Status Updates From Daemon Voices

"This disjuncture between one reader and another happens quite often with children and their parents, the children demanding to be read the same book night after night, long after any remaining nourishment has been wrung out of it, the exhausted parent thinks."
LOL! Oh, I've been there. My parents have been there. Aunts and grandparents too. So many books in that list.

I wonder if this attitude of collective reading rather than solitary is still happening in China even though it's still communist?

Aw, I like this final note where Pullman, after giving this lecture, had talked to the daughter of the writer whom he was referring to.

Between this page and the previous one were pages that had the art discussed in this book in color. Not all of them, though, which was disappointing. I wonder why it was just these pieces? Were they the only ones available or the only ones allowed?

"Modern fairy tales are almost universally ghastly, in my view, being affected, whimsical, putting on a show, nudging us, winking at us, showing us how clever they are, or how compassionate, or making sure we get the right political message—swanking or ingratiating or hectoring. Away with them! The great folk tales are interested in none of that sort of thing." "Away with them" indeed! Lol. Especially the remakes.

"I make this point about the present tense to emphasize the contrast between what we often get now, the immediate, the up-close, the hectic of the incessant present tense..." Ah, there it is.

"A quite extraordinary number of novels published these days, for adults as well as for children, use the present tense...Fiction editors have told me that a large number of the books they receive from literary agents are told in the present tense, a good number of those in the first person as well." This was written when? 2011? 15 years, and it's still the same.

I would've liked to have had a more in-depth essay on the "fundamental particles of narrative" than just the act of pouring liquid that we see or the differences of liquid in context (the difference between an offered alcoholic drink and a cup of tea for example). Going out of somewhere/going in to somewhere, moving upwards/moving downwards, getting larger/smaller, carrying something, striking something, etc.

Okay, 1) I didn't know that the Addams Family was invented by someone called Charles Addams. 2) I didn't know that the Addams Family started out as printed cartoons you would find in newspapers. And 3) this cartoon of the Addams Family pouring boiling water or oil on Christmas carollers is hilarious.

I was wondering how we went from talking about writing and storytelling to talking about art in this particular essay.

Pullman expresses regret that he did not teach students about the Grimm's fairy tales when he was teaching. I too would do the same if I had the opportunity.

"The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep one version or one translation alone is to put a robin redbreast in a cage. A fairy tale is not a text." I don't know about that lol. I guess this goes back to his earlier essay; the storyteller in a market. People are going to be interested in a fairy tale if it's told better than one that is told poorly. Look at Disney and their la remakes.

It's interesting that out of all of the Grimm's tales to pluck from as an example, Pullman choses "The Juniper Tree." I've been listening to a band called Neural Pantheon recently, and one of their songs is inspired by this story and had the same title.

"'Once there was a poor man who couldn't support his only son any more. When the son realised this, he said, 'Father, it's no use my staying here. I'm just a burden to you. I'm going to leave home and see if I can earn a living.' [The Three Snake Leaves]" I recall many a Norwegian folktale beginning like this too.

"[Characters] seldom have names of their own. More often than not they're known by their occupation or their social position, or by a quirk of their dress: the miller, the princess, the captain, Bearskin, Little Red Riding Hood. When they do have a name it's usually Hans, just as Jack is the hero of every British tale." I remember the Norse folktale book to be similar. I can't remember the most prominent name though.

"We all have our own way of telling stories, and our own strengths and weaknesses; some us can make our listeners laugh, while others can make them shudder, and others again can bring them to tears, and the best of us can do all three. But we do it by making the stories our own—by adding, taking away, twisting, decorating, bringing up to date." And the worst of us attempt those things and fail spectacularly.

"Are children still told stories that frighten them, or do they watch horror DVDs instead?" Speaking as someone who works with teens, it's the latter. These teenagers now have a better stomach for horror than I do. I still have to sit as far from the screen as possible.

"'There wiz aince a man traivilin in a hill, and he gede will, an he gede and he gede till he saw a bonnie clear lichtie, and he gede till he cam till't.'" What is this? Is this even English? English, m#%@%#&×%+_^, can you speak it?
"'Wonce when I was sittin' i'front o' th' Pywipe, doon by river by Lincoln, a man cum'd up wi' won o' them theare barges an' he hissen' doon...'" At least this is more understandable.

I've put "The Fairies in Tradition and Literature" and "Dictionary of Fairies" on my To-Read list now. But "Hobberdy Dick" and "Kate Crackernuts" just cracks me up! Lol

I love reading folk tales, so now that he mentions "Folk Tales of Britain" by Katherine M. Briggs I want to read it now.

"'There is no happy ending, even for mighty heroes who are close to the gods...This is the true epic vision...An older wisdom, and a truer poetry, sees that the highest nobility and the deepest truth are inseparable, in the end, from failure—however heroic—from defeat, and from death.'" He mentions Illiad, The Odyssey, Beowulf, and King Arthur does this, but I would propose LOTR and Star Wars (in regards to Anakin).

"I don't know where the next generation of children's authors is going to come from, but I predict that it won't come out of the ranks of teachers. Young teachers today have too many other stupid things to do to have time or energy left at the end of the day to sit down and write, and the National Curriculum forbids them to do what I used to do, and simply tell stories for the love of it when they want to." Here too.

Some of my favorite stories come from different perspectives. George R.R. Martin, Django Wexler, throw a dart at Star Wars and you'll likely land on an author that tells the story from multiple perspectives. I find that it enriches the world a lot faster than if you were to keep it to one.