Sivilized

Michael Chabon, in an elegiac essay in the new edition of the New York Review of Books, rues the loss of the "Wilderness of Childhood" - the unparented, unfenced, only partially mapped territory that was once the scene of youth. It is by now an old theme, but he gives it a vigorous workout: As the national feeling of guilt over the extermination of the Indians led to the creation of a kind of cult of the Indian, so our children have become cult objects to us, too precious to be risked. At the same time they have become fetishes,... http://ping.fm/OVzgL