A Bear Called Paddington
Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington, a most endearing bear from Darkest Peru on a railway platform in London. A sign hanging around his neck said, "Please look after this bear. Thank you" So that is just what they did. From the very first night when he attempted his first bath and ended up nearly flooding the house, Paddington was seldom far from imminent disaster. Jonathan and Judy were delighted with this havoc and even Mr. and Mrs. Brown had to admit that life seemed to be more filled with adventure when there was a bear in the house.
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What Hacker News says
- > There's such a volume of lost everything. Original masters taped over . . .
Michael Bond deftly develops this problem in Chapter 5, "Paddington and 'The Old Master'", of the masterpiece "A Bear Called Paddington." [0] Even a read of the linked synopsis brings to light the combinatorial Ship of Theseus nature of all human-interpretation. The pathos brings tears to my eyes: Paddington's failure to recreate a present scrambled by a search for the past is victorious-by-proxy, despite the judges viewing it upside down--just as an artist might draw. [1]
0. https://paddingtonbear.fandom.com/wiki/Paddington_and_%22The...
1. https://www.allaboutdrawings.com/upside-down-drawing.html
- These are fun insights into the hit and miss tastes of the publishing biz. For example, from the article, "A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond, 28 August 1957":
I think the author has missed his mark in this story of a bear adopted by a middle-class family called Brown. Unless I mistake him he means it to be funny but the jokes are all on the bear; the Browns treat him very much as I imagine they would treat a "foreigner" and as one’s sympathies and affections are all with the bear it is difficult to laugh with the author. Moreover the Brown family are perfect fools, they leave him alone to bath and nearly to drown; they twice lose him, once on the Underground and once in a large store simply through inattention. No – frankly the best of the book lies in its title.
I kinda feel F&F's department of humour kinda had a very rigid pole up its ass. I bet they were kicking themselves after this went on to be published initially by Collins in '58.
