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primeidealThe Wall Street Journal has some hot takes on literature and culture stuff on occasion. They're generally considered to lean "conservative" in the US sense, but sometimes, the takes aren't right-wing so much as...annoying. Excerpting significantly from a paywalled article:
"Adventures in Ambiguity" - Leonard Cassuto
When I first read E.B. White’s “Stuart Little” as a child, the ending disturbed me. The title character has left his New York City home in search of a bird, Margalo, whom he loves dearly. Does Stuart find her? We never find out. All we learn is that “he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.”
Children’s books don’t usually end in the middle of an adventure. I remember wondering, “Where’s the rest of this story?” Other children wondered the same thing, and so did some of their schoolteachers. White’s correspondence, housed at Cornell University, contains many packets from teachers who enclosed their students’ attempts to bring Stuart Little to a more definitive and conventional conclusion.
White was neither pleased nor amused by these efforts. He wanted to preserve the uncertainty of Stuart’s journey.
That final uncertainty made “Stuart Little” a pioneering children’s book. White’s departure from the predictable and tendentious moralism that prevailed in earlier children’s stories made “Stuart Little” an instant classic. The ambiguity of the novel begins with its opening lines. “When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son was born,” White wrote, “the baby looked very much like a mouse in every way.”
[Discussions of freak shows and anti-disabled prejudice. But:]
Freak shows dehumanize their participants, and White reveals Stuart as a fully human personality housed in an anomalous body.
Stuart’s ambitions and desires thoroughly humanize him. When Margalo arrives, Stuart falls in love with her beauty. The mock-heroic episode in which Stuart protects the sleeping Margalo by aiming a tiny arrow into the ear of the stalking family cat shows his dignity and courage. And when Margalo saves him from a garbage scow, Stuart displays stoic endurance under stress.
[more plot summary] he briefly courts Harriet Ames, a young woman of his own height. [more stuff]
A powerful children’s librarian, Anne Moore, read the galleys of “Stuart Little” in 1945, and tried hard to persuade White not to publish it on the grounds that it was “non-affirmative” and therefore inappropriate for children. The first television version of “Stuart Little,” in 1966, omitted the Harriet Ames episode, presumably for similar reasons. About the execrable 1999 movie, let it suffice to say that not only Harriet but also Margalo are written out of the story.
[cut] Stuart’s trust in his own course mirrors White’s trust in his young readers. “Life,” White wrote, “is essentially inconclusive.” He believed that children—of all ages—should be able to understand that.
Okay, so, there's a lot going on here. "Stuart Little" was written in 1945. I haven't seen the movie or TV show so I can't speak to whether or not they're that terrible, but I'll give Cassuto the benefit of the doubt.
-E.B. White apparently kept a bunch of the letters students and teachers sent to him, even though he didn't even like the efforts. Why?
-The students wrote their own conclusions to the story because they wanted more conclusive endings. Is this something the teacher assigned them for a class project, or did they themselves actually choose to write fix-it fanfic?
-If the genius of "Stuart Little" is that it's so much better than all those other neat endings, why didn't it completely revolutionize the field? Could it be that (some, many) children actually don't like that style?
-is falling in love one of the ambitions or desires that make Stuart "fully human"?
-What is Moore implying the story should have affirmed? Some Aesop lesson? But I would think there are children's books pre-1945 that don't really have obvious morals either...?
-I don't understand what Cassuto is saying about "similar reasons." They cut a scene about Harriet, where Stuart comes to terms with his own insecurities. That's bad because...? They should have had the romance plot? Something else? (Beyond "most adaptations aren't that good anyway.")
-Cassuto himself admitted that he didn't like the ending when he first read it. I'm assuming he does now? Did he go through some magical transformative Maturity thing where he stopped wanting resolutions and closure and became a Good Adult? Why doesn't he write about that, for the edification of the Dumb Kids?
-in conclusion, aaaaaaaaaargh
"Adventures in Ambiguity" - Leonard Cassuto
When I first read E.B. White’s “Stuart Little” as a child, the ending disturbed me. The title character has left his New York City home in search of a bird, Margalo, whom he loves dearly. Does Stuart find her? We never find out. All we learn is that “he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.”
Children’s books don’t usually end in the middle of an adventure. I remember wondering, “Where’s the rest of this story?” Other children wondered the same thing, and so did some of their schoolteachers. White’s correspondence, housed at Cornell University, contains many packets from teachers who enclosed their students’ attempts to bring Stuart Little to a more definitive and conventional conclusion.
White was neither pleased nor amused by these efforts. He wanted to preserve the uncertainty of Stuart’s journey.
That final uncertainty made “Stuart Little” a pioneering children’s book. White’s departure from the predictable and tendentious moralism that prevailed in earlier children’s stories made “Stuart Little” an instant classic. The ambiguity of the novel begins with its opening lines. “When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son was born,” White wrote, “the baby looked very much like a mouse in every way.”
[Discussions of freak shows and anti-disabled prejudice. But:]
Freak shows dehumanize their participants, and White reveals Stuart as a fully human personality housed in an anomalous body.
Stuart’s ambitions and desires thoroughly humanize him. When Margalo arrives, Stuart falls in love with her beauty. The mock-heroic episode in which Stuart protects the sleeping Margalo by aiming a tiny arrow into the ear of the stalking family cat shows his dignity and courage. And when Margalo saves him from a garbage scow, Stuart displays stoic endurance under stress.
[more plot summary] he briefly courts Harriet Ames, a young woman of his own height. [more stuff]
A powerful children’s librarian, Anne Moore, read the galleys of “Stuart Little” in 1945, and tried hard to persuade White not to publish it on the grounds that it was “non-affirmative” and therefore inappropriate for children. The first television version of “Stuart Little,” in 1966, omitted the Harriet Ames episode, presumably for similar reasons. About the execrable 1999 movie, let it suffice to say that not only Harriet but also Margalo are written out of the story.
[cut] Stuart’s trust in his own course mirrors White’s trust in his young readers. “Life,” White wrote, “is essentially inconclusive.” He believed that children—of all ages—should be able to understand that.
Okay, so, there's a lot going on here. "Stuart Little" was written in 1945. I haven't seen the movie or TV show so I can't speak to whether or not they're that terrible, but I'll give Cassuto the benefit of the doubt.
-E.B. White apparently kept a bunch of the letters students and teachers sent to him, even though he didn't even like the efforts. Why?
-The students wrote their own conclusions to the story because they wanted more conclusive endings. Is this something the teacher assigned them for a class project, or did they themselves actually choose to write fix-it fanfic?
-If the genius of "Stuart Little" is that it's so much better than all those other neat endings, why didn't it completely revolutionize the field? Could it be that (some, many) children actually don't like that style?
-is falling in love one of the ambitions or desires that make Stuart "fully human"?
-What is Moore implying the story should have affirmed? Some Aesop lesson? But I would think there are children's books pre-1945 that don't really have obvious morals either...?
-I don't understand what Cassuto is saying about "similar reasons." They cut a scene about Harriet, where Stuart comes to terms with his own insecurities. That's bad because...? They should have had the romance plot? Something else? (Beyond "most adaptations aren't that good anyway.")
-Cassuto himself admitted that he didn't like the ending when he first read it. I'm assuming he does now? Did he go through some magical transformative Maturity thing where he stopped wanting resolutions and closure and became a Good Adult? Why doesn't he write about that, for the edification of the Dumb Kids?
-in conclusion, aaaaaaaaaargh
no subject
Date: 11/29/20 01:15 am (UTC)-E.B. White apparently kept a bunch of the letters students and teachers sent to him, even though he didn't even like the efforts. Why?
IDK, I can see being touched by kids writing post-canon fic for my canon even if I didn't really like it? (Also keeping letters I wasn't super into because, uh, mild hoarding tendencies here :P )
-The students wrote their own conclusions to the story because they wanted more conclusive endings. Is this something the teacher assigned them for a class project, or did they themselves actually choose to write fix-it fanfic?
Yeah, good question!
-If the genius of "Stuart Little" is that it's so much better than all those other neat endings, why didn't it completely revolutionize the field? Could it be that (some, many) children actually don't like that style?
...what's interesting is that Charlotte's Web and Trumpet of the Swan, both of which I believe were written after Stuart Little, DO have reasonably neat endings :P But I think it's sort of baby's first ambiguous ending? I think it can be an interesting ending that says something interesting about life (which rarely, alas, has neat endings) without sparking a revolution (partially because we like neat endings, darn it!)
So interestingly, I don't like Stuart Little well enough to have ever reread it since childhood (whereas I've reread both Charlotte's Web and Trumpet of the Swan) and I've forgotten almost all of it, but I do remember that ending. Possibly because it vexed me! :)
-is falling in love one of the ambitions or desires that make Stuart "fully human"?
Yes. *shrugs* He's not saying it's a necessary condition, mind! Also acting like a jerk (see below) is something that makes Stuart fully human :P
-What is Moore implying the story should have affirmed? Some Aesop lesson? But I would think there are children's books pre-1945 that don't really have obvious morals either...?
-I don't understand what Cassuto is saying about "similar reasons." They cut a scene about Harriet, where Stuart comes to terms with his own insecurities. That's bad because...? They should have had the romance plot? Something else? (Beyond "most adaptations aren't that good anyway.")
So I reread the Harriet scene. In this scene, Stuart is a total and unmitigated perfectionist jerk (of the kind I recognize because I am one of these too). His perfect plans fall through, which is admittedly disappointing, but his response is to throw a tantrum. Harriet proposes some other possibilities but he's like "nope, won't do, my plans are ruined, I'm no longer interested, bye, have a nice life." And he abruptly leaves! (Poor Harriet.)
This is clearly a bad thing! But there is no punishment or clear authorial weighing in that Stuart is acting like a jerk (as is the case in all kidslit I can think of before White -- L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, etc.) -- you just have to come to that conclusion on your own. (Hence the lack of "predictable and tendentious moralism," which I agree is something that is rather cool about the book. I don't remember whether his other books do that too, but I think so? Templeton the Rat saves the day at one point, after all, and is never punished...) So in this sense it's non-affirmative; Stuart isn't affirmed to be cool and heroic, he's just... a kid who is behaving badly.
The thing I don't understand now is Cassuto framing of this scene as Stuart "confronting his fears and insecurities" because, like... he really doesn't?? I guess he sort of has them and then reacts by... not being self-aware about them? I would definitely have not used the word "confront" for that. Possibly just poor word choice though.
-Cassuto himself admitted that he didn't like the ending when he first read it. I'm assuming he does now? Did he go through some magical transformative Maturity thing where he stopped wanting resolutions and closure and became a Good Adult? Why doesn't he write about that, for the edification of the Dumb Kids?
Yeah, that's kind of a weird glaring omission in the article. It's definitely something that I have become more reconciled to in fiction as I've learned more about history, actually, where things don't have neat endings and sometimes the ending is "rocks fall everyone dies" and okay, maybe sometimes fiction feels the need to reflect that. Though I still wouldn't say I actually like it! Closure is why I'm reading fiction instead of history :P
no subject
Date: 11/29/20 02:42 am (UTC)