Customer Reviews

Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
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Of course, you are never to old to enjoy a good fairy tale. But maybe it is also true that you are never really old enough to understand all its subtle layers of meaning. Behind the simple story read to a child, there are always enough hidden allusions, jokes and adult tragedies to last a lifetime of re-reading. And when the fairy tales have been created by a modern author such as Hans Christian Andersen, they may even contain an entire autobiography. Andersen published several rather rosy-coloured "official" accounts of his life, with sugar-sweet titles like "The Fairy Tale of My Life". But as Jacky Wullschlager shows in this moving biography, it was only in his stories that he revealed his true fears, hopes and obsessions. The great pleasure of Wullschlager's book is that it helps us to rediscover the familiar cast of fairy tale characters; to recognize Andersen's struggle from extreme poverty in the "Ugly Duckling", his flirtation with nobility in the king-loving "Nightingale" and his almost fin-de-siècle obsession with sex and death in the "Snow Queen" or the "Ice Maiden". It gives an added biographical depth to characters that have fascinated readers ever since Andersen first created them. And as the story goes, "if they haven't stopped fascinating, they're fascinating still."

Although this is a highly readable, extremely informative biography, the death of my Hollywood-derived impressions of Hans Christian Anderson, as personified by Danny Kaye, was a tortured one.

As Wullschlager clearly illustrates, Anderson was not a very likeable character. Easily wounded and quick to take offense (even where it was unwarranted), strangely self-assured to the point of embarrassing those around him with his pomposity and silliness (if not himself), he seems to have been almost incapable of giving the same friendship that he demanded of others. Even so, Wullschlager succeeds in making him sympathetic. Rather than try to make excuses for his behavior, she just lays out the facts and presents him as he was. She is particularly effective when she associates events in Anderson's life with the fairy tales and repeating literary themes they inspired.

That Anderson was able to transform his inner demons into timeless, allegorical tales that are both touching and uplifting is remarkable. That he was able to do so after having overcome seemingly insurmountable hurdles in his background and early education marks him for the genius he was-warts and all.

This is a very good biography of an unusual, but brilliant, story-teller.

From childhood the stories of Hans Christian Anderson always brought hope and encouragement to a boy trying to fit in despite leg braces and crutches. Later as a parent my appreciation for his insight and depth grew as I read his stories to my children. I found myself wanting to know who was this man and how had he been influenced to write about these flawed characters who always reacted to their circumstances with courage and dignity. Wullschlager's masterful biography does a good job of giving us an understanding of Anderson and his stories. Unlike the person portrayed in the film by Danny Kaye, Anderson experienced much of the alienation and abuse that his characters did. This biography shows that Anderson was much like the heros in his stories, flawed, but always hopeful. Like the hero in my favorite Anderson story, "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", he understood that although he was different, he would always believe that he would make a difference.

I picked up this book looking to get some insight into the mind of Hans Christian Andersen, and to some extent I did, but in an almost disturbing way, I got a stronger sense of the biographer herself.

The reader of this book will get to know Andersen's family's origins (although not enough), his life as a child (again, not enough), the places he lived, those he knew and a lot about what they might have thought of him. There is a minor amount of information given about why or when Andersen wrote certain books or stories -- and this is where the book falls tragically short.

Instead of delving into the mind of Andersen or the world that created him, the readers should prepare themselves for page after page of the author's fixation with how clumsy Andersen's behavior was with colleagues and friends and her conclusions about Andersen's sex life. Some of this might even be true, but at times the stories are presented just to titillate instead of lending insight with any genuine caring. To a larger degree, I think the author missed the point of Andersen's dilemma entirely.

The issue for Andersen might be that he was socially and sexually immature -- for his age and at any age -- whether as a teenager or as an adult. And that he had deeper issues of inferiority that could have stemmed from a number of sources, the least of which his issues with being born into a lower class of society than he might have liked. Between the lines of the stories of his life, it seems pretty clear that Andersen did not have enough self-worth to have more conventional or even reciprocal friendships. The author draws this conclusion briefly later in the book but you're going to have to sit through a lot of saucy and editorialized excerpts of his letters. For me, the biographer's point seemed labored, like she enjoyed it too much.

Additionally it should be noted (even though the author doesn't draw this conclusion in her book) that it's a fairly widely held opinion that Andersen probably suffered from Aspergers Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism that leaves the individual socially un-evolved while being highly skilled at more intellectual pursuits. Setting up one mocking scenario after scenario, as the author does in this book, might be one way of relaying the facts but in the end the author comes across as no better than the stories she tells of the haughty girls who mocked Andersen throughout his life. It's like picking on a handicapped child. Cruel; and leads the reader nowhere.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is I would have preferred the author spent more time on how Andersen's environment shaped him, how he spent his day, how he wrote his stories, where he drew his inspiration, how his writings altered other writing of the day, etc. The sexual speculation and the repeated focus on the negative effects of his ego raising behavior -- were not so interesting and come across as lacking any useful insight into Andersen or her having any meaningful literary ability.

As a matter of respect for Andersen's body of work, and more to the point, to be taken seriously as a biographer, the author might have tried to present a vision of Andersen that delves beyond the tawdry and superficial.

Others collected folk stories and retold them; but Hans Christian Andersen's efforts stood out from his peers in that he was the first to create fairy stories himself. Surprisingly, this is the first comprehensive study of Andersen and his work to be published in English, telling of his life and poverty, his struggle to achieve fame, and the psychological forces which drove him to keep on producing. A fascinating and different portrait of the man evolves.

There are three Hans Christian Andersen biographies on the market: by Alison Prince (1998), Jackie Wullschlager (2000), and Jens Andersen (no relation -- 2004).
The later is the weakest, because the author is hesitant to reveal too much about Andersen's personal life. Being Danish, he cannot ruffle too many feathers, since he still has to live with the descendants of these people! The other two are British...
The Wullschlager biography takes a Freudian approach -- quite revealing as to Andersen's sex life, and ties in the major events of his life to his fairy tales and stories. It does an excellent job in both those areas. The storyteller's friend!
However, the most revealing of the three is the Prince -- it takes over where the Wullschlager left off. Andersen's homosexuality is a given, with the "politics" of oppression and repression well expressed. But it also presents the main events of his life in a brand new light: Andersen may not have been Mr and Mrs Andersen's little boy! A royal bastard, probably the son of the Crown Prince who later became king of Denmark. This sheds a whole new light on the "hidden" meaning of such masterpieces of Andersen's as THE UGLY DUCKLING!
So please avoid the Andersen, read the Wullschlager first, then compare with the Prince -- it will be a thrilling experience in biography reading, I promise you!

Very interesting book and a good read--having heard of Andersen most of my life, it was good to read about him. The book lays to rest the image of Andersen created by Danny Kaye in the (albiet interesting) misleading musical version of Hans Christian's life. The book chronicles the master storyteller's incredible ambition and drive to make something of himself, despite his poverty-stricten background, and thoroughly examines the demons (both physical and psychological) that encompassed his life.

No true artist is really ever content in the age in which they live. Artists naturally resist time, space and matter. Given that, living in Europe during the 1800s must have been tedious for a man of Hans Christian Andersen's (b. 1805, d. 1875), passion and vision. In Andersen's case, writing became his way of transcending matter, of becoming timeless and immortal.

Author Jackie Wullschlager writes a thoroughly researched biography of the quirky genius. While I loved this book, I gave it three stars because I completely disagree with her premise that Andersen was a "victim" of classism and elitism and that his work was inspired in opposition to this.

Andersen pushed gender, sexual, social and artistic boundries so effortlessly that I have to believe it was instinctive not contrived. Isn't it every artists' lament that they are misunderstood? And isn't it every biographer's urge to explain it for them? All artists share the very same yearnings, complications, misunderstandings, restlessness and even nuttiness that Andersen did.

Quite simply there is no answer as to what informs any of their work. It just is. Mortals like us have to accept their magic gracefully. I certainly wish Wullschlager had.

A well-researched critical, yet sympathetic biography of the complex brilliance which was Hans Christian Andersen.
When you reach the pages describing his death, you feel like you have lost a dear friend. HCA was known for his children's fiction, but in fact, many of his works are for adults. This biography is particularly interesting as it gives some insight into his little known adult works, together with his character, and places his work in the cultural context in Europe in which it found itself.

A heartbreaking and page-turning account of the original Ugly Duckling -- Andersen's own awkward, striving, half-mad character, as it turns out, informs his best known stories, nearly all of which involve an outsider trying to penetrate rigid, hypocritical society. Tales like The Emperor's New Clothes and The Little Mermaid, in their original form (Disney versions will be even more unwatchable once you read this book) were clearly understood by contemporaries in 19th-century Copenhagen as the brilliant and vituperative satires they were. An impressive book.