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2008; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 1; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/thr.2008.0026
ISSN1939-9774
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoPlease Forward A yellowed paperback so brittle that each page snaps out when I turn it— well, it ought to last me through this little flight of fancy in a prop plane, a throwback to my childhood. Have I even tried Peer Gynt before? Not sure. You reach an age when classics are what you must have read. Certainly there can't be any worse translation than this one; and no tale of trolls should ever call for footnotes this pedantic. Munching peanuts, bored, how could I have missed till now (tucked in at page sixteen) the fusty postcard addressed to "Mrs. Gert Ferrie"? (Yes, as if she too were supernatural.) And look, a cryptic message which, though uncompelling as the book it's slipped into, seems, somehow, more telling just for landing here: "Well how did things go? I hope alright," [End Page 27] is how Gert's correspondent, name illegible, begins; and ends, "we spent a lot of time in the rain. Take care and God bless." Ah, I see . . . So Gert, some forty years ago, had sat there in Milwaukee and tried to read this book, had failed, like me, and stuck the postcard in the early scene where she got stuck. And worrying, probably, about a host of "things" that hadn't gone "alright," she hadn't gazed for long at this photo of "The Great North Door, Singing Tower, Mountain Lake Sanctuary, Lake Wales, Florida," an icy Technicolor- bluish stone façade in which a golden door— with pictures in each panel, like stories cut and pasted from a grander drama time had hammered out— seems to be the entrance to the Hall of the Mountain King . . . A dream door, to more visions lacking a master builder; to mysteries half-banal, half-magical, we happen upon: as when, today, a dog-eared traveler [End Page 28] myself, I slipped into a used bookstore (seduced by time-warped, slovenly volumes left to lean on the most specious of connections), and as if from a mail slot in my own door, I took in hand this paperback— which now, before we land, I slip into the pocket behind a stranger's seat. Copyright © 2008 Johns Hopkins University Press and its Authors
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