Word: grownups
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...think of Bill Clinton, who came out of a '50s world and as a teenager had enthusiastic, precocious relations with grownups. But oddly, he stayed a precocious boy. His entire life has been a dramatization of the grownup problem. His struggle to become an adult has played before the world in excruciating detail. The other day I took The Catcher in the Rye up to the edge of the bee yard and sat reading it for the first time in 35 years. J.D. Salinger's book, published in 1951, is one of the founding documents of American adolescence, I guess...
This is the work of Lucas the compulsive chronicler of his own imaginary galaxy. But there are other Lucases. One is the grownup kid who loves wise heroes and fast cars. That Lucas created a terse, looming Jedi knight in the person of Qui-Gon, and orchestrated a spectacular, turbo-thrust drag race through sculpted desert rock that consumes 12 minutes and most of the audience's adrenaline supply...
...What keeps Tintin moving at this relentless pace? The young reader takes it for granted that Tintin will always be on the move, just as he assumes that the Hardy Boys will always be on the trail of one more mystery. But for the grownup reader, it's difficult not to interpret Tintin's constant motion as an evasion of mortality. Tintin's metabolism, like that of all other children's book characters, is governed by a simple law: Stop moving and you grow old and die. Archie and Jughead keep driving around suburbia for the very reason that once...
...Hence Tintin's mysterious age. He's evidently not a grownup, but not quite a boy either. All the tell-tale signs of puberty, such as facial hair and acne, are strangely absent. His skin is as baby-smooth in "The Blue Lotus" (set in 1930s Shanghai) as it is in his final adventure, "Tintin and The Picaros" (set in 1970s Latin America). Forty years without a single zit or wrinkle! That's as amazing an ability as Superman's X-ray vision...
...difficult hurdles for a memoirist. Gail Hall Howard, 52, writes memoirs and teaches memoir writing at Connecticut's University of Bridgeport. "There isn't just one version of the truth," she maintains. "We remember certain things in different ways, and our understanding changes over time." Everyone sees childhood through grownup eyes. The memoirist's task is to bring back the reality of the child's view filtered through adult perceptions and make that truth into a compelling story...