Cheap Letters to My Son on the Love of Books (Book) (Roberto Cotroneo, Roberto Controneo) Price
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Letters to My Son on the Love of Books is an odd little book; billed as a guide for parents who want to impart a love of reading to their children, Robert Cotroneo's slim epistolary volume works just as easily as psychopomp to the adult reader's own past love affair with the written word. And surely the literature he chooses to discuss is hardly appropriate to the Dr. Seuss set--one whole letter is devoted to T.S. Eliot, whose "The Wasteland" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" have confounded many an English lit. major. As one delves further into Cotroneo's musings on the nature of literature in general and the moral and psychological dimensions of particular works such as The Catcher in the Rye, Treasure Island, and The Loser (in addition to Eliot), it becomes increasingly clear that this book is intended for one's inner child first and foremost. Deceptively simple, Robert Cotroneo's charming Letters makes reading about old favorites almost as delightful as introducing them to a new generation of readers. --Margaret Prior
| AUTHOR: | Roberto Cotroneo, Roberto Controneo |
| CATEGORY: | Book |
| MANUFACTURER: | Ecco Pr |
| ISBN: | 0880016310 |
| TYPE: | 20th Century American Literature, 20th century, American - General, American literature, Books & Reading, Books And Reading, Family / Parenting / Childbirth, History and criticism, Italy, Literary Criticism, Parenting, Parenting - General, Treasure Island (Imaginary place), Bernhard, Thomas, Catcher in the rye, Criticism and interpretation, Eliot, T. S, Salinger, J. D, Stevenson, Robert Louis, Treasure Island, Untergeher |
| MEDIA: | Hardcover |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
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Customer Reviews of Letters to My Son on the Love of Books
Literary mountaineering with a two-year-old In a nutshell, this is a book of close reading exercises and personal reflections disguised as a long letter to a two-year old boy. It discusses three novels (Stevenson's Treasure Island, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Thomas Bernhard's The Loser) and one poem (T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) in some detail. Not exactly the kind of bedtime reading a two-year-old enjoys.
I appreciate the idea of the book and the intention behind it, but the weaknesses of the book are substantial. Most obvious is the irritating discrepancy between the author's attempt to appear talking to his two-year old son while at the same time penning sentences like "In Italy, Holden's transgression is a precursor of 1968, a sort of protest ante litteram, a proto-desecrator of the system, of the social values of his day." That is heady stuff for a two-year old, but definitely good material for an essay in the culture section of the weekly magazine for which the author writes. The tone of the book is that of a well-meaning but somewhat patronizing teacher. There is a strong "you-shouldish-ness" in the book, which erupts every so often in sentences like "You should treasure the good books, and throw away the ones which are not good." Not that this was a very sophisticated suggestion - but there are very few original ideas in the book, anyway. Mr. Cotroneo spends a lot of time recounting the story lines, which is admittedly a bit boring. At other times he indulges in some personal, and nonetheless widespread, prejudices against popular culture ("If it happens that the latest and most stupid hit record brings to your mind a fragment of Heraclitus, then it will mean that, on the cultural side, you have nothing to worry at all."), against professionals ("And remember, even lawyers, economists, and physicians can only be good lawyers, economists, and physicians if they have truly learned how to read a great poem. If they can't, they're only hacks, extremely mediocre ones.") and against small towns ("You are also struck by the measured quality [of life in a small town], from which a Baudelaire, a Radiguet, a Wilde, or a Hemingway could never have been born."). All these rather snooty statements combine to bring him across as more sententious, arrogant, and condescending than he probably is.
I am convinced Mr. Cotroneo loves his son no less than I love my own two-year old son. But what is the little guy to think of a father who boasts that "at the age of fifteen I was reading Joyce, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and much more," but claims at the same time that he has "no intention to make you [his son] into a literary mountaineer?" Mr. Controneo is all good intentions but sets a bad example himself by name-dropping Joyce, Dante, Augustinus, Borges and many other famous literary luminaries. Why, if he does not want his son to go climbing at such altitudes, does he point out the highest peaks?
The redeeming aspects of the book are the author's protectiveness of his son and his professed wish for the boy to enjoy what he does without having to feel forced to excel at it: "When you are older you will have to learn a lesson that The Loser can teach you: you must have passion and generosity of spirit to love the things that you do, without trying to obtain a result whatever the cost." When he grows up, his son will also come to understand that his father's "Letters to my Son" can be read for the most part as a monologue in which his father explains what made his life meaningful, what shaped him, and what he thinks is important in life. Very few fathers care to do that, and the little guy is privileged to have such a father. I just wish his father had not packaged all this in the form of an exhortative letter full of contradictory messages.