In yesterday's post I shared the tale of how A. A. Milne ruined the relationship between he and his son Christopher Robin Milne.
My wife proposed the same idea that NP did when I shared the tale of how the runaway success of Winnie the Pooh made it impossible for Christopher Milne to escape the spotlight and threw him into a spiral of bitterness and eventual estrangement from his parents.
He could have chosen a different path.
Yes, he could have. He could have said "fine, my dad loved me and was inspired by my childhood, enough so that he wrote a series of books which made me famous. Great, give me your teddy bear to sign."
People have gone through much worse and shone. Yet not all people are created equally. Sure, Mr. Milne may have been blaming his own failure to thrive on his dad. And maybe he was a wimp. A gamma.
Man up, Christopher Robin.
Yet still:
Vespers
Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head.
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.
God bless Mummy. I know that's right.
Wasn't it fun in the bath to-night?
The cold's so cold, and the hot's so hot.
Oh! God bless Daddy - I quite forgot.
If I open my fingers a little bit more,
I can see Nanny's dressing-gown on the door.
It's a beautiful blue, but it hasn't a hood.
Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good.
Mine has a hood, and I lie in bed,
And pull the hood right over my head,
And I shut my eyes, and I curl up small,
And nobody knows that I'm there at all.
Oh! Thank you, God, for a lovely day.
And what was the other I had to say?
I said "Bless Daddy," so what can it be?
Oh! Now I remember it. God bless Me.
Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head.
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.
AMOG Christopher Milne all you like, but having your dad publish a famous poem featuring your faltering bedtime prayers?
Christopher had a reason for anger, and that anger ate him.
It's hard to escape the shadow of our fathers. And A. A. Milne's shadow was long indeed.
11 comments:
Whether or not Christopher Robin should've gotten over it is irrelevant. Children can get over the poor choices their parents make, that doesn't excuse the parents making those choices. The point is don't prostitute your children to achieve fame and fortune for yourself. A lesson it's especially important to understand now when it's so much easier to do.
Absolutely.
His father was a jackass, but he's still a bitch.
my dad was an abusive drunkard who beat me for no good reason. His dad loved him enough to make him the main character out of an epic children's fantasy series. Maybe his father was naive and ignorant about the negative repercussions of making your kid famous but I'm struggling to feel much sympathy for him.
So the son hates it so much he runs away to open a bookstore? If he is not a snow flake he is either dumb or willing to over look the slight to make a living of people who come looking for him.
> but I'm struggling to feel much sympathy for him.
I am personally not bothered by the poem either - but it is about the big picture.
Giving a child a lifetime of undesired fame as a "child" is not a gift.
It isn't right to leave a child a debt of a million dollars; unwanted fame can act like a "social debt".
I suspect these detractors do not understand that the purpose of criticism is other than to identify bad people from good people.
Frame control. His father obviously did a very poor job of it, not a large surprise as an atheist, he only had second hand morals absorbed by osmosis from the culture around him.
Someone with strong frame could write about their child, and make it clear during interviews that the stories are inspired by their child and not necessarily 100% accurate in any particular detail. And then explain to the child that here is how we put bread on the table, a roof over our heads, and pay for the nice education that you're receiving.
Teach the child how to take charge of their famous name, and use it to their advantage (and teach them how to use it to their advantage without turning into an entitled brat).
Still a rotten trick to use the exact same name of your real child in your stories.
"my dad was an abusive drunkard who beat me for no good reason. His dad loved him enough to make him the main character out of an epic children's fantasy series. Maybe his father was naive and ignorant about the negative repercussions of making your kid famous but I'm struggling to feel much sympathy for him."
This is completely understandable given your background. A middle class American could rightfully observe that growing up in a crime-ridden trailer park in the US is lousy - yet if he grew up in Somalia, a US trailer park would look pretty good.
"So the son hates it so much he runs away to open a bookstore? If he is not a snow flake he is either dumb or willing to over look the slight to make a living of people who come looking for him."
It strikes me as a Gamma move or even Borderline Personality Disorder. "I hate you - don't leave me!" as they say.
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