Oompa loompas are a little creepy and do seem like the spies of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but apparently their spying ways in the film are not all that different than Roald Dahl's own past. The news that Dahl was a war-time spy was not nearly as entertaining as last month's revelation that Julia Child was a spy, but his methods were a little more scandalous. According to recent reports, the celebrated children's author was employed by the government to charm and then sleep with well-connected Americans in order to win confidences from them. Does 007 really come from 00-mpa loompa? According to one source in The Telegraph: "I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that [was worth] more than $50,000 a year."While this this may sound like a great gig, accordng to Newsweek:
Dahl was assigned to gather pillow talk from Mrs. Luce, who was regarded as anti-British. It was hard duty. "I am all f–––ed out," Dahl complained to the ambassador, Lord Halifax, after a three-night stand. "You know it's a great assignment but I just can't go on."Supposedly FDR knew he was a spy and allowed Dahl to report his pillow confessions to the UK, as the US would enter WWII shortly. More interesting to me, however, is what the children's lit backlash will be.
In my 170 class this morning we talked briefly about this and related issues and my students seemed unsure how to process sex spy turned children's author. Luckily they seem to have fallen in love with his books first and are unwilling to degrade their value simply because of scandal. Let's just hope Sarah Palin doesn't get wind of this story. According to Time, while mayor of Wasilla, AK she, among other things,
continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them.Clearly Harry Potter is to blame for teen pregnancies!*
*I've found conflicting reports about the titles of the books she sought to ban. John Green first alerted me to this connection. I'll be interested to see what's on that list though.
3 comments:
Oddly enough, I just this week was shocked by the reverse; finding out a spy had written children's books ("Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang" by Flemming). Spies and children's lit is a really odd fit.
I think it's brilliant! (BTW, I had to pause Bones to read your blog tonight - that's pretty impressive, since I am reluctant to pause Bones for much...) :)
You need to read Mickenburg's Learning from the Left.
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