The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Last week I read Steven Millhauser's terrific Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright. How's that for a title? The conceit is that the book is the biography of a boy genius, written by his friend, another little boy who is perhaps also a genius. Or perhaps he is a homicidal maniac. To find out you'll have to read the book. 

Millhauser's prose is beautiful, as usual, but what strikes me most about this book is how apt, how perfectly and precisely detailed, his scenes of childhood are -- they seem not invented but remembered. Maybe they were. If so, I envy Millhauser his memory. This book definitely belongs on my list of classics for adults about childhood. There is passage after passage here that transports you right back into some half-remembered childhood scene of your own.

There is also passage after passage here that highlights what's going on in the lives of my own children, particularly Luke. This scene, for instance, is about Edwin's second-grade infatuation with one of his classmates, a very unsuitable little girl:

He began to have [a] curious sympathy with Rose Dorn... Her fits oppressed him; her restlessness infected him; her habits obsessed him. Unwittingly, as it seemed to me, he began to imitate her. He picked up her habit, for instance, of swinging her arms together in a clap and swinging them apart as far as they would go. He imitated her way of standing against a wall or tree with one foot resting heel-first on the surface behind her. She had a way of pushing her lower lip out and down like a kind of flap, so that she seemed to have no upper lip and a vast underlip; one day when I looked up from my table I saw him sitting with his lip folded down, gazing off in a Dornish trance, quite unaware that he resembled an idiot. When it was her turn during a spelling bee she sometimes frowned, puffed out her cheeks, and placed the tip of her forefinger on her lower lip. The first time I saw Edwin do that I told him he looked like Rose Dorn; he blushed and never repeated it. But he picked up her habit of sitting in her seat with both elbows sticking through the space between the wide wooden slat on top and the narrow slat below. For a while he imitated her unspeakable habit of suddenly banishing a smile or laugh from her face and staring at you without expression; I believe she considered such insolence amusing. She was fond of sticking out her tongue, but thank God Edwin never sank to that. ...

To my horror he began to pick up on her verbal expressions as well. She was fond of saying, "Thank a-you," and Edwin began to say it constantly, angering everyone. "Thank a-you," he would say to Mrs. Mullhouse as she served each item of his lunch. "Thanks, mom. Thank a-you." He assimilated several mispronunciations: "o-weez" (always), "prolly" (probably), "innit" (isn't it), "chocklit" (chocolate), "Mondee" (Monday), "rayroad" (railroad), and "crane" (crayon). Other Dornisms that crept into his speech included: "It's Howdy Doody time" (in answer to the question "What time is it?"), "goody goody gumdrops," "scaredy pants," "fa crine out loud," and "poopy" (a vulgar expression). She was fond of making vulgar sounds in class, and to my great disgust Edwin began to practice them on the way home from school, placing his tongue between his lips and sputtering with positive gusto.

The little girl Luke is taken with isn't unsuitable. She's a sweet kid. She does, however, have a slight speech impediment that must somehow add to her charm. He went back to preschool today after a week off sick and came back talking like her again. He does it on purpose. And he doesn't just imitate her mispronunciations, he imitates the pitch and tone of her voice, too. I try to tease him out of it, looking around with astonishment whenever he does it and asking where his little friend is hiding, but he's too enamoured of her to be embarrassed out of it. He just giggles and carries on.

Comments

[Rose]

Your child has the most beautiful skin! I know that's not the point of your post at all, and I hope it isn't creepy to note it, but just look! so lovely.

That's a great passage, too. There's a little girl at preschool my son likes; so far, he does not imitate her, he only draws pictures of her driving fire trucks.

[Steph]

Aw, thanks, Rose. He is very pale. Sometimes it's pretty, sometimes he looks almost green!

Love the idea of your son drawing his friend driving trucks -- wonder if she's interested in fire trucks or if that's *his* idea of the perfect girl.