I am always pleased when I run into examples of how successes in art and accomplishment need not necessarily begin very young ages. It's not so much that I hold out any particular hope of achieving artistic greatness in the years before me, but simply that it gives one a bracing feeling that Things Can Still Happen. While, on the other hand, whenever I run into yet another mention of some insufferable prodigy composing his first pieces at the age of five, I want to kick the next child I see. Fortunately, the next child I see is likely to be my own, and will certainly be doing something reassuringly child-like rather than composing odes or sonatas or some such nonsense.
All of which is to say that I am rather charmed to run into Jerome K. Jerome's quoted recollection of his writing of Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog): "I remember only feeling very young and absurdly pleased with myself."
Jerome was thirty when Three Men In A Boat was published in 1889, and I think we can forgive him for feeling absurdly pleased with himself as a result.
Thursday Random
11 hours ago
2 comments:
As my wife says when watching "America's Got Talent" (don't judge us...), I hate talented kids.
You can get a little down on yourself when you look around and every homeschooling blogger has a genius or three in the making. Glad to know that normal kids like mine are, well, the norm. They're unique, precious, blah blah blah, but really only interested in playing with trains and legos and light sabers, and a little grumpy when it's time for school or bed.
+JMJ+
Sylvester Stallone had a similar epiphany, and that was why he decided to make Rocky Balboa.
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