From: Susan Pearson <spearsonbooks>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:39:00 -0500

I'm a newcomer to this conversation, so please forgive me if someone has already addressed my points. I'm finding the discussion of the Dear Reader
(or Dear Listener, Nick) device in DESPEREAUX intriguing, especially since, although it does rather beat one over the head, I don't think it's really all that important. It's a literary device. In this case, I think it was overused and annoying, but it's really more a stylistic thing, not to my mind integral to the evaluation of the book as a whole. Had the author chosen to impart information through these asides, I might feel they were more important, but I don't recall that she did.

Eliza Dressing noted that she didn't know whether Kate DiCamillo considered the Fielding tradition of author intervention when writing D. ED did note, though, that she'd heard KDC mention Dickens as an inspiration, which totally flummoxed me. Alongside social commentary, Dickens is TOTALLY absorbed in character and inter-personal relations. It is Peggotty's abiding love for David Copperfield, and Aunt Betsy Trotwood's acceptance of P because they both love David despite their other differences, and David's love for Dora (even though we don't necessarily like her much), that move us, that make DAVID COPPERFIELD so eternal. But in THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX, I did not find a single loving relationship, not a single abiding friendship. (Certainly D's love to Pea cannot be considered such--it's a first-sight love that lasts for a mere 4 or 5 pages and is then dropped except insofar as it is D's motivation.) This to me is the great flaw of the book, that Despereaux is ever alone, that friendship is never a part of his quest. That's a message I don't much care for even in adult fiction.

If someone has seen a relatinship, a love, a camaraderie in this book that I have missed, I'm open to having it pointed out.
Received on Tue 27 Jan 2004 08:39:00 PM CST