El Burro Volador

I finished reading Peter Pan last night, and I observed something that some of you may find intriguing.  While the book is famous for being a children’s story filled with wonder, I also perceived a subtle but definitely sinister undertone to it.  I’ve always noticed this mildly disturbing undercurrent in the writing I feel best captures dreams and/or childhood, most notably Neil Gaiman’s work.  It reminds us, I think, that dreams (and the waking dream of childhood) are things of both wonder and terror.  Perhaps it is impossible for the soul to be open to the wondrous without making itself supremely vulnerable, a truly terrifying prospect to many.

Anyway, fans of Neil Gaiman (and there should be some out there, lord knows I work hard enough to enlarge his cult), check out Peter Pan.  Fans of Pan, check out Gaiman’s Coraline.

In the Meantime, I thought I’d leave you with a description of one of literature’s most memorable villains:

“A more villainous-looking lot never hung in a row on Execution dock….

In the midst of them, the blackest and largest jewel in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared.  He lay at his ease in a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of his right hand he had the iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged them to increase their pace.  As dogs this terrible man treated and addressed them, and as dogs they obeyed him.  In person he was cadaverous and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance.  His eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots appeared in them and lit them up horribly.  In manner, something of the grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he was a raconteur of repute.  He was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanor, showed him one of a different caste from his crew.  A man of indomitable courage, it was said of him that the only thing he shied at was the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of an unusual color.  In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts; and in his mouth he had a holder of his own contrivance which enabled him to smoke two cigars at once.  But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw.

Let us now kill a pirate, to show Hook’s method.  Skylights will do.  As they pass, Skylights lurches clumsily against him, ruffling his lace collar; the hook shoots forth, there is a tearing sound and one screech, then the body is kicked aside, and the pirates pass on.  He has not even taken the cigars from his mouth.

Such is the terrible man against whom Peter Pan is pitted.  Which will win?”