Years ago in Paris I did a great deal of drinking and talking with a guy called Antoine. He was a good looking man, an aviator, philosopher and writer.
He showed me the rough draft for a book he was working on, provisionally called the little prince. He asked me to read it and give him my opinion.
I found the book a little twee and the philosophy simplistic.
when we next met I told him this ( I am a straight talking man ) and went on to suggest a few modifications.
I remember suggesting that the little prince, when lost in the desert, uses his remaining bullet to shoot down Jonathan Livingstone seagull. Later, after eating the bird, the prince dies of food poisoning, putting a generation of hippychick thinkers boyfriends out of their misery.
Antoine did not like that idea to much.
I did not tamper with his aeroplane whatever anyone says.
1 comment:
Strange that you should alight on Antoine de Saint-Expury right now. Years ago in Hay-on-Wye I found a very battered copy of Carole R. Smith, Adoption and Fostering: Why and how (Practical Social Work, Macmillan, 1984). It was only £1:50 and removed from Islington Libraries; tatty and tired. I have been rereading it. Each chapter starts with a quotation from the Little Prince, straining to relate to the content. Tell me, but I don't think you tampered with this bit of cod philosophy? "To me you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world." The quotation precedes the chapter 'Is Blood Thicker than Water?' Goodness knows, but at least we are all 'unique', tamed or otherwise, even accepting that we all seem to inhabit such familiar social forms: and those uncomfortable binary oppositions feel like ill fitting shoes. Now I understand why so many get lobbed and not merely 'lost' from umpteen unconnected bridges.
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