Posted by Pam Adams on September 08, 2006 at 00:33:28 from 134.71.192.243 user PamAdams.
In Reply to: Re: A missing generation? (was Bob & his history) posted by PeterH on September 07, 2006 at 20:03:24:
Was he perhaps suffering from emotional damage, so that he could only bear to invent characters who were emotionally unattached?
Perhaps this emotional detachment is why AR turned to children's fiction rather than adult works. In children's books, especially as AR constructed them, parents and adults are 'other.' They are unimportant to the real business of the protagonists, and only useful as suppliers of food or fillers up of space. (Natives, missionaries, even seals in WH)
I still haven't reached Best of Childhood in the by-the-bed stack, so can't confirm or disprove any of this, but this is an answer that feels right to me.
Pam