Everything you ever wanted to know about literary agents

Neil Gaiman got the perennial question ("How do I get a good agent?" if you didn't know), and he asked Teresa Nielsen Hayden http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ (tnh on LJ) who obligingly and kindly replied with an astonishing comprehensive spate of information. I have added it to my memories, and I pass it on as a public service to you. Thanks mucho, Neil and Teresa!

The Giving Tree, urgh

I was looking at various critics' list for best 100 books, and ran across The National Education Association's list of 100 best books for children.

Right at the top is Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, and I think urgh, urgh urgh.

To me, The Giving Tree is a loathsome, evil book.

I'm a Christian, but to me the message of that book is just twisted, and certainly not a picture of what true Christian giving should be like, although I am sure there are many that would argue otherwise. It is clear that the author approves of the tree (Edited to add: or perhaps he doesn't; perhaps it's meant as a cautionary tale). The tree is always referred to as she, and she gives up her apples, her branches, and eventually the wood of her trunk to a selfish, greedy boy. When he is an old man, he sits on her stump. That's the payoff: "And the tree was happy."

I rewrote the story once because it disgusted me so much. I wish I had a copy of my rewrite (Edited to add: I remember now: I titled my rewrite The Sharing Tree). When he asked for apples, she told him to take half the apples and sell them for fertilizer to put around her trunk, and then she could make even more apples, so there would be some for him, but she would not be bereft. I think at one point she told him to apply yet more fertilizer so she would be even bigger and stronger, and then invited him to make a tree house in her (much larger) branches, using the extra wood she had grown big enough to spare, and invite all his friends over so that he would not be lonely. In the end, she was a mighty tree indeed, with many extra apples and many extra branches, with a breezy tree house up above and a whole happy, thriving community around her roots. My point was, she could give to him without maiming and destroying herself. And goddamn it, why did he have to be so selfish, anyway? Why did he (male) always get to be the taker, and she (female) always have to be the giver? Couldn't there be ways that he could take and she could give that wouldn't involve her destruction, but instead her being nurtured by him? Why was she happy that he parked his bony ass on her in the end, destroyed by giving herself up for him, when he had done nothing for her? How could the author approve of this?

I think it's an awful message, both for girls and for boys.

So? Do you agree or disagree?

Edited to add (again!): Thanks to mereilin, who provided a link to a symposium at the always interesting First Things about the book.

An excellent counterargument to The Giving Tree

Wow. What a storm of comments I have provoked with my last entry, all v. interesting.

I suggest that an excellent counterargument (or counterexample) to Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree might perhaps be J.R.R. Tolkien's "Leaf, by Niggle."

Discuss.

Another counterargument to The Giving Tree: The Quiltmaker's Gift

I have been mulling all day about the lively explosion of comments made to my post about The Giving Tree, particularly some very thoughtful ones made by cakmpls, dreamcoat_mom, and liadan_m, among others. Yes, I value giving. Yes, I understand loving giving as part of my faith, and as a proper part of parenting. So what is it that bothers me so much about The Giving Tree? If I value giving and unselfishness (and I think I do), why does that book squick me so much, when it seems to extol exactly those things?

It occurred to me to come up with an example of a story about giving that doesn't squick me and see what the contrast suggested. The first that occurred to me, as I noted, was "Leaf by Niggle" by J.R.R. Tolkien. This story has a lot to do with other topics, too (Tolkien partly wrote it to examine subcreation, and to deal with his anxious fear that he would never finish his great work, The Silmarillion) but the story also throws some interesting commentary on giving, on the relationship between the giver and receiver (e.g., Niggle and Parish), and how that changes as the soul purges unworthiness from the heart and becomes purified for heaven.

And then I thought of another tale that seemed very similar to me to "Leaf By Niggle," and identifying it helped me pin down what I've been struggling to articulate all day: It's The Quiltmaker's Gift:( Read more )