Richard Adams: Watership Down

The peril of allegory is manifestly its tendency to be obvious. Animal Farm, charming though it is, is a great example of this. The animals are all clear archetypes, and their activities have clear human parallels, and everybody gets a kick out of being in on a big open joke. It's funny, but not that stimulating. And don't even mention Pilgrim's Progress . . .

Watership Down manages to avoid this pitfall, which makes it a far more enjoyable read. The activities of the rabbits never feel too human, and the animals are always themselves, never mere masks for human characteristics. An allegorical reading is clearly possible, even intended, but any such interpretations are bound to be less than watertight.

I would love the opportunity to teach kids who can read again. This would be must--if they could handle the vocabulary. I could kill the Mock Epic (I hate "The Rape of the Lock") and Allegory with one stone, and think of all the activities this would engender. Sigh. Where is A.J.K. when you need him?

George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss

I am agog; simply agog. I knew that this book was a special one when I couldn't put it down and tried to read it while walking (something that never ends well). I even went further, and tried to read it during my workout, holding it as I did sit-ups. Eliot succeeded as she never did in other books in creating true suspense; I was terrified for Maggie that she might choose Charles, completely believing that she could choose either path. So real and three-dimensional were Eliot's characters that I not only was invested in their choices, but really was unsure what their choices would be. I simply couldn't put it down, something that has been true of only one other book in my adult life: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

Which was not the only similarity between my reactions to those two books. Ender's Game left me weeping longingly due to its resonance with my particular childhood. The Mill on the Floss, as I read the very last pages, left me not only weeping but wracked with sobs, gasping for purchase. I have never reacted that way to a book, and I have read many.

Perhaps it is a function of my current vulnerability, or the lovely scenery around me as I read it, or the happiness that comes with having smoked a few cigarettes, but to be sure it is largely attributable to Eliot's skill as a writer. She has always been amond my favorites, and on occasion has topped the list. In this instance, however, she has outdone herself. The Mill on the Floss is a book out of time, one that defies prediction in a way that her contemporaries would surely covet. Telling without being didactic, wise without being self-important, colorful and scenic without being florid, and touching without being pathetic. It is-and I do not say this lightly, as any follower (of which there are none, I am sure) of this blog will know--one of the best books ever written.