Sunday, December 2, 2007
"IF YOU COULD SPEND A HOLIDAY WEEK AS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER , WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?" Some well-known authors reveal their surprising choices.
The Prince | in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince
I've been grieving over a sweetheart I just lost -- my dog. And I've been thinking of things I've misplaced, like my focus. I've also been losing a little optimism about the world and am scared about those who think they own the stars. Perhaps if I traveled with the Little Prince, I would find these things. What's more, I have always loved to draw and he would help me revise what I am seeing. Since I am learning to speak French and the Little Prince speaks that language as his first, by necessity, I would listen carefully for the true meaning of what he says. The Little Prince would never sneer at me for being sentimental about larger hopes or nostalgic for things forever gone. We would see things from the beginning, where all things are still possible and assumptions don't yet exist. But first I must find the Little Prince. In a world of fiction, he would reappear with a flower in his hand, and during my week with him, we would find my dog at last.
-- Amy Tan, author of "Saving Fish From Drowning"
Professor Pnin | in Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin
Oh, no question: I would spend it with Nabokov's tragicomic Professor Pnin. I would sit Pnin down and try to explain America to him. I would tell him to temper his Russian sentimentality and think in pragmatic terms of his academic career. I would hold his hand, maybe stroke it a little, address him by his patronymic and mention the pleasures of a romance with a healthy, strong American woman as opposed to that crazy Liza of his, and I would give him the number of my analyst. "In America," I would say, "in progressive coastal America, we try to cut out the extreme highs and the scary lows and to enjoy the wonderful middle. Wouldn't you agree, Timofey Pavlovich, that this is the best course of action to take?"
-- Gary Shteyngart, author of "The Russian Debutante's Handbook"
Buddy and "my friend" | in Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory"
The fact is I do spend a holiday week with two fictional characters every year: 7-year-old Buddy and his 60-something, very distant cousin, known only as "my friend," via Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory." Actually, it's more than a week, it's the time between a morning in late November when our friend announces "It's fruitcake weather," and the afternoon of Christmas Day when she declares, "As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes." Every year, when the four of us (Buddy, our friend, Queenie the rat terrier and I, the tag-along reader) approach Mr. HaHa Jones's caf¿ to purchase his bootlegged whiskey for our fruitcakes, I feel our collective heart "overturn." Every year, I laugh at the lovely absurdity of 31 fruitcakes sent to "people who've struck our fancy," and feel the Christmas Eve thrill of "stars spinning at the window like a visible caroling." Every year, although I know it is coming, I am heartbroken to learn that Queenie, rushing to bury her Christmas-morning bone in the pasture, will be buried there, too, "a winter hence." I've read "A Christmas Memory" every December since I was a girl, and -- much like the season itself -- despite its brevity, its familiarity, despite my conviction, each year, that surely, this time, I'll have outgrown its charms, the story never fails to surprise me with delight.
-- Alice McDermott, author of "After This"
Scrooge | in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol
Scrooge, pre-visitation by the ghosts.
Prior to all that supernatural humbuggery, Ebenezer Scrooge was a contented, prosperous businessman. He paid his taxes and left everyone alone. In addition to his other qualities, he was prescient about energy conservation, even as far back as the 1830s. Did he let Bob Cratchit -- a man of unproven accounting competence, insofar as we know from the story -- burn ton after ton of coal and contribute to global warming? Talk about an inconvenient truth! In addition, Scrooge's views on how to deal with the poor and the "surplus population" were eminently utilitarian and sensible. Did Tiny Tim go on to become a useful member of society? Did he contribute in any meaningful way? Dickens is rather silent on that point.
Finally, Ebenezer Scrooge -- God bless him -- courageously and solitarily refused to go along with the crass commercialization of Christmas. What a shame that Dickens, an otherwise reliable moralist, should have given into such treacle and populist sentiment and turned this ethical exemplar -- this quiet giant of Stoicism -- into a mere warm and fuzzy old cuddlebear.
-- Christopher Buckley, author of "Thank You for Smoking"
Sub-Mariner, King of Atlantis | a Marvel Comics character
My first choice was Sinbad the Sailor because he's the original mack daddy explorer who scooped princesses worldwide and fought all the ill Harryhausen monsters, so you know he would have been cool to have been for Christmas, but with the war on terror going on . . . let's be real: Who the heck wants to get on a plane to Santo Domingo and end up in Syria with a bag over their head, being told waterboarding ain't torture?
So I'm thinking I'd like to be Prince Namor of Atlantis -- aka the Sub-Mariner. Not only is Namor good-looking and in incredible shape (check the abs), he's also an irascible, mixed-breed playboy, half-man, half-Atlantean (how very Caribbean of him). The fact that he can outswim a speedboat and outfly a jet and is as strong as one thousand men don't hurt either.
Why the Sub-Mariner? Well, like any good Island boy, I've always wanted to see the sea, but the way James Cameron has seen it: deep and strange. And a week as the Sub-Mariner would give me just that opportunity. The sea, as we all know or don't want to know, is dying. If you want to see it while it's still got legs (or life), see it now. I'd dive straight into the Puerto Rico trench, hang with the lantern fish, arm-wrestle giant squids and maybe track down the ruins of Atlantis.
Yes, the Sub-Mariner.
But only for the holiday. Seven days as the Sub-Mariner: a miracle. A lifetime as the Sub-Mariner, watching the seas die: a heartbreak.
And I, like most people, like my holidays light.
-- Junot Diaz, author of "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"
Charles Ryder | in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited
"I have the gondola here. I shall follow with the luggage in the vaporetto."
Ah, to arrive in Venice and be met by a valet.
"Palazzo. Pronto."
To be 19 years old. To be finding your way toward your destiny as an artist. To be in love for the first time, with the beautiful scion of a family that owns some truly excellent real estate, and doesn't mind if the kids have friends over. To make your way up the cool, mossy stone stairs from the water door to the piano nobile "in full sunshine, ablaze with frescos of the school of Tintoretto." To open the shutters in your own room and find a view of the Grand Canal and its "incomparable pageant."
I would like to be Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited for one of his two weeks in Venice, being shown the "immense splendours of the place" by a "midget Venetian nobleman to whom all doors were open." I would like to go to a ball at the Corombona Palace on a night "such as Byron might have known" and to eat "melon and prosciutto on the balcony in the cool of the morning."
I would like to be Charles for that deliriously happy holiday week, before Waugh writes the cruel destiny that will overtake him. Before his beloved becomes a hopeless drunk, before he prostitutes his talent for an easy and banal success, makes a bad marriage, abandons his kids and loses the love of his life (and her amazing Baroque pile) for metaphysical reasons that never, to me, seemed quite that compelling.
-- Geraldine Brooks, author of "March"
Nancy Drew | in Carolyn Keene/Mildred Benson's series
I'd love to be Nancy Drew for the holidays. She solves mysteries, and there are lots of them coming up now. The Mystery of How Long To Cook the Turkey, The Mystery of Finding Chairs for All These People, The Mystery of Making that Onion Dip You Had That One Time, The Mystery of the Finger Swipe on the Lemon Meringue Pie, and The Mystery of Getting the Christmas Tree To Stand Up Straight.
Nancy Drew can find anything, a skill that comes in handy at the holidays. I could find a parking space at the mall. Or that tablecloth I put somewhere and the iron to press it with. Okay, maybe I don't need the iron -- let's not get crazy.
Nancy Drew is brave. She wouldn't be afraid of the holiday crowds, even in the Apple store. The crowds in the Apple store terrify me. I'm afraid if I got in there, I might never get out again. I'd still be there at iNew Year's, begging for service at the Genius Bar.
We should all channel Nancy Drew around the holidays. She's always merry. This is a woman who can look on the bright side of a major felony.
And if we were Nancy Drew, we'd be able to solve the biggest mystery of all:
How To Pay the VISA Bill, Come January.
-- Lisa Scottoline, author of "Daddy's Girl"
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