Dahl
I took my time getting up today. I eventually made my way to Starbucks after some errands. I brought with me a magazine and a book. I don’t read often, and when I do, it’s not really at a Starbucks. But it is not as easy as it sounds, even though I found parking and a chair quickly. It’s a busy Starbucks. People were bustling around, having proposal meetings, chatting on the phone. It also didn’t help that there was loud pop music playing on the speakers.
Dahl at 9 years old, perhaps on vacation with his family in Norway?
But really it didn’t matter as soon as I opened the book. I’m reading Boy, an autobiographical story by Roald Dahl about his childhood. I think I’ve read it before, because some chapters sound familiar, but I was still falling in love with Dahl all over again. His stories are perceptive, childlike, precious, hilarious, touching. He must’ve had an amazing mother, who he wrote to at least every week since he was a child until she died.
One of the things I just learned about Dahl tonight was that his headmaster of Repton, a private boy boarding school, became the Archbishop of Canterbury, who crowned the current Queen Elizabeth. Dahl couldn’t believe how someone promoted high up in the church was once the kind of person who flogged little boys so violently. “If this person, I kept telling myself, was one of God’s chosen salesmen on earth, then there must be something very wrong about the whole business.” I like how this kid thinks.
Roald Dahl, in the Royal Air Force in his 20s, I believe
Wes Anderson directed a child story of Dahl’s, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which came out last year (that I’ve blogged about a couple times). I feel like there needs to be more Dahl movies made, but from his adult shorts and novels. There also needs to be a movie made based on his life. He has one of the most interesting lives ever, or it seems like because we have so many detailed stories about it from Dahl himself.
Reading Boy explains so much of Dahl’s fictional stories to me, like Matilda and James and the Giant Peach. Dahl, along with Steinbeck, is the one author that keeps me reading today.
The 1986 version of Boy that I am reading
Maybe that’s a screenplay project I should start on. Just a thought.