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>What a strangely beautiful bit of absurdism in a children’s book! I doubt that very many in the book's audience have been able to appreciate it as such. Inste
by prvc 5y ago
>What a strangely beautiful bit of absurdism in a children’s book!
I doubt that very many in the book's audience have been able to appreciate it as such. Instead, it seems prone to plant in the listener the seed of imprecise logocentric thinking. The phrase reminds me of "The nothing itself nothings", a non-ironic statement, whose ilk I had thought we had left behind in a previous generation.
- omnicognate 5y agoIt's a joke, and was readily appreciated as such by both my kids. There's a sequence of things to which you are saying "goodnight", and to include "nobody" and "air" in that list is unexpected, funny and thought provoking to a small child. "The nothing itself nothings" is Heidegger, and while I agree metaphysics often amounts to thinking far more deeply about meaningless quirks of language than they deserve I don't see the relevance to a book for preschool children. Do you see all absurdist linguistic humour as "imprecise logocentric thinking"?
- mbg721 5y agoKids who are learning language love playing with language, and find things that don't make sense hilarious. That's why "Dad jokes" are what they are.