The joys of travel caught up with us last week, and we spent an unscheduled 24 hours in Ohio. We muttered and sputtered, but we came out ahead overall — because we happened to pick up a copy of J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan at an airport shop.
We’ve long been partial to Mr. Pan, a heathen deity who shows up often in legend and literature. For one of his darker turns, read The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen.
Barrie’s play and novel, written at the turn of the 20th century, were darker than the Disney version — no surprise there. But what stunned us was the writing: Barrie was a perfectionist, unrelenting.
That’s all we ask.
