authoritarianism, fascism, and the power of imagination

June 19, 2024 9:27 AM

If you’ve never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early — If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whosecompany life seems empty and meaningless — If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won’t understand what Bastian did next. What we can learn from the Neverending Story by Helen De Cruz (trigger warning for picture of shirtless Putin). Retro Childhood Review: The Neverending Story by Jen Zink
posted by bq (6 comments total)

Can't say enough about the influence of this book on me, so I won't try.

A local kids' theater put on a production of a play where Bastian and Atreyu were girls. It looked delightful, but it was definitely for kids, so I didn't go.

I hear they're going to make a new movie(s), presumably taking the point of the whole book this time, but I'll believe it when I see it.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:35 AM on June 19 [4 favorites]

I knew that Neverending Story was originally written in German, but it hadn't occurred to me that the author would've been the right age to have lived through WWII, or to look for metaphors for that experience in the book. I appreciate that extra layer of meaning... I hadn't even really remembered that if the Fantasticans are lost to the Nothing, they become lies.

I did love the movie as a kid. In fact, I spent a lot of time as a kid wondering whether I might actually be a character in a book, and if so, what the person reading about me thought of me.

I think I read the book in college. I loved it, but I'm not sure I understood it from an adult perspective, still. I think I was just still fascinated with the meta-ness of it. A story about stories (You can tell from my username that I do care and think a lot about stories). And maybe also about how flawed human nature is, given how hard it becomes to root for Bastian in the second half of the book, when he is acting idiotic in a very human way. He's so vain and easily manipulated by Xayide. But he's still important, and we need him to come to some kind of terms with himself and succeed. I think that's what I took away from it at the time. That humans can be idiots and still be important? And that stories can save us or doom us?

Now I wonder if the sourceress Xayide has some other kind of metaphorical meaning. She seems to represent the way that Bastian that is easily suckered by empty flattery and promises and schemes. Maybe Ende had some specific false promises and schemes in mind.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:44 AM on June 19 [3 favorites]

Children are natural philosophers. They spontaneously ask themselves such questions as: can there be such a thing like “nothing” in nature?

The Neverending Story was a result of similar conditions that brought about Being and Nothingness! [lithub] thank you for this knowledge. wonderful also to see Edgar Ende’s painting. i started searching the Entartete Kunst inventory [V&A] for his name, then just felt overwhelmed by the enormity
posted by HearHere at 2:54 PM on June 19 [4 favorites]

wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless

Look, I didn't need to be called out like this... But also, hell yeah. When I really get into media, I commit 110%. I have thrown books (my beloved books!) across the room, grieving at a beloved character's death or angry with a twist that I should've seen coming but was too caught up in the story to notice. It's mostly books, but also some video games. More and more studios are turning out really great content that is more of an immersive, interactive story than a pew pew shootemup. I love the whole series, but Life Is Strange: Before The Storm, especially the "Farewell" bonus chapter, absolutely destroyed me in the most beautiful way. I sat there at my desk and ugly cried, and it was magnificent.
posted by xedrik at 4:10 PM on June 19 [2 favorites]

... And that stories can save us or doom us?

That's mainly what I took from it. The first half, the one that was uplifting enough for a movie, was about the saving. In the second half, Bastian does not really understand what the AURYN says: do what you wish. He wishes for great gifts and adventures, and he gets them, but he doesn't realize that he's trading parts of his true self for them. If he had finally lost all of himself, he would have existed in meaningless delusion like everyone else in the City of Old Emperors.

As a kid, I just read this as a story of magical tradeoffs, like many others. It wasn't until I was older that I understood that people do this. They lose themselves in pursuit of something, then end up wandering around ideologies and religions looking for what they've lost.

Although I knew that WWII must have affected Ende very deeply, I did not really understand it as a story about authoritarianism. I'm sure it would reward a re-read --
posted by Countess Elena at 6:33 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]

I am old enough that I got this book, in the original German, as a gift when I was in junior high, and adored it (among other things, the early print runs are just physically beautiful, with 26 chapters each staring with a full page illuminated letter illustration from A to Z- the movie stops at M - and the text in our world and in Phantasien (the original german name for the country) in different colors).

I am consequently one of the small handful of people who rather dislikes the movie- I can see why slightly younger folks loved it, but having already read the book several times, it so wildly missed the point, plus the Hollywood cutesifying of Bastian was irritating. Ende himself disliked the movie enough that he withdrew his name from the production, calling it, 'A humungous melodrama of kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic."

So it's nice to see this article- Michael Ende was a deeply philosophical writer, from everything I've ever heard, and it's a pity he died so young without time to write more.

But for folks who like the movie or the book, I also recommend his other novel Momo, which is shorter, and takes place in an alternate version of our own world, and is all about time and how we use and value it. Purely personal opinion, but I like the translation better as well- I feel as if the translation of Neverending Story is a bit more childish, although there is a very good chance that this is only because reading German was not as easy for me and so the book seemed more adult to youthful me in the original language. However, I did not have that reaction with Momo which is absolutely a children's story, but which I have reread several times as an adult and found it holds up.
posted by Dorothea Ladislaw at 9:38 AM on June 20 [2 favorites]