"No doubt some people will be saying the same thing over here and
they'll be wrong just as these English skeptics are and if they'll only
stop to think for a moment they'll know why they're wrong. No grown
person, not even the creator of a Wendy and a Peter Pan, could have
done this thing. It exhales the perfume of an authoritative genuineness
in every line of it. It had to be a child who wrote it--a child with a
child's imagination and a child's viewpoint and a child's ignorance of
the things she wrote about. In a way of speaking it is like those
unintentionally humorous obituary poems which appear in the papers. No
professional humorist can hope to equal them because when he writes one
he does it with deliberate intent to be funny and invariably he betrays
his hand. It is when some poor mourning amateur dips a 'prentice pen in
the very blood of his or her heart and writes such a poem that it
becomes so pathetically and so tragically side-splitting."
This was what I said. Not in these words exactly, but to this effect.
Mind you, I am not proclaiming that I am the only person who has said
this. Between chuckles thousands and thousands of others since that day
have thought and have said it. What I am proud of is that I was the
first person in America to say it, and so to this extent I count myself
a discoverer and I feel a sort of proprietary sense in being permitted
here to introduce "Daisy Ashford: Her Book." I am mindful of the
distinction because of the reason I have just stated and because also in
a way of speaking it qualifies me for some sort of literary kinship with
Sir James M. Barrie.
Even so I do not aspire to the presumptuous hope that any one may say
"Well, I see this man Cobb is doing for Miss Ashford's second book what
Barrie did for her first one." I have no such ambition. A minnow always
errs when he undertakes to swim in the company of a whale. If he tries
to swim alongside he is unnoticed; if he swims in the wake he is
swamped. He makes other minnows jealous or contemptuous as the case may
be, and he is properly ignored by the whale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account