Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Readings: The Phantom Tollbooth
One of my tutees recommended The Phantom Tollbooth to me the other day, so I picked it up and gave it a read. It's a tough book to get through in the sense that it's written for kids but without that little something extra that makes it work for adults. However, it is very cute and very clever. And it should be required reading for everybody today, young or old. Why? Because as I was reading it, I was struck by how the non-sense world of the Phantom Tollbooth is so very much like our world today -- specifically the world of illogic that the neo-cons have constructed around us. The book was written in '61, yet there are some amazing caricatures of everyone from Bill O'Reilly to the 101st Fighting Keyboarders. It wouldn't take much of a satirist to recast the entire book as a parable for the last six years. Hell, I might even do it myself. In any case, get yourself a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth and let me know what you think.
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2 comments:
I read that book in 4th or 5th grade. The whole class read it. For some reason it has left a bit of an impression on me. 20 or so years later I've been meaning to re-read it but it always slips my mind when I'm at the bookstore.
Thanks for reminding me to pick it up (again).
Excellent! It is a very good book, and it would be interesting to know how your experience reading it so many years later compares to what it was like to read it as a kid. Drop me an update if you get a chance.
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