Misadventures in the Land of Fables #40
The latest fable was inspired by an illustration of two, well three, tortoises attributed to Hokusai. This is how I saw it: Two tortoises come face to face. They may have been about to pass each other, but in the instant Hokusai has captured, they seem to have paused. We see the encounter from above […]
Stories I Would Like to Have Written #2
‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak Maurice Sendak’s ‘Where The Wild Things Are‘ was published sixty-one years ago this week. Not a significant date it’s true—I’m one year late for the sixtieth anniversary party—but still a tweet today (from Barnes Children’s Literature Festival) commemorating the book reminded me how much I loved it […]
Little Roger Is No More
Last week my cat died. He was an old boy, almost eighteen, and though he was with us only four years—he’d been brought from my elder sister’s menagerie—he had become our darling. A cat who liked to be held and who articulated himself in a range of cries and grumbles. My first and only pet. […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #39
‘The Cat who Served the Lion’ (from Hitopadesha book II) is a tale of an enforcer who gets their comeuppance. A lion hires a cat to deal with a mouse who seems intent on irritating him. He rewards the cat with tasty morsels from his table, but the cat does its job too well. Confined […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #38
I talked last week of my discovery of a whole new landscape of fables in Frederic Taber Cooper’s ‘An Argosy of Fables.’ Well, it seems this landscape was fraught with danger, a jungle of deep shadows and grave consequences. I was familiar with Aesop’s work, and the later latin upstarts often attributed to the ancient […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #37
You think you’ve seen them all and then, wait, another old collection of fables turns up. Just before New Year, I discovered ‘An Argosy of Fables‘ by Frederic Taber Cooper. An illustration from the volume popped up in my recommendations on the image sharing service Pinterest. A vivid composition of three monkeys on the branch […]