Aug. 29th, 2003

camwyn: Me in a bomber jacket and jeans standing next to a green two-man North Andover Flight Academy helicopter. (Default)
I have never read Peter Pan. I saw the Disney movie, and I saw the stage-play, but I have never actually read the book. This is quite embarrassing, as my deceased great-grandmother was cousin to the child who jumped off the dresser thinking Barrie had given her pixie dust (Great-Grandma Carter said she was an annoying child, but given that she herself was 13 at the time, all six-year-olds would have been annoying). I had been largely content to let this slide until Neverland, pixie dust, and the like came up in the course of the LXG 1936 game. As I was already at abebooks.com looking for the Mary Poppins books, I went through the list and placed an order for an Illustrated Classics edition of Peter Pan, then owned by a bookstore in Metuchen, NJ. TOday that edition arrived.

A paperback.
A skinny paperback. I mean, skinnier than any of Walter Farley's Black Stallion books ever were.
And according to the back cover, it was 'retold for young readers'.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAA AAAAUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUU UUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHH.

*pant pant*

Having silently wailed over the fact that I had paid for a book that was essentially CRAP, I considered trying to suss out the REAL book again on Abebooks, and opted not to. I had no idea if I'd repeat my bad luck.

This evening I went to the local drug store, where I had dropped off film to be developed a while back. The pictures developed, all right - they were largely very bad, no big surprise since half were taken sans flash. More importantly, the drug store was next door to the only bookstore in town. I went in. "Got a copy of Peter Pan?"

"Gee, I dunno... there's one place we might, but if it's not there I'll have to look..."

"That's fine."

"Ah! Here it is. Hard cover and illustrated. $6.99."

*blink blink*

I took the book and flipped to the back. There are certain points in many major works of literature that are considered embarrassing by the more vaporish publishers, and one may be assured that if they remain in a text, then one has almost certainly got a proper version of the work in question. One need not look too hard in - say- Macbeth to determine if it has been bowdlerized. Simply look for the porter's speech about drink, and urine. If it is gone, put the play back; the Shakespeare has been gutted before you arrived. Just so, there is a point in Peter Pan where an older Wendy inquires after adventures, and after Tinkerbell. It is not present in the CRAP volume 'retold for young readers'; in fact whole pages are summarized in a single paragraph, another reason to dispense with the book. I looked for it here. And lo - Peter not only blandly says he doesn't remember Tinkerbell and that 'there are such a lot of fairies, I expect she is no more', but Peter goes so far as to say 'oh, I forget my enemies after I kill 'em'.

You do not find that in stories 'retold for young readers'.

I am happy. Thank you, Buchmeister.
camwyn: Me in a bomber jacket and jeans standing next to a green two-man North Andover Flight Academy helicopter. (Default)
Went to Matrix website. Tried to find trailer. Found that Warner Brothers has set up page so that you can access trailer related foo in many languages, but not actually in ENGLISH.

Clicked on Finnish, reckoning that in Finland they speak much English in addition to Suomi.

The page is written in Finnish. The trailer is still in English. That's all I need.

Mmm... Seraph. Mommy, want.


... er. Yeah. I should go write Sergeant Preston now or something.

Profile

camwyn: Me in a bomber jacket and jeans standing next to a green two-man North Andover Flight Academy helicopter. (Default)
camwyn

May 2025

S M T W T F S
     123
45678910
11121314 151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 05:55 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios