Yesterday blogger Ariel S. Winter (We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie) posted an item titled “John Updike on Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Stories,” with illustrations of The Young King and Other Fairy Tales by Oscar Wilde, which was introduced by John Updike.

Winter offers a summary and assessment of Updike’s remarks.

“In the modern age, fairy stories become necessary, Updike says, ‘For if men do not keep on speaking terms with children they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money. This danger was not so clear until machines entered the world in force and began to make men resemble them.'”

Here’s the link.