As the literati are dragged kicking and screaming into the technological age they are subjected to the indignity of being published via short story dispenser. “For now, Valledor says the one dispenser in San Francisco has become so popular that people come in off the street just to print out a story…. Valledor encourages it. She says it helps the café find new customers, all through the power of literature.”
What do fairy tales have to do with the faith? “Peter Pan gives us Neverland, a place of eternal youth, where there is no death and nothing ever changes. C. S. Lewis gives us Narnia, where a King brings peace and redemption to a broken land. Tolkien gives us Middle Earth, where evil is fought by those who rise up to protect the good.”
Carla Baricz reflects on her Romanian family’s intergenerational love affair with books. “Among these classics, I also come across Editura Panghira’s prayer book, printed with the blessing of the Romanian Orthodox Church after the revolution and featuring Prayers for Deliverance from Spells, Charms, Curses, and Enemies…. Among all this wealth, one finds Hardy, Trollope, and Woolf, Eco, Jules Verne, Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas, Zola, every Romanian author ever published, and so many others, hundreds of others. Here one finds the world.”
Or ‘Middle-earth’, even, which Tolkien did not invent and which is NOT a “fairy tale” land.