![]() ![]() ![]() The criminals write a ransom letter to the boy's father, lowering the ransom from $2,000 to $1,500, believing that the father won't pay much money for his return. Calling himself "Red Chief", the boy proceeds to drive his captors to distraction with his unrelenting chatter, malicious pranks, and demands that they play wearying games with him, such as riding 90 miles on Bill's back pretending to be an Indian scout. But the moment that they arrive at their hideout with the boy, the plan begins to unravel, as the boy actually starts to enjoy his kidnappers. Two small-time criminals, Bill and Sam Driskoll, kidnap a kid named Johnny, the red-haired son of Ebenezer Dorset, an important citizen, and hold him for ransom. It has also been often used as a classic example of two ultimate comic ironies – a supposed "hostage" actually liking his abductors and enjoying being captured, and his captors getting their just deserts by having the tables turned on them, and being compelled to pay to be rid of him.įirst appearance in The Saturday Evening Post. ![]() The story and its main idea have become a part of popular culture, with many children's television programs depicting versions of the story as one of their episodes. Eventually, the men are driven crazy by the boy's spoiled and hyperactive behavior, and they pay the boy's father to take him back. It follows two men who kidnap and demand a ransom for a wealthy Alabamian's son. ![]() Henry first published in the July 6, 1907, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. "The Ransom of Red Chief" is a short story by O. ![]()
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![]() Richardson shows us the artist being as prolific as ever, painting Walter, as well as the surrealist photographer Dora Maar, who became a muse, collaborator and lover. It was during this time that Picasso began writing surrealist poetry and became obsessed with the image of himself as the mythic Minotaur. Picasso was contributing to André Breton's Minotaur magazine and spending time with the likes of Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, Lee Miller, and the poet Paul Éluard, in Paris and the south of France. ![]() ![]() The Minotaur Years opens in 1933 with a visit by the Hungarian-French photographer Brassaï to Picasso's château in Normandy, Boisgeloup, where he would take his iconic photographs of the celebrated plaster busts of Picasso's lover Marie-Thérèse Walter. The beautifully illustrated, long-awaited final volume of John Richardson's magisterial Life of Picasso, drawing on original research from interviews and never-before-seen material in the Picasso family archives. ![]() ![]() ![]() Kierkegaard's understanding of God as impossible and transcendent is relatable to the modern man, and may inspire him to seek out God, with God revealing himself as immanent, on his own terms. Schaeffer rejects Kierkegaard's understanding of God, that God is fundamentally other from reason this is a tragedy. This is most clear to me in his treatment of Kierkegaard. Yes, he gets the despair of modernity however, his defense of Biblical Christianity as a relevant modern worldview is ill-posed. While, factually, Schaeffer, seems to present most thinkers accurately, he does not fully get modern philosophy. ![]() His review of the western intellectual history is quick and accessible, and his great insight in this book is to point to Aquinas' fault of placing reason "upstairs"-assuming that human reason is immune to the fall. I love Schaeffer, the person, but I totally disagree with half of what he says. ![]() ![]() ![]() Hermux steps out of his mousy little existence (this is a pun, because he is in fact a mouse) to investigate, and finds himself embroiled in a dastardly plot. His imagination is fired up both by the attractive Linka Perflinger (I told you about the names) and her thrilling adventures, and becomes even more so when Linka fails to return to claim the watch. Hermux Tantamoq is shaken out of his extremely ordinary existence when a dashing aviatrix comes to his watch shop and asks him to fix her watch. It certainly helped that there was a lot more action so there were fewer painfully slow descriptions of Hermux’s meals and clothing. However, about halfway through I got interested in the mystery, and after that it was a quick read. Most of my dislike focused on the too-cute outlandish names and the too-detailed narratives of the main character’s daily routine. It’s difficult to write a positive review about a book that had me thinking about stopping through the entire first half. ![]() |