E.L. Konigsburg
Apr. 20th, 2013 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessEntertainment Weekly is reporting that E.L. Konigsburg has died.
I haven't gotten around to blogging about Konigsburg over on Tor.com, and probably won't, since strictly speaking she wrote only one speculative fiction novel, Up From Jericho Tel, which is not one of her better known works. But in a way, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler has certain fantastic elements, or at least wish-fulfillment elements: I still find it just slightly difficult to believe that no one would have noticed two kids happily living in the Metropolitan Museum for a week. And her first novel, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth, is more or less about how to train to be a witch. Kinda.
Regardless of plausibility, From the Mixed Up Files was one of my favorite books of all time for years; I begged and begged to go to the Met, and especially to see the fountain. Years later in college I had to laugh when, after a trip to a Cloisters, a friend admitted that she'd never been to the Met; we went, and shortly after stepping inside, the friend said wistfully that would I mind if we headed to the furniture? She had a bed she wanted to see. And to the Egyptian section. It also sparked a nice if temporary interest in Michelangelo for me, and a certain appreciation that art is not just for beauty, or for comfort, or to look at: art is for adventure.
Thanks for the books, Ms. Konigsburg.
I haven't gotten around to blogging about Konigsburg over on Tor.com, and probably won't, since strictly speaking she wrote only one speculative fiction novel, Up From Jericho Tel, which is not one of her better known works. But in a way, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler has certain fantastic elements, or at least wish-fulfillment elements: I still find it just slightly difficult to believe that no one would have noticed two kids happily living in the Metropolitan Museum for a week. And her first novel, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth, is more or less about how to train to be a witch. Kinda.
Regardless of plausibility, From the Mixed Up Files was one of my favorite books of all time for years; I begged and begged to go to the Met, and especially to see the fountain. Years later in college I had to laugh when, after a trip to a Cloisters, a friend admitted that she'd never been to the Met; we went, and shortly after stepping inside, the friend said wistfully that would I mind if we headed to the furniture? She had a bed she wanted to see. And to the Egyptian section. It also sparked a nice if temporary interest in Michelangelo for me, and a certain appreciation that art is not just for beauty, or for comfort, or to look at: art is for adventure.
Thanks for the books, Ms. Konigsburg.