Twice-Told Children's Tales: The Influence of Childhood Reading on Writers for Adults

by Greenway,Betty; Greenway,Betty

• ISBN13: 9780415972055
• ISBN10: 0415972051
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-17
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Writers, as they often attest, are deeply influenced by their childhood reading. Salman Rushdie, for example, has said that The Wizard of Oz 'made a writer of me.' Twice-Told Tales is a collection of essays on the way the works of adult writers have been influenced by their childhood reading. This fascinating volume includes theoretical essays on Salman Rushdie and the Oz books, Beauty and the Beast retold as Jane Eyre, the childhood reading of Jorge Luis Borges, and the remnants of nursery rhymes in Sylvia Plath's poetry. It is supplemented with a number of brief commentaries on children's books by major creative writers, including Maxine Hong Kingston and Maxine Kumin.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Foreword	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: "Points of intersection..."
The Influence of Childhood Reading	xiii
Betty Greenway
Part 1: "To drift in the currents of my unconscious..."
1 A Child's-Eye Reading of Mark Twain	3	(8)
Madison Smartt Bell
Part 2: "The place was full of books..."
2 Borges and Georgie	11	(16)
Childhood Reading, Adult Writing, and the Shape of the Latin American Fantastic
Kimberly A. Nance
3 Lonely Impulse of Delight	27	(6)
One Reader's Childhood
Dana Gioia
4 All the Stuff	33	(6)
Antonya Nelson
5 Taking Flight	39	(6)
A Retrospect on Booking Passage
Ira Sadoff
6 Bad Habits	45	(6)
Lee K. Abbott
Part 3: "Wake me up in Wonderland and Whoville and Oz..."
7 A Writer on the Yellow Brick Road	51	(18)
Salman Rushdie's Ozian Inspirations
Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak
8 The Pudding, the Witch, and the Titan	69	(4)
Sabina Murray
9 Fantastic Fellow Travelers	73
X.J. Kennedy
Part 4 "The essential eternal stories..."
10 "Grains of Truth in the Wildest Fable"	79	(20)
"Beauty and the Beast" Retold as Jane Eyre
Christine Butterworth-McDermott
11 Pictures First	99	(4)
Barry Unsworth
12 Essential and Eternal	103	(2)
Penelope Lively
13 Silver Chief	105	(4)
John McPhee
Part 5 "Whose echoes seem ineradicable..."
14 Higgledy Piggledy, Gobbledygoo	109	(16)
The Rotted Residue of Nursery Rhyme in Sylvia Plath's Poetry
Luanne Castle
15 Corrupting Children	125	(2)
W.D. Snodgrass
16 Cuentos	127	(2)
Rudolfo Anaya
17 Ineradicable Echoes	129	(4)
Charles Wright
Part 6 "The luminous symbol of innocence..."
18 "Wonders Wild and New"	133	(14)
Lewis Carroll's Alice Books and Postmodern Women Writers
Carolyn Sigler
19 Dreamhouse Revisited	147	(4)
Alison Habens
Part 7 "An impossible idealism ..."
20 Mapping the Soupsweet Land	151	(24)
King Solomon's Mines in Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter
Hope Howell Hodgkins
21 Sheba's Breasts	175	(2)
D.M. Thomas
22 E. Nesbit and Primrose Cumming	177	(6)
Maxine Kumin
Part 8 "Recuperated loss..."
23 Punch Reads Aunt Judy	183	(16)
Kipling, Ewing, and the Uses of Children's Literature
Judith A. Plotz
24 Three Men in a Boat	199	(2)
Andrei Codrescu
25 Cowboys and Poets	201	(6)
C.K. Williams
Part 9 "I could become a writer too ..."
26 Transmutations of Folktale and School Story in	207	(14)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Jacqueline L. Gmuca
27 New Year's Day, Year of the Horse	221	(4)
Maxine Hong Kingston
Part 10 "To wash up on another island of truth..."
28. From the Salty Unconscious of the Sea	225	(4)
Sandra Alcosser
Contributors	229	(6)
Series List	235	(2)
Index	237