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neilrcoulter 's review for:
The Annotated Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
What to say about one of my favorite books? The Wind in the Willows is a book I’ve read aloud to the family numerous times—in fact, my kids reminded me that the last time I read it to them was as we were leaving the tropics and moving back to the US, after twelve years away. That made the book feel even more bittersweet. As always, when I read this novel—and I think it’s best when read aloud—I am in awe of Kenneth Grahame’s skills with words. He crafts brilliantly meandering sentences that bring disparate elements of the archaic literary past into conversation with fantasy in amazing ways, resulting in a magical, unforgettable story.
Tolkien and Lewis both admired the novel, and I see many connections between this story and some of theirs. All three authors shared a similar perspective toward post-industrial England: a joy in walking the unspoiled countryside in the company of good male friends, and a worry that society was becoming too concerned about “progress” and “utility,” to the detriment of enjoyment of craftsmanship and quiet reflection, especially surrounded by nature. The background information in this beautiful annotated edition of The Wind in the Willows shows me that I have somewhat less feeling of kinship with Grahame than with Tolkien or Lewis. Like both of them, Grahame was in many ways a man out of place in his world, but in contrast to them, Grahame never seemed to quite find his place, being excluded from the academic environment of Oxford, and not having the kind of understanding and support from his wife that Tolkien found in Edith. The coldness Grahame experienced in his growing-up years didn’t transition into warmth and family later in life, as it did for Tolkien and Lewis. Instead, Grahame remained strangely distant from his son, whom he later lost to what seems like suicide. As I read about Grahame’s life, I desperately wish that he would have found the way to fellowship and love, instead of distance and misunderstanding.
The novel he left us, however, remains as a testament to so much of the real, deep feeling of life. A lot of readers most remember the hilarious escapades of Toad, but for me the true heart of the story is in “Dulce Domum,” “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” and “Wayfarers All,” all chapters that both celebrate home, beauty, and the numinous, and also confront the yearning in our hearts—to travel, to be in motion, to experience the sublime but not quite remember it clearly. Grahame himself seems to struggle with what this all really means, all together, and his epic structure (the novel mirrors the form of The Odyssey) is ultimately a bit asymmetrical, with our initial entry to the world, Mole, overshadowed by the end, not having returned home with new wisdom (as Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin do at the end of The Lord of the Rings). In a way, there’s a yearning and unfinishedness that is at the core of the whole book, and so it’s beautiful but also a bit heartbreaking. We see that idea working out in the lives of the three main characters—Rat, Mole, Toad—in different ways, and in the end, we can assume that their roads will go “ever on and on,” never quite coming to completion—which is what we see in our own lives, too.
The annotated edition is definitely the version of this book to get. The introductory material and the notes throughout are excellent and very helpful in establishing the place of this book, and especially in pointing out connections to other literary works that I wouldn’t have spotted otherwise. The edition includes a number of illustrations from the first several illustrated versions, though I wished sometimes that this one included all of them; sometimes the editor mentions an illustration that isn’t presented in the book, but usually what she’s writing about is there on the same page, or close by. It’s fun to see how various illustrators have worked around the problems inherent in this story, regarding the relative size of the characters to their world, their attire, and so forth. Ultimately, it’s a story through words, and there are many occasions in which trying to think how everything is working logically is unnecessary and unhelpful.
Tolkien and Lewis both admired the novel, and I see many connections between this story and some of theirs. All three authors shared a similar perspective toward post-industrial England: a joy in walking the unspoiled countryside in the company of good male friends, and a worry that society was becoming too concerned about “progress” and “utility,” to the detriment of enjoyment of craftsmanship and quiet reflection, especially surrounded by nature. The background information in this beautiful annotated edition of The Wind in the Willows shows me that I have somewhat less feeling of kinship with Grahame than with Tolkien or Lewis. Like both of them, Grahame was in many ways a man out of place in his world, but in contrast to them, Grahame never seemed to quite find his place, being excluded from the academic environment of Oxford, and not having the kind of understanding and support from his wife that Tolkien found in Edith. The coldness Grahame experienced in his growing-up years didn’t transition into warmth and family later in life, as it did for Tolkien and Lewis. Instead, Grahame remained strangely distant from his son, whom he later lost to what seems like suicide. As I read about Grahame’s life, I desperately wish that he would have found the way to fellowship and love, instead of distance and misunderstanding.
The novel he left us, however, remains as a testament to so much of the real, deep feeling of life. A lot of readers most remember the hilarious escapades of Toad, but for me the true heart of the story is in “Dulce Domum,” “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” and “Wayfarers All,” all chapters that both celebrate home, beauty, and the numinous, and also confront the yearning in our hearts—to travel, to be in motion, to experience the sublime but not quite remember it clearly. Grahame himself seems to struggle with what this all really means, all together, and his epic structure (the novel mirrors the form of The Odyssey) is ultimately a bit asymmetrical, with our initial entry to the world, Mole, overshadowed by the end, not having returned home with new wisdom (as Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin do at the end of The Lord of the Rings). In a way, there’s a yearning and unfinishedness that is at the core of the whole book, and so it’s beautiful but also a bit heartbreaking. We see that idea working out in the lives of the three main characters—Rat, Mole, Toad—in different ways, and in the end, we can assume that their roads will go “ever on and on,” never quite coming to completion—which is what we see in our own lives, too.
The annotated edition is definitely the version of this book to get. The introductory material and the notes throughout are excellent and very helpful in establishing the place of this book, and especially in pointing out connections to other literary works that I wouldn’t have spotted otherwise. The edition includes a number of illustrations from the first several illustrated versions, though I wished sometimes that this one included all of them; sometimes the editor mentions an illustration that isn’t presented in the book, but usually what she’s writing about is there on the same page, or close by. It’s fun to see how various illustrators have worked around the problems inherent in this story, regarding the relative size of the characters to their world, their attire, and so forth. Ultimately, it’s a story through words, and there are many occasions in which trying to think how everything is working logically is unnecessary and unhelpful.