Children's Book Writers and Film

Saturday's post on Beatrix Potter has got me thinking about two other children's book writers whose lives got the movie treatment, turning them into men rather different than the men they actually were.

The film Hans Christian Andersen, made in 1952 and featuring Danny Kaye in the title role, turned this difficult, enormously complex man into a gentle, simplistic character. Andersen did indeed live a rags-to-riches story straight out of one of his own fairy tales; he was born to a poor family in Odense and died a wealthy man celebrated around the world (acclaimed, during his lifetime, for his adult novels and travel writing as well as his fairy tales). But his rise was not a straight-forward one, nor was his character. He lived at a time when wealth and achievement could not entirely erase the stigma of his working class origins; he also lived at a time when his sexual passion for men could not be openly acknowledged. Had Andersen been alive today, his life — and thus his art — would have been very different. As his biographer Jackie Wullschlaeger commented: "Without the enormous repression of his time, he could have declared himself to be a homosexual. Many people have asked me what would have become of him today. He might have taken anti-depressants and been happier, but then he would not have written his fairy tales"  -- for his fairy tales, with their distinctive strain of tragedy, were drawn from the pain of Andersen's own experience.

To read more about Andersen's life, here's a short article from the Endicott archives. And I highly recommend Wullschlaeger's book, Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller.

Finding Neverland, a film inspired by the life of J.M. Barrie (creator of Peter Pan), is a charming but heavily fictionalized concoction, playing fast-and-loose with the facts of Barrie's life in order to tell a simpler, more romantic story. The biggest change is that handsome, charismatic Johnny Depp plays the part of the Scottish playwright, depicting him as a gentle, fey, unworldly man, rather than as the odd little sharp-edged man that he actually was.

There seems to be a desire on the part of filmmakers to turn children's book writers into dreamy characters who spin dreamy sorts of tales -- neglecting the fact that the tales themselves aren't dreamy at all. Go back to Barrie's original text for Peter Pan and you'll find that it contains a razor-sharp strain of humor entirely absent from the Disney cartoon -- which is, sadly, still the version of Peter Pan best known around the world today.

For a proper film treatment of Barrie's life, seek out the DVD of Andrew Birkin's docu-drama The Lost Boys, which was made for British television. Birkin worked with a vast array of Barrie's surviving journals, correspondence, manuscripts and photographs, as well as conducting extensive interviews with those who had actually known James Barrie. The last of the real-life "Lost Boys," Nico Llewelyn Davies, read and advised on Birkin's script — and when the final production was broadcast, he phoned up Birkin in tears, "undone," he said, by the way actor Ian Holm had turned into his Uncle Jim.

You can read about Barrie's life in a short article in the Endicott archives, in a New Yorker article by Anthony Lane, and in two Barrie biographies: J.M. Barrie: The Man Behind the Image by Janet Dunbar and J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys by Andrew Birkin. I also recommend Birkin's web site, where he generously makes a treasure trove of Barrie material — journals, letters, story notes, photographs, etc. — freely available to fans and scholars.

Another children's book writer with a fascinating life story is E. Nesbit (1858-1924), author of The Railway Children and other classic fantasies. She was an early socialist and founder of the Fabian Society, and she lived an adventurous, bohemian life full of art, politics, and love affairs with men like Bernard Shaw. If a film is ever made of her life, let's hope that she, too, isn't turned into a twee figure lost in the mists of childhood. To learn more about her, seek out Julia Brigg's biography A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit. There's also a short article on Nesbit's fiction by Gore Vidal, of all people, on the New York Review of Books website.

Comments

[UrsulaV]

Mmmm. I'm always skeptical of the claim that someone wouldn't have created their great art if they hadn't been depressed, as if lack of despair makes someone throw their paints/typewriter into the river and become an investment banker. It smacks too much of the romanticization of tormented artistness. (Also, just from personal experience, when I'm depressed, I don't want to get out of bed, nevermind paint...)

It's impossible to test, of course, but I have a sneaking suspicion, in my heart of hearts, that if Anderson or Van Gogh had gotten meds, they'd have lived twice as long and produced four or five times more work.

*cough* Sorry, went off on a tangent there...

[Martyn Drake]

Does anybody remember Dreamchild? This was Dennis Potter's (fictional) story about Lewis Caroll and Alice Hargreaves, and featured some of Caroll's characters created by Lyle Conway (Little Shop of Horrors, Labyrinth and Dark Crystal to name but a few of his projects) of the Jim Henson Creature Shop.

It's been a very long time since I've last seen it, but I remember it being rather twisted and dark, but ultimately rather entertaining.

See:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089052/maindetails

M.

[Cat Eldridge]

Thank you!!! I hadn't known that the The Lost Boys had come out on DVD!

[Charles Vess]

I have a copy of Dreamchild on VHS (and am always hoping that a DVD release will follow). A brilliant but very dark film with lovely nightmarish depictions of the Wonderland characters and a sensitive script that allows both Ian Holm as Caroll and the actresses that portray the real Alice, as a young girl and as an elderly woman the room to show both dignity and foolishness. A truely adult fantasy movie.

Charles

[Terri Windling]

I don't think Wullschlaeger was ever saying that artists can only create from pain, despair, and repression. What she was saying was that *this particular writer* had a psyche so extremely shaped by his personal misery that it indelibly shaped the art that he produced. His fairy tales (when they're in good translation and haven't been "softened") can make for very painful reading. Had Andersen not been in deep, life-long pain, he would have written different fairy tales. They might have been better fairy tales, who knows? But they would have been different.

That said, I agree with you, Ursula, that depression is horribly debilitating, and most people find themselves able to produce more and better work *after* they've been treated for it, not while they're in its grip. The whole "suffering artist" myth is pretty much just that, a myth; it's hard to make art and suffer at the same time. For one thing, suffering is so time consuming....

I understand that Stephen Fry has made a very good television program for the BBC about Manic-Depression, looking at its relationship to creativity and at his own devastating experience of this illness. I'm very curious to see it (I grew up with a MD parent, so I've an interest in the subject) -- so if anybody out there knows where to get it on tape or DVD, I'd be quite grateful for the info.

There's also a book called Touched by Fire: Manic Depression Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Kay Redfield Jamison, which I hear is good, though I haven't read it myself. The children's book writer Alan Garner talks candidly about his own severe battles with depression in his book of essays The Voice That Thunders. I *have* read that, and it's both brave and brilliant.

[chandracerchionepeltier]

"When you are young," writes E. Nesbit in her book, The Enchanted Castle, "so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true - such things, for instance, as that the earth goes around the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairytales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all." E. Nesbit has always been one of my favorite authors, not only for her ability to transform the ordinary into a landscape of wonder, but because she could speak directly and confidently to children. Having supported so many children (some of whom her husband, Henry Bland, had had with other women), Nesbit had a deep understanding of how children talk to one another. The authenticity of her dialogue influenced the writing of both C. S. Lewis and Edward Eager, both of whom professed an indebtedness to her. As the author who insisted that magic was as real as chocolate cake, Nesbit gets my vote as one of the best children's authors of fantastic fiction, whose work deserves to be better known.

[Veronica Schanoes]

I just wanted to thank both Ursula and Terri for acknowledging and denying the distressing idea that depression is creative. Certainly Andersen would have written, but I agree he would have written different tales. (If this means that he wouldn't have written The Little Match Girl, then I, for one, would be all in favor!).

Also, thanks for this post. I've been icked out by the sentimentalizing of children's writers as well.

[Carl V.]

I guess in some ways I don't quite understand the backlash against sentamentalizing children's authors. Its as if we are saying that, despite their very real problems, traumas, rough edges etc that they didn't have any sentimentality, which I completely disagree with. I read the article on the Endicott site before I ever saw Finding Neverland and did not actually see a great difference from the J.M. Barrie featured in both of those. I agree that the harshness of life shouldn't be glossed over, but I also don't believe that every time Hollywood tries to put a pleasant light on something that they are somehow watering it down. The thing that is great about Finding Neverland, for example, is that it is a magical movie with a great deal of sadness, sorrow, and downright un-fairytale like stuff in it. Its right there and didn't take much effort to see both the triumph and tragedy of J.M. Barrie's life. Of course that is just my opinion.

[UrsulaV]

You're probably right that Anderson's biographer wasn't generalizing about depressed artists, Terri--it's just been one of those weird weeks where I've run across the notion of misery-as-muse every time I turn around, and sooner or later I was bound to snap. *grin*

[Terri Windling]

Hey, it kicked off an interesting discussion! And I did pause to wonder when I quoted Wullschlaeger if it would seem (taken out of the context of the original interview) that she was some how dissing the use of anti-depressants, which was definitely not her point -- so I'm glad you brought the subject up.

[Emma]

Just wanted to add my voice, saying I'm relieved to read the comments about creativity/depression. I came to the site from my bloglines feed to make a comment on that aspect of the post, too. :) I guess there are a bunch of us out here fighting the whole depression=artistic thing.

[Liz Hand]

Interesting and intelligent discussion of writers & what nudges them. I also own DREAMCHILD, which is a lovely film with, as noted, an especially memorable performance by Ian Holm -- the scene with the Gryffin and the Mock Turtle (if I remember aright: maybe I'm recalling another Carroll adaption?) is really haunting.

I feel there is a definite link between certain mood disorders and creativity. As has been said above, debilitating depression keeps one from working; but people with cyclic or seasonal mood disorders (I'm one of them) often have a burst of energy linked to hypomania that produces the work. There have been some very interesting recent studies about this (one in particular I had bookmarked but now unfortunately can't find), in which researchers found that in the hypomanic phase creative types made unexpected and sudden connections between ideas, borne out by brain imaging. In TOUCHED BY FIRE Kay Jamison suggests a very intriguing corollary between seasonal disorders, the origin of seasonal rituals, poetry, and creativity in general. Quite fascinating, and since then whenever I have read a biography of an artist who suffered from a cyclic disorder I've found myself attempting to track their creative spurts and comncomitant depressive episodes, to see if there is a correlation with the seasons. It would be an interesting project to see if someone could actually draw a sine curve linking the two (Jamison does something like this in her book) And I find it a beautiful and quite haunting notion, that our ancvestors may have been driven to create by this very imbalance. A recent book, THE MIND IN THE CAVE, deals with the origins of art and the origins of consciousness in altered states.

But then there are all those writers and artists who *don't* suffer from mood disorders, who produce brilliant work without the balky neurological machinery. It would be very interesting to see what the insides of *their* heads looked like.

I loved the Wullschlaeger HCA bio. But I wouldn't have wanted to BE Andersen, for all the tea in China (or all the matches in, well, anywhere).

[Colleen]

As someone who grew up strictly on the Disney movie versions of pretty much all the fairy tales (child of the '70s!) I was shocked the first time I actually read the complete Peter Pan - just a couple of years ago. I couldn't believe how often Tinkerbell said "Peter, you ass!" in the story - I know ideas about children's literature have changed in the past 100 years but it was still such a surprise. (And I mean that in a good way.)

As for writers and depression, well my only experience with deep paralyzing depression is after my father died. I didn't get out of bed for anything other than occasional food and trips to the bathroom for a month. I might still be there if my thesis wasn't looming large and I knew how disappointed he would be if I didn't get it done.

I often think the folks who say depression makes artists more creative have never truly suffered from it themselves.

[Terri Windling]

I wrote to the BBC and received a reply back saying that the Stephen Fry program on Manic Depression is going to be repeated in March. When the actual date is announced, I'll post it on this blog in case anyone else here (living in the UK) would also like to see it.

Liz, thanks for your comments; I'm defintely going to have to track down that Jamison book now. Sounds fascinating.

[Martyn Drake]

Terri,

The official mini-site for The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/tv_and_radio/secretlife_index.shtml

and it also has some clips from the documentary too.

M.

[Staci M]

I would like to invite everyone to take a look at a unique edition of "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen and illustrated by the award-winning Ukrainian artist Vladyslav Yerko.
A very special, collectible book!
You can find it here:
http://www.snowqueen.us