Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is published. |
|
|
On January 17, 1964, Roald Dahl published his third children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in the US (it wouldn’t be published in the writer’s native UK until November of that year, due, if you ask Dahl, to the industry’s “priggish, obtuse stuffiness”). It sold 10,000 copies in the first week; the New York Times described it as “exciting, hilarious and, incidentally, moral . . . Fertile in invention, rich in humor, acutely observant.” From then on, he was a household name.
“Most of us remember our first Dahl book as a revelatory experience,” wrote Lucy Mangan in The Guardian in 2014.
The tone–both confident and confiding from the moment Charlie is introduced (“‘How d’you do, how d’you do, and how d’you do again?’ He is pleased to meet you”)—and the brio, exhilarating and infectious. It is fascinating to see that whatever else came and went in the drafting process, that most vital and inimitable feature remained constant. “If you look now, you can see Mr Wonka quite easily,” runs the opening paragraph of “Charlie’s Chocolate Boy” [an early draft of the story in which Charlie was Black], followed by a breathless description of all that goes on inside the factory before finishing with “I am telling you all these things simply to show you what a fantastically clever chocolate maker Mr Willy Wonka was—and still is.” And there your eight-year-old self is, right where Dahl wants you, hushed, hooked and hardly breathing for the duration.
No surprise that the book has been beloved by children for 60 years.
However, despite the ubiquity of his books for children, Dahl has often come under fire for his use of racist and sexist stereotypes, as well as for his anti-semitic attitudes. In 2020, the Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company apologized for his “prejudiced remarks,” and in 2022, after Netflix acquired the adaptation rights to the author’s entire body of work, announced that “a significant part” of the profits from that deal would be used to set up a trust to support charities focusing on children’s health, anti-hate and anti-racism. And of course, one of the biggest literary stories of last year was the controversy over edits to new editions of Dahl’s work, which sought to smooth over some language deemed offensive.
But no matter where you stand on that, there’s no denying the enduring power of this children’s classic—which if nothing else, reminds us to do our best to be good and kind (and not to watch too much TV).
|
|
|
A dangerous secret held for too long between estranged best friends rises to the surface, and a long marriage comes apart with devastating consequences. Invisible Woman is at once a literary thriller about the lies we tell each other (and ourselves), and a powerful psychological examination of the complexities of friendship, marriage, and motherhood.
|
|
|
MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM
|
|
|
“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that, I am sure, is why he does it.” |
|
|
In other (old) news this week |
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is published under the name Victoria Lucas (January 14, 1963) • Victor Hugo finishes writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame (January 15, 1831) • The first edition of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Book One of Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes—a ”sloppy, inconsistent, baffling, perfect” novel—is published in Madrid (January 16, 1605) • Anton Chekhov’s last play, The Cherry Orchard, premieres at the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski (January 17, 1904) • Virginia Woolf stages her only play (January 19, 1935) • Isaac Asimov’s first full-length novel, Pebble in the Sky, is published by Doubleday (January 19, 1950) • Robert Frost recites his poem “The Greatest Gift” from memory at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy; it was the first time a poet had ever read at an inauguration (January 20, 1961) .
|
|
|
“My six words of advice to writers are: ‘Read, read, read, write, write, write.’ Writing is a lonely job; you have to read, and then you must sit down at the desk and write. There’s no one there to tell you when to write, what to write, or how to write.” |
|
|
“Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. It’s all about taking in as much of what’s out there as you can, and not letting the excuses and the dreariness of some of the obligations you’ll soon be incurring narrow your lives. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” |
|
|
|