Let's just say that James Wolcott is no fan of New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik ("A careerist with delicate antennae, he wants to be encouraged, petted, praised, promoted, and congratulated...") But if I hadn't read Wolcott's dissection of the newly published Through The Children's Gate, I'd never have come across the description of Gopnik's daughter's imaginary best friend, Mr Ravioli. You see, Mr R is a best friend with a difference - he's always too busy to spend time with her:
For most children, an imaginary friend is a constant companion, a secret sharer, but Mr Ravioli is a phantom always on the go, hard to book for a long chat: "She sighs sometimes at her inability to make their schedules mesh." Concerned that Mr Ravioli might be a figment of buried trauma (shades of Val Lewton's The Curse of the Cat People), Gopnik phones his sister Alison, a developmental psychologist who has just finished a review of Marjorie Taylor's study "Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them". Alison assures him that Olivia's fictional offshoot is a healthy by-product of developing consciousness - the conversion of impressions and experience into creative narrative.
"I grasp that it's normal for her to have an imaginary friend," Gopnik says, "but have you ever heard of an imaginary friend who's too busy to play with you?" Pause. "She thought about it. 'No,' she said. 'I'm sure that doesn't occur anywhere in the research literature. That sounds completely New York.'
Yes, very Woody Allen. Many moons ago, I lived in NYC, and hoped to move my family out to join me. It didn't happen in the end, partly because of an unforeseen medical problem. But I was struck, too, by the fact that, in all the months of scouting around among the media set, I never met a single child who wasn't either neurotic or over-indulged or both. Looking back, I think we had a very lucky escape. I enjoyed my time in Manhattan, but I could never, ever have raised kids there.
[Picture taken from the Rainbow Room on the morning of the Pajamas Media launch, 2005. That seems a very long time ago.]
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