SOURCE: “Strategies for Immortality: Romanticism Revised in Flying a Red Kite,” in Pilgrim's Progress: A Study of the Short Stories of Hugh Hood, ECW Press, 1988, pp. 19–48.

In the following essay, Copoloff-Mechanic explores the influence of a Romantic aesthetic on Hood's work, especially the stories comprising Flying a Red Kite.

When Hood's first collection of short stories, Flying a Red Kite, appeared in 1962, critics responded to what Robert Fulford described in his review as its “unlikely blending of fiction and fact” (2). The collection's documentary impulse provided the focus for criticism until 1978, when J. R. (Tim) Struthers noted its Wordsworthian “diction and concepts” (he cited “recollection,” “immortality,” “vanishing,” and “tranquillity” as conspicuous examples of its romantic undertone [28]). Five years later, Keith Garebian observed how Flying a Red Kite mixes Wordsworthian concepts with a “literal documentary” style (15–16). But while he acknowledged the structural cohesion of this collection, he neglected to explain...