Advertisement
The Paris Review
Subscribe
Sign In
Remember me
Forgot password?
Sign In
Subscribe
The Daily
The Latest
Columns
The Quarterly
Issues
Interviews
Fiction
Poetry
Letters & Essays
Art & Photo
graphy
Authors
Podcast
About
History
Opportunities
Masthead
Prizes
Submissions
Media Kit
Bookstores
Events
Donate
Donate to
The Paris Review
THE SPRING REVEL
Institutional Support
Newsletters
Store
The Paris Review
The Daily
The Latest
Columns
The Quarterly
Issues
Interviews
Fiction
Poetry
Letters & Essays
Art & Photography
Authors
Podcast
About
History
Opportunities
Masthead
Prizes
Submissions
Media Kit
Bookstores
Events
Donate
Donate to
The Paris Review
THE SPRING REVEL
Institutional Support
Newsletters
Store
Sign In
Remember me
Forgot password?
Sign In
Subscribe
Sign In
Remember Me
Forgot password?
The Totalitarian Tank Engine, and Other News
By
Dan Piepenbring
May 13, 2015
On the Shelf
Thomas: a thinly veiled work of socialist realism? Image via the
Telegraph
As Thomas the Tank Engine turns seventy, it’s worth asking:
What’s this talking train’s political agenda
? A thoughtless pushover, fearful of going off the rails and fixed on his cohort’s industriousness, “Thomas resembles one of those preposterous idealized figures of Stalinist propaganda. Face radiant with a dream of heightened productivity. In fact, Stalin would probably have approved of Thomas, who always does what the Fat Controller tells him and strongly disapproves of other engines who step out of line.”
If society seems increasingly illiterate to you, person of letters, remember that society relies less on literacy every year: “
Most human beings worldwide would rather talk than read
. Reading and writing are late inventions in the human story; widespread literacy in most places is only a few centuries old. And the fact that in black-and-white pictures of a commuter train almost every passenger is reading was an artifact of the technological state of things at the time. Today, most of those people’s equivalents are either talking on their phone or listening to music on it. Their forebears in those pictures would have been as well, if there had been devices to allow it.”
Piero di Cosimo is remembered most for his religious paintings, but he also made “
startlingly vivid portraits of individuals
…
He gave himself the same tests, again and again, though he did not always pass them: for example, depicting feet, which he did in an elegantly detailed manner, down to their splayed toes.”
“When I began my first novel …
I asked my colleague whether writing fiction caused manic-depression
or merely mimicked the symptoms of manic-depression. He answered, ‘Yes,’ a cleverly enigmatic but also oddly confirming response.”
Want a euphemism for
motherfucker
? Try
melon-farmer
,
mother-fouler
, or
motorcycle
, and have a nice day.
Last / Next
Article
Last / Next Article
Share