Madeleine L'Engle
American · 20th century
American author (1918-2007), best known for A Wrinkle in Time, the 1962 children's novel in which a tesseract folds spacetime so travellers can cross it without covering the distance.
Connection to Taylor Swift
The phrase a wrinkle in time appears in two songs, used in opposite directions: Hits Different shrinks it to a crease at the corner of someone's eyes, while So High School lets it work as a fold that returns the speaker to being sixteen.
Notable Works
- A Wrinkle in Time; A Wind in the Door; A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Appears in the Archive
Context within the Archive
A Wrinkle in Time
“A wrinkle in time like the crease by your eyes”
L'Engle's title names a fold in spacetime that lets travellers skip the distance between two points. The song cashes the phrase in as something physical and small: the wrinkle is a crease at the corner of someone's eyes, the mark left by years of smiling. A device for defeating time is reduced to the evidence of time passing on a face.
A Wrinkle in Time
“The brink of a wrinkle in time, bittersweet sixteen suddenly”
The same title is used for its original sense here, a fold that collapses the distance between two ages: standing at the brink of it, the speaker is suddenly sixteen again. Where Hits Different shrinks the wrinkle to a line on a face, this one lets it work as L'Engle intended and travels through it.