I read your review.

Very interesting -- thanks! My only criticism: an Austrian boy in the 1930s of Walter's age would have almost certainly been wearing shorts -- maybe lederhosen -- and probably with knee socks. I don't know where the illustrations come from, but I wondered about the lack of attention to boy fashions. The notion of the beautiful boy as a destroyer is not unique to the West. I remember reading something along those lines in a book Ian Buruma wrote on Japan. I asked Chat GPT about it. Here is the response: QUOTE There is a long Japanese cultural tradition in which the beautiful boy (美少年, bishōnen) is treated as a figure of fascination but also of danger. Ian Buruma discusses this in A Japanese Mirror, and the idea appears in several layers of Japanese cultural history. The basic pattern is that extraordinary male beauty destabilizes normal social order. The beautiful boy attracts desire, jealousy, and obsession, often leading to destruction. UNQUOTE SR