Kyrie
I had a lot more fun with this one than I was expecting I would.
Another book I'm reading, The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America, mentions The Water Babies, and its (probable) influence on Rev. Charles Dodgson - better known as Lewis Carroll.
And since I've been enjoying my casual perusal into the history of folklore and fantasy, I figured, “Why not?”
Well, there were several reasons why not. The story itself is incredibly dated. There are several uncomfortable comparisons made in the book, and the narrator repeatedly addresses the reader as a young British boy.
The narrative thread is all over the place, with the narrator frequently stopping all plot progression to follow marginally related tangents, my favorite of which was definitely the several page rant about whether Water Babies exist (which they may or may not, but you can't prove it!!!), where the narrator gets more and more offended by hypothetical questions.
“But there are no such things as water-babies.” How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none. If Mr. Garth does not find a fox in Eversley Wood—as folks sometimes fear he never will—that does not prove that there are no such things as foxes. And as is Eversley Wood to all the woods in England, so are the waters we know to all the waters in the world. And no one has a right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do.
The plot is a fairy tale wrapped in heavy-handed moral dressings.
But for once, going into the book knowing what to expect helped. I knew the book was going to be kind of preachy, and heavy-handed. So I had fun with it.
I had a lot more fun with this one than I was expecting I would.
Another book I'm reading, The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and America, mentions The Water Babies, and its (probable) influence on Rev. Charles Dodgson - better known as Lewis Carroll.
And since I've been enjoying my casual perusal into the history of folklore and fantasy, I figured, “Why not?”
Well, there were several reasons why not. The story itself is incredibly dated. There are several uncomfortable comparisons made in the book, and the narrator repeatedly addresses the reader as a young British boy.
The narrative thread is all over the place, with the narrator frequently stopping all plot progression to follow marginally related tangents, my favorite of which was definitely the several page rant about whether Water Babies exist (which they may or may not, but you can't prove it!!!), where the narrator gets more and more offended by hypothetical questions.
“But there are no such things as water-babies.” How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none. If Mr. Garth does not find a fox in Eversley Wood—as folks sometimes fear he never will—that does not prove that there are no such things as foxes. And as is Eversley Wood to all the woods in England, so are the waters we know to all the waters in the world. And no one has a right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do.
The plot is a fairy tale wrapped in heavy-handed moral dressings.
But for once, going into the book knowing what to expect helped. I knew the book was going to be kind of preachy, and heavy-handed. So I had fun with it.