This is a reread; one I enjoy but don’t get to very often. Michael Ende has written a beautiful book about adventure and dreams. As a kid I remember empathizing with Bastian, but also feeling somewhat superior– while weak and unathletic, at least I wasn’t fat and hated. Looking at it now, he picked a great constellation of attributes for Sebastian– a few positive and a enough poor that it’s easy to imagine that you (for essentially every value of you) feel that you could do as well. Even his hesitation at coming to Fantastica is something I could “easily beat”.
The first and second halves are fascinating. I’m currently reading a paperback version, which is good, but I miss the red and green text of the hardback. (They make the difference italic versus standard print, which is good, but feels less otherworldly. I suspect House of Leaves is similar; while I read a paperback version with house highlighted blue, I bet the art version would have been fascinating as an object.)
3 replies on “The Neverending Story”
Wow…talk about nostalgia. I will forever be a traumatized 11 year old waiting for my luck dragon to show up.
Thank you for the much needed trip down memory lane!
I was eating lunch and reading the book when a drywaller on a break struck up a conversation. He enjoyed the movie and remembered it and wanted to know how far into it I was. He was surprised when I told him that the movie just covered the first half of the book. It’ll be nice if he gets to enjoy the whole experience.
Yes, Donny, there’s a lot of me that is still as a young boy in stuck in stories and in need of experience, just like Bastian. The journey when he reaches Fantastica is awesome… and scary. He came so close to doom at the crowning…
There’s good fodder for an RPG there ya know. The 8-13 market is criminally underserved ; )
Another gem was the redwall series. A little more in terms of depth, but compelling and well written just the same.
Thanks again for the memories, a kinder gentler alternative to the brainbleach needed to scrub the film sequels from my forebrain.