Revisiting A Classic

A great ode to Wind in the Willows from Salon:

"The Wind in the Willows," published 100 years ago this year, is one of those books. I first read Kenneth Grahame's classic when I was 14, and I have been going back to it ever since. I just read it again, and its wonders seem greater than ever, its colors more glowing, its language more miraculous. Although it is uniquely mixed in style and matter, moving effortlessly from deadpan observation to piercing lyricism to raucous comedy to incantatory mysticism, it is a complete world. And like the old friend that it is, it always welcomes you back.

At the end of the fifth of its 12 perfect chapters, the Mole, who has rediscovered his old home, lays his head on his pillow in utter contentment. "But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him, and now smilingly received him back, without rancor." Opening "The Wind in the Willows" again always feels like that to me.