literature in comic book form; they were graphic novels, before the term “graphic novel” was even coined (and then totally overrun with – all apologies to my dark lord and master pikachu – shitty, shitty manga.)
so, i’m very excited about this newest incarnation. if the illustrations and pacing are as fabulous as the review says, i think my boys will be enchanted. and though this particular review seems a little over-the-top in the praise, i’m almost always really happy with books i choose based on newsweek reviews. in fact, the only exception i can think of is the offensively shitty bel canto:
why that dumb bitch ann patchett keeps getting paid to miss the mark with shitty prose like “his heel stuck out of the hole in his sock like a dinner roll” is beyond me.
and, seriously, for little boys to be enchanted with “the wind in the willows” would be something special. seriously. have you looked at that goddamned book lately? it’s boring. no shame in changing it to make it not suck. there’s a reason that the first installment of the harry potter series -
- one of the freshest, funniest, most wonderfully imaginitive books of this generation – was beaten out for the top british literary award that year by a translation of beowulf. seriously. a new TRANSLATION of some old bullshit beat harry fucking potter.
and i was pissed about that… until i read seamus heaney’s translation.
oh my god, was it good – and i’m into the classics. i’ve read the norse sagas in their original old norse. i don’t need a new translation to fall in love with a story like beowulf. but this translation was so good – dark, spare, with word choice that really got you inside the mindset of the times without ever feeling artificially “antiqued” – that i totally understood why it won the Whitbread Award.
so. think of all the awesome stories that just don’t feel awesome to an eight-year-old (let alone a five-year-old) because of outdated writing styles and word choices. the war of the worlds. 20,000 leagues under the sea. tarzan. i mean, come on… if they can take tarzan and wipe the disney taint off it, i’m down. taking a classic and turning it back into something that will set a child’s imagination on fire as much as any star wars movie? rock.
we couldn’t find “the wind in the willows” at barnes and noble today, so i just ordered it through amazon (yay, prime!).
and i’m skipping the other one in the new series that’s out, “great expectations.” i dunno. that story just doesn’t do it for me.
but the next two in the series? i pre-ordered them both: “the invisible man”
and “the tales of the brothers grimm.”
also, i picked up a re-issue of one of the classic classics illustrated from the original 1941-1962 series: “war of the worlds.”
the creepy, old-fashioned sci-fi cover illustration is awesome, and i think holds up well today.
okay. note the amazon links. especially note the amazon search box on the right side of my page. use that link to start any shopping at amazon, and i get paid. costs you nothing. help a welfareloser out.
