Sail on, Sullydish

I have had a hard time getting my thoughts and feelings together since Andrew Sullivan announced the shuttering of the Dish, happening tomorrow. Like many, I imprinted what political blogging was in large part from Andrew; my own blog grew in part out of interior response -- often opposition -- to  the Dish. As many have noted, one of Sullivan's cardinal virtues is that he will engage with anyone who engages him in good faith -- and will link to anyone he thinks worth reading. Because of that openness, I've been privileged to keep up a running dialogue with him -- here, on the Dish, and via email.  Because the two-way dialogue is real, it always continues for me solo when I read the Dish, and that's what I'll really miss.

Obviously I'm not alone. The Dish crew has had fun with a flood of farewell reader mail this last week. One curated outpouring brought this raucous parting to mind:

“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go - we’ll eat you up - we love you so!”
And Max said, “No!”
The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye.”

Image here.


So sail on, Sullydish. I trust we''l hear from Chris, Patrick et al soon, and elsewhere. As for Andrew, after a longish or shortish hibernation I trust he'll yawn awake when the skies clear and grow lank with longing to re-engage the world..  

"Those books are for kids"? C.S. Lewis says no

Over at the Dish they've been having some fun with a bit of snark by Joel Stein, who exhorts adults to act their age while reading:

The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is seeing a guy on the plane reading “The Hunger Games.” Or a Twilight book. Or Harry Potter. The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads.

Now, this strikes me as a cocktail party provocation -- who really gets indignant about other people's choice of reading matter? -- albeit with the germ of a point that could be worked out more seriously (e.g., by humorless me...read on!). A host of readers have been delighted to take the bait, defending adult reading of YA and children's books with reasons many and good.  The best, of course, is sharing an experience -- often quite deeply -- with one's children. Also, it never hurts to connect with our inner child.  Then, too, teenagers are a great audience -- in a sense, the ur-audience -- for the internal angst that the novel evolved to express, so novels dramatizing teen angst often connect with readers of all ages. One Dish reader, a much-traveled businessman, adds that mega-popular series like Harry Potter click with huge numbers of people around the world and provide a basis for relationship.  Finally the best children's literature is high art indeed, evoking the passions, dilemmas, and quiddity of human experience as intensely as good literature for adults.

One forceful spokesman for children's literature was C.S. Lewis, a man who spent his life reading adult literature from the Iliad to Eliot (whom he professed not to understand at all), and who is probably better known for the seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia he dashed off for children than for all his scholarship, religious polemic, and adult fiction.  Lewis's argument for children's literature was partly historical: the kind of fantasy and romance he loved was out of fashion in his time. He was suspicious of fashion in all things --and children, he suggested, were immune to it.  In "On Juvenile Tastes," noting that "specifically childish taste has been generally held to be that for the adventurous and marvellous," he argued there is nothing inherently childish in it: