in praise of calvin
I’ve been reading Calvin and Hobbes lately, mostly because it’s fantastic, and I’m struck by how well Calvin is characterized.
I find children somewhat difficult to write, particularly as I have none of my own (yet), and tend to struggle with a bleary sense of nostalgia for the better aspects of childhood while eliding the worse. I’m fully aware of the (sometimes surprising) perspicacity that children can display, of their great struggle with what’s ‘no fair’, of the generosity of which they’re capable.
I often need to remind myself of the scheming cunning of childhood, the egocentrism, the power games between peers, and the astounding stupidity that you can only get from someone who simply doesn’t have an adult understanding of consequence.
Calvin embodies all of these things. He’s by turns perceptive and stump-dumb, worldly and locked within the confines of his imagination, deeply concerned with Hobbes’s happiness and stunningly self-obsessed. Certainly, it’s all played up for comedic effect, and most of the insights that come out of Calvin are much too sophisticated for a six-year-old, but they feel true to life.
Calvin’s not an adult-in-child’s clothing; he’s not a pensive Linus or a world-weary Charlie Brown, he’s not one of the too-jaded Foxtrot kids, he’s not wise-beyond-his-years Huey (he’s a pretty good match for Riley, though). He’s a child, through-and-through: whiny, brilliant, exasperating, hilarious. We feel for his parents, even as we’d like nothing better than to get on that toboggan with him.
