Judah, Aaron 1923-

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Judah, Aaron 1923-

PERSONAL:

Born October 19, 1923, in Bombay (now Mumbai), Maharashtra, India; son of Joseph (a fund secretary) and Kate Judah; married October 19, 1977 (divorced, 1996); children: Daniel. Education: Attended Lawrence College, India, 1942-43. Politics: "All party sympathy." Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Ashford, Kent, England.

CAREER:

Worked as bridge-boy on Cunard ship, 1943-44; drafter at a munitions factory in London, England, 1945-46; trainee physiotherapist, 1946-49; physiotherapist in London, Norway, Israel, India, Australia, France, and Spain, 1949-72; part-time physiotherapist, 1972-88; writer.

WRITINGS:

JUVENILE

Tommy with the Hole in His Shoe, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1957.

The Adventures of Henrietta Hen, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1958.

Tales of Teddy Bear, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1958.

Basil Chimpy Isn't Bright, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1959.

Miss Hare and Mr. Tortoise, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1959.

The Pot of Gold, and Two Other Tales, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1959, A.S. Barnes (New York, NY), 1960.

Anna Anaconda: The Swallowing Wonder, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1960.

Basil Chimpy's Comic Light, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1960.

God and Mr. Sourpuss, A.S. Barnes (New York, NY), 1960.

Henrietta in the Snow, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1960.

Henrietta in Love, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1961.

(And illustrator) The Proud Duck, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1961.

The Elf's New House, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1962.

The Careless Cuckoos, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1963.

(And illustrator) Ex-King Max Forever!, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1963.

(And illustrator) The Fabulous Haircut, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1964.

On the Feast of Stephen, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1965.

NOVELS

Clown of Bombay, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1963, Dial (New York, NY), 1968.

Clown on Fire, Macdonald (London, England), 1965, Dial (New York, NY), 1967.

Cobweb Pennant, J.M. Dent (London, England), 1968.

Lillian's Dam, J.M. Dent (London, England), 1970.

SIDELIGHTS:

In his writings for children, Aaron Judah employs a range of experience and emotion. The people and animals in his tales are balanced between wonder and reality, fear and joy, harshness and tenderness, humor and sadness. His animal characters live in animal and human worlds, and frequently represent virtues and vices. For example, foxes are wily, camels are selfish, owls are well-educated, hedgehogs are kind, and pandas are wise. According to critics, Judah illustrates in a simple and direct manner a variety of morals in his children's stories. The language of his children's stories is straightforward, and his tone was described by Myles McDowell of Twentieth-Century Children's Writers as "lyrical without being coy or whimsical." McDowell added, "The tone is central to the success of these tales. The words leap from the page demanding to be read aloud." McDowell deemed Miss Hare and Mr. Tortoise a perfect example of the best of Judah's children's writing. The book is a love story containing fear, humor, wonder, and tenderness.

Sensitivity and humor are Judah's keys to success in his adult novels Clown on Fire and Clown of Bombay. The main character in these works, a rebellious teenager by the name of Joe Hosea, is the grandson of a clown. In the New York Times Book Review, Joseph Hitrec wrote of Clown on Fire: "Hosea … did his pubescent best to pick clean the adult world as it confronted him in India during the last war. Joe's verve and glee in his galloping disengagement from society had a purity so close to moral it joined him to the elite of fictional teenage rebels from Huck Finn to Kim and Holden Caulfield. Joe's frontal assault on the mysteries of existence at a preposterous prep-school in the Himalayas was a tonic of zaniness and truth: It proved Aaron Judah to be a comic writer of considerable gifts."

Judah once commented to CA: "A few decades ago the complaint of the serious novelist was that the majority of the reading public read ‘trash.’ But readers they were, and there was always the hope of catching their interest with some inspired phrase and eventually uplifting their literary tastes. The flight from ‘trash’ was then no more rare than spiritual enlightenment. Now that challenge no longer exists. The novelist doesn't try to write a second novel better than his first; he must write better than television.

"In one of my former homes, the television—even this impoverished black and white affair—was singing, laughing, weeping, whispering, yelling, shooting, killing, raping, and looting its way into the house for over fifty hours a week. The horrendous end results of television on the young mind has been the storm center of national scandals, yet not for one precious minute has its mouth been stopped up. For the 1970s, at least, the battle is lost, and many excellent writers have given up trying to write better than television. Instead, they write for it.

"Another and more insidious evil particular to ‘the box’ is its re-adaptation of the classics to the myopic demands of the viewers. A much-voiced argument of the television buffs is that sales of a great novel (unabridged!) always increase after its depiction on television. One wonders what the ‘imbecilified’ hordes of buyers get out of the real thing. The process of enlightenment here is like that of a youth introduced to the joys of sex by a poxy whore, being next inspired to try marriage."