![]() I had a lot of trouble in school to begin with. I don't think I thought I was a “beamish boy” per se, but I certainly liked to think I'd been out slaying jabberwocks in the woods. This was very exciting for my brother and me. As we ran out of the woods to meet him, he’d come up and would always say:Īnd hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! We were pretty poor, and my mother always tried to turn little things into big events-so my father coming home from work would be a big thing. My brother and I would run around in the woods all day, and when my father came home it was always a big event. We had a very tight-knit little family, and we lived on the outskirts of a Long Island town by these train tracks. They were a great favorite with all of us. Several times in the course of my childhood, he would read Alice and Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass over a few weeks. Jesse Ball: When I was a child, my father would read out loud to my brother, my mother, and me. He teaches in the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA in Writing program, and he spoke to me by phone. He’s won the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize and his been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Jesse Ball’s other novels include Samedi the Deafness and Silence Once Begun. Slowly, as the man gains confidence, and his past starts to materialize-as does the a vision of a society that flees from hurt, numbing the tormented in order to save them. At first the lessons are basic and literal-this is how a chair is used, here is how to greet a stranger-but they grow in difficulty and complexity. ![]() More broadly, the poem illustrates the kind of literature Ball likes best: driven by sound, urgently communicative, and yet able to sustain a range of private meanings.Ī Cure for Suicide, Ball’s fifth book, begins without providing any context: we’re plunked down in a tiny, unnamed town, as a woman teaches an male amnesiac how to be human again. In our conversation for this series, Ball described the process by which nonsense verse-when done well-achieves powerful emotional effects, while at the same time deflecting “objective” or intellectualized interpretations. Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think Arthur C.
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