Misadventures in the Land of Fables #22
‘The Rule of the Lion’ or ‘The Monkey and the Lion’s Breath’ is a little-known fable attributed to Aesop. A critique of power and the folly of our attempts to pander to it. It goes something like this: The lion makes himself king of the beasts but seeks to be known as fair and just. […]
Creating The Need
~~~ The two things I retained from my time studying to teach English as foreign language are the now-debunked ‘learner styles’ and something called ‘creating the need,’ a strategy recommended for the first part of a lesson plan. If I recall correctly, to create the need in the language classroom you have to give the […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #21
Late last year, I wrote a wholesome, inspirational fable. I was reluctant to promote it though, because the postivity placed it outside my comfort zone. As an original, there was no antecedent to be over-written or challenged. No reference. Nor was there any inherent aggression, no punishment or cruelty. It was whimsical. It was hard […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #20
Last week I began to poke around in the distant corners of the land of fables, the hinterland. I went to the bottom of the Perry list* and started to work my way up. I can report most of these fables were unfamiliar and forgettable, as you might expect, but at number 559 (out of […]
Tolstoy’s ‘Alyosha the Pot’
I came across this accidental masterpiece in ‘Lives and Deaths,’ a collection of Tolstoy’s shorter works translated by Boris Drayluk. It surprised me, hidden away at the end like an afterthought, its simplicity and brevity (only nine half-pages) proving more potent than the longer texts preceding it. The story is an unpretentious, plain-spoken account of […]
Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Pinocchio’
In this new animated adaptation, Guillermo Del Toro takes the much-loved episodic tale for children and fashions a more coherent narrative with a deeper emotional anchor. He makes the story his own, bringing to the fore his perennial themes of death and loss, the Underworld, and the shadow of fascism. The film is a triumph: […]