Loan at Budapest, which means that I shall have to be there a good deal of the time, go to Geneva for every meeting of the Finan. I have been asked to represent the Trustees of the Hung. The identity of “M” and “H” and the nature of the “amnesty acquittal” are not known. It may really have been necessary for him to have this searching experience. I was very greatly relieved to hear of the “Amnesty Acquittal,” especially for M’s sake.
Of course Elisina and Bill will be here when you are in Paris, and enchanted to see you if you could run down to have a look at Antigny. I was in Paris for a couple of days last week, and now have a clear three weeks here, but unhappily have got to be back at Budapest on August 15th to prepare for the Sept. The vocabulary can get relatively sophisticated but visual cues and humor could keep a savvy early reader’s attention-the joy here, though, will more likely involve some performative storytelling that would make Juan Hormiga proud.Your letter of July 8th has only this minute reached me, and I am hastening to reply in the hope of catching you before you sail. The scribbly art has a cheerful verve with dynamic compositions and a plethora of frantic motion lines, and the ants themselves are pleasingly odd little dudes with oversized beaklike heads protruding over pudgy bottoms and sticklike appendages. There’s a clever authorial wink as it becomes clear that it’s the usually diligent ants who have the adventure here, and their increasing dramatics over Juan’s possible fates are sure to elicit some guffaws. This Argentinian import, a delightfully idiosyncratic ode to storytelling, just begs for a readers’ theater performance, balancing the various ants’ emotive musings with a folkloric narrative tone.
Their efforts to memorialize him with a flower, though, lead to their finding him ensconced safely in a tree, waking up from a restful nap, blissfully unaware of the drama. The other ants, fantasizing about his adventures, are so lost in their imaginings that they barely have time to escape a sudden storm their wondering turns to worry as they become convinced Juan has been swept away. One day, however, Juan decides it’s his turn to hit the road and gather some of his own stories. Juan Hormiga’s fellow ants don’t mind that he’s not particularly industrious or that he usually shirks ant duties for naptime because they know that he’s the colony’s best storyteller, narrating the extraordinary adventures had by his grandfather to the breathless wonderment of his insect crowd.
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