Todays Thoughts

A picture by Arthur Rackham of the fairytale, The Three Bears

I was reading the New York Times Book Review for June 8, 2008, P.11. They had a review for The Enchantress of Florence. The critic hated it. He called it a fantasy book that was very hard to follow. The reviewer admits that he found the novel to be quite confusing.

I also found the novel to be confusing, but at the same time, I found it to be beautifully crafted and deeply enchanting. If you are reading it as a fantastical romance it works quite well. However, if you are reading it as a novel it does not work quite as well. I am not sure I can even review it. It is one of those books which makes you think very hard because it is truly awful in some aspects, and truly fantastic in other ways. People will love or hate this book.

I am sitting looking at the book wondering when I will begin writing the review.

Earlier on the train, instead of writing a review of the Enchantress of Florence, I read the graphic novel (comic book) Castle Waiting by Linda Medley. It was absolutely wonderful. There is an introduction by Jane Yolen one of my favorite storytellers. The drawing is very pretty. It uses elements of Kay Nielsen, and Arthur Rackham in a clean black and white comic book drawing style. One of the characters in the novel is even based on Arthur Rackham, a half man, half-stork character.

There are a lot of puns in the story, Rackham, the stork man has a chicken which lays solid gold eggs. The Dutchess of Carabas comes to visit Castle Waiting and gives birth to a half cat child. This is very much a fractured fairytale. It is what happens after the princess who has lain asleep for a hundred years leaves her castle with her knight never to return.

I would call this story, a thinking persons fairytale, there is not a lot of violence, but there are plenty of tricks, adventures, and tall tales spun into the story. I especially like the order of bearded nuns which appears toward the end of the story.

There are many fairytale references sprinkled throughout the story. There is Iron John, the Town of Bremen, and Simple Simon. There are also ghosts, pookas, brownies, minor spirits, and other fairytale creatures. There is even a little imp who tries to trick the characters in the story into doing bad or foolish things. He is constantly testing the bearded nuns.

I enjoyed the stories and artwork set in a medieval fairytale otherworld with talking bears, fairies, and other creatures. I think it really is entertaining. It also entertains you with stories that make you think and be amused at the same time. There is a strong sense of kindness, community, and tolerance written into the stories. This is not your typical swords and sorcery tale.

Earlier today, in the diner while I was having a toasted bagel and coffee, I was reading two articles in the Daily News, the local New York newspaper. The first one was about how General Motors is releasing a new plug in hybrid vehicle, the Chevrolet Volt, that is supposed to get 600 miles on a full tank of gas in 2010. They already are showing the demonstration models at the automotive shows. The second article that caught my attention was about a set of underwater tidal turbines being worked on in the East River of Manhattan. Apparently, they hope to have 30 turbines in place by 2009. Verdant Power is building the turbines. They were replacing the blades on the turbines with a more durable set of blades.

Also, two more books came in for me to read, God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe about a revolt in hell, and Sagramande by Alan Dean Foster. I now have several large piles of books to read on my desk.

The Djinn In the Nightingale's Eye by A.S. Byatt-- Review

The Djinn in The Nightingale's Eye Five Fairy Stories by A.S. Byatt is actually five fairy stories and a novella. The book is six inches by eight inches and is about an inch thick. It easily fits in the hand. It is easy reading if you are on a subway or bus.

The first story in the collection is the Glass Coffin. It is about a little taylor who rescues a princess and her brother from an evil magician. I like the story because the hero is a master craftsman, not a prince. The ending is different than most fairly tales. It is a different kind of happily ever after.

The second story, Gode's Story again varies from other fairytales. This is not a tale I cared for much. The protagonist is rather cruel and unthinking. He is a sailor with merry feet who destroys womens lives. It is almost a relief when he comes to a bad end. There is a unique monster in this tale, a baby who dances a woman off a cliff. This seems to be an excellent metaphor for women who don't rear or like children well.

The Story of the Eldest Princess again changes the morals to a more modern sensibility. I especially like when the cockroach saves the first princess from certain doom by insisting she listen to the complete song of the woodsman instead of the first verse. Apparently the woodsman is a villain who drives women to their death.

Dragonsbreath is especially interesting. There is a metaphor for volcanoes as dragons who belch smoke and destroy the lives of villagers. It is the story of unhappy villagers who are driven to ever greater unhappiness by disaster.

The last story is not a story at all, but a full novellas. The story is told by a "narratist" woman. A woman who has her children gone, her husband run away, and now is free to wander the world happily providing lectures to universities. Two of the oddest passages in literature which I have ever read are in this story. The first is a lecture by Dr. Perholt, the protagonist, on the meaning of Chaucer's Winter Tale. The second is a lecture on the meaning of wishes in fairtytales. This makes it especially odd because she has just gained the services of a djinn from a blue Nightingale's Eye bottle.

There is something to be learned from the novella, The Djinn In The Nightingales Eye about wishing for things the right way in fairytales. It seems to reflect on ordinary wishes. It says we should wish for things that are both attainable and comfortable that we can appreciate in the real world. For example, Dr. Perholt wishes she was the age that she was most comfortable with her body and promptly turns 35. She is not young, but not old.

A.S. Byatt's stories are written with a very modern sensibility. They are often about creating myths which help women deal with false images of masculinity, sensuality, and the body if you read them carefully. The critics call her fairytales Victorian in nature. I find the style to not be Victorian at all. They are much too liberated and full of life. The images seem to draw out the free style of Art Deco or the 1920's than the Victorian age. They are not prudish.

A.S. Byatt uses glass in her fairytales. She describes snow globes, and glass weights. The way she describes these images, they are of glass you might see in a high end antique store frequented by an upper middle class professor, or nouveau rich person who liked Vogue magazine and elegant things from Tiffany's or Fortunoff. It is not a Victorian feeling at all.



This is a paperback version of the book.

Comic Book News and Reviews:Pulp Secret Report 05/10/07

Bill Willingham, the author of Fables is in this video. It is not what you would expect.

Jack of Fables-- Bill Willingham-- DC Comics-- Vertigo-- Review

Fee Fi Fo Fum I Smell The Blood of and English Man

This is a modern fairytale set in comic book form. It is not for children. It has some adult content. It is part of the Fables series, there are some fifteen "graphic novels" in the series. The Fables series is about fairytale characters who have been forced into the modern world, driven out of fairyland by a cruel and evil adversary.

Jack of Fables written by Bill Willingham is of course about Jack, the violent trickster. He goes under many names Jack Horner, Jack Be Nimble, or Jack the Giant Killer. Jack had previously escaped to Hollywood where he made several blockbuster movies. The other fairytales caught up with him and drove him out of town. Now he is on the road. Think, "Hit the Road," as in Jack Kerouac.

Jack is captured and brought into a fortified compound for wayward fairytales, "The Golden Bough Retirement Community." There fairytales are sanitized and made mundane by the resident librarians. All their magic is removed. The head librarian is called Mr. Revise, the senior librarians who all wear glasses are Priscilla Page, Robin Page, and Hillary Page, there are assistant librarians, and junior assistant librarians. There is nothing quite like a wicked librarian to make your day.

The retirement community is of course a fortress surrounded by tigers, crows, watchtowers, and a razor wire topped fence. Jack being Jack plans his escape with the help of other fairytales and legends like the Tin Woodsman, Sam, Humpty Dumpty, and Goldilocks. You see all sorts of creatures and characters wandering through the story around, Alice, the Tortoise and The Hare, The Walrus and The Carpenter, and Paul Bunyan and his ox blue are just a few.

To escape Jack enlists the help of the fairies so they can distract the crows. The escape scenes are wonderful. A few spoilers are Toto gets eaten by a tiger, and Sam turns out to be Sambo, he takes care of the tigers in his special way.

I can't give away the whole story so I'll stop there. The comic book is quite enjoyable. The full color illustrations are quite interesting. This is not a childrens story, the naughty bits are not revised out. The illustrations are superb and often startling.

What I especially like about Fables is that there is an underlying subversive message about censorship that runs through the whole series. It is especially strong in this installment. The adversary is the embodiment of censorship and removing the darker elements from our common myths so they become soft and clean.

Originally fairytales were stories from the folk. Mother Goose included things like admonishing children to pray, not stay out late at night, and be prepared to defend yourself with violence. These things have been removed from these stories in America. They were childrens stories meant to scare people into behaving well. Here is a nice little Mother Goose nursery rhyem. There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children she didn't know what to do, she gave them some broth without any bread, then whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.

Many of the images in the original fairytales were racist, sexist, and erotic. It is hard for people to read the non-disneyified versions of Brer Rabbit, Mother Goose, or Anderson's Fairytales. Trickster figures were womanizers, con artists, and gamblers. They showed people the value of taking risks and winning. Goldilocks was not a sweet little girl and Jack the Giant Killer was not a nice guy. Puss In Boots was a liar and con artist. It is why we like them so much.

The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia-- Review

The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia is an absolutely unique and wonderful urban fantasy which incorporates Russian fairytales.

Galina a young woman watches her sister turn into a bird and fly away. She is left with her sister's baby and mother to watch. Galina tries to get help and eventually ends up with Yakov a police inspector trying to find a slew of missing people who have also turned into jackdaws, pigeons, and owls then simply disappeared.

Thus begins a strange urban fairytale where eventually Galina ends up in an underground fairyland Moscow underneath the real city. There we readers get to meet many strange Russian small spirits, small gods, and fairies. There is Father Frost, Zhemun the Celestial Cow, and Khoschey the Deathless. These are truly wonderful and strange characters.
The city itself reminds me of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere or China Mieville's Un Lundun. It is a deathless land of the forgotten.

After getting help in the underground city, they must return to the surface travelling through the dark forest under the city of Moscow, crossing the black river and meeting the ferryman, and eventually making it up top. There are helpers with them. I won't list all of them. It would spoil the surprise. A few of them are a white jackdaw with the soul of a thug trapped in it, rats that can form into a bear, and a gypsy girl.

If you like urban fantasy, or fairytales this is an excellent read. There is a sardonic, melancholy, funny quality to the book unlike anything else I have ever read. The setting is truly unique. The writing uses memories and evokes feeling far better than most novels which I have read.

If I gave stars, this would be the North Star.

Nursery Rhymes, Poetry, and Fairytales

I really enjoy reading nursery rhymes. I have memorized quite a few of them from Mother Goose. Mother Goose is the source for many of todays childrens picture books. I have fond memories of it from when I was a child. I also love Beatrix Potter, especially the Tales of Benjamin Bunny and Jemima Puddleduck.

I took some time to write some poems that are variations of nursery rhymes and odes to fairytales.

Hey fiddle, fiddle, the cat's in the middle,
The dog jumped over the moon,
The little cow laughed to see such sport,
As the dish rapped a tune with the spoon.

Jill be thimbled
Jill be quickened
Jill jumped onto the candlestick

Puss
Hat and feather
Collars and lace
Boots of velvet
What a fine cat you are

Reinard
Quick Smiling
Quick Thinking
Sleight of Hand
Fleet of Foot
A master trickster

These, I wrote on the train coming to work this morning.

Earlier, I had written another poem at the Poetry In The Branches Workshop

Puss's Boots

If I had boots like these,
I'd dance across the oceans,
And climb the highest mountains,

I'd jump and hang from the moon,
Then walk across the starry sky,

The sun would be a single step,
The moon a soft shuffle,
And the farthest stars a mile.

I think nursery rhymes for todays children are too sanitized. Removing the scary or naughty parts makes them less real. It also changes the effect on children. Disney often to me is more scary with its sanitized fairytales than the original versions.

There are two major collectors of fairytales which we think of the west, Charles Perrault who was French, and The Brothers Grimm who was German. Luckily, these are no longer under copywrite and can be used for almost any purpose. I think of them as a repository and excellent source for fantasy writing.

The other place we often draw our stories from is Aesop who is attributed with Aesop's fables. The original unexpurgated version is far better than the clean children's version. Aesop himself is very interesting. He was a slave who was supposed to be very ugly.

I am not sure what else to say at this point. Oh yes, I also wrote two approximation of koans in the Poetry At The Branches workshop. Here they are:

Is the glove on the hand, or the hand in the glove?

Does the scarf blow in the wind, or the wind blow the scarf?

I am often ambivalent about poetry. I know I can write it, but I am not sure that I want to be known in any way as being a poet. There are interesting connotations that go with being a poet.

I have a few favorite poets. I have always liked Shel Silverstein's childrens poetry-- Where the Sidewalk Ends is a truly excellent book.

I also like Charles Bukowski who is a story unto himself with his raunchy, drunken, often whimsical self reflecting poetry. It is not for children.

When I was younger, I used to collect poetry books when I was in college renting a room. Then I had something traumatic happen. The old lady who was the landlady downstairs passed out on her bed with a bottle of gin and some cigarettes. The apartment burned down. With it went the poetry collection. I still read poetry books sometimes.

The net is a truly excellent medium for poetry. There are a lot of blogs with poetry in them. Because it is easy to screen blogs, you can quickly find blogs with quite a few good poems in them.

My favorite blog with poems so far is this one:
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/the-musings-of-madness.html

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I decided to change my heading picture for Book Calendar. I found a picture from a public domain photo archive. I think it is a little better looking than the original lectern image.

Also, I updated my fuelmyblog.com image, so it would include my "friends" log.

Every day, I try to improve my blog a bit. It is slow improvement that makes things better.

Myth Fantasy, Urban Folklore, Fairytales, A Free Life by Ha Jin

Puss In Boots

Today, I decided to write a bit about Myth Fantasy, or novels which retell old fairytales or use old gods and legends and legends as their basis. One of the most prominent writers of this type of tale is Neil Gaiman who is a truly prolific writer. He recently wrote the screenplay of Beowulf which is in theaters now. It is a fantastic version of the Beowulf story. I'll wait for it to come to video. Another video which I will be waiting for from him is Stardust which is a film based on the graphic novel he wrote.

Two novels which he wrote are both based on myth and fantasy, the first is American Gods which sets the Norse pantheon in modern America. There are also cameos by the Egyptian gods and a few folk heros. Another novel called Anansi Boys tells a modern story of Anansi in contemporary America. This is full of the trickster tales of Anansi which are very entertaining.

I like when people use mythic characters as centerpieces in their novels. Jane Yolen wrote Briar Rose, a retelling of the snow white story during the holocaust. Also, Christopher Moore, who writes humorous fantasy used Coyote as a central figure in his novel Coyote Blue.

This may all seem a bit unusual. We all create our own myths everyday. This is why I read http://www.snopes.com/ a nice collection of shaggy dog stories, urban folktales, and news of the weird. People do amazingly stupid things and it is often hard to tell if they are telling the truth or just making it up.

The Choking Doberman: And Other Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand is an excellent book if you are interested in this kind of thing. She also wrote part of the graphic novel called The Big Book of Urban Legends which is quite entertaining. It is a comic book with all sorts of urban myths which are often passed off as being true.

Quite a few writers use myth as the basis for their novels. If you think about it, the story of Gilgamesh is the first novel. Then the Ramayana. This is followed by the Odyssey and the Iliad, then Beowulf. These are the true basis for most of the fantasy novels being written. At some level most fantasy novels being written have some of the characterization from these books. The Icelandic Eddas are also a rich source for fantasy novelists to draw from.

There are trickster figures from all over the world to draw from, the Monkey King, Coyote, Tom Thumb, Jack, Brer Rabbit, Sis' Roach, Anansi, Puss N' Boots (one of my favorite of all characters), Iron Heinrich, and any number of characters which are written into todays childrens fairytales.

We see in them in some of our favorite movies, I really liked Shrek, which is a near perfect "fractured fairytale", or retelling of a fairytale with a different twisted ending. Jon Sciezka does an excellent job of creating fractured fairytales for children with his books, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs , and The Stinky Cheeseman and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.

If you are interested in the morbid, sometimes which is both disgusting and funny. The Darwin Awards, http://www.darwinawards.com/ is a site which lists incredibly stupid examples of people dying. It is also a book.

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I started reading A Free Life by Ha Jin. It is about a Chinese family escaping the Tiananmien massacre and moving to America. I like the accuracy of the conversations and the accents. They seem to be excellent descriptions. The description of the immigrant experience is very engrossing so far. They move into a rich persons house where they keep the house in order. During the day, the father works in a series of menial security guard jobs and dreams of being a poet and novelist. The main character is originally here to get a Ph.D. in Political Science but now is very disaffected with the Chinese communists.

This book was on the New York Times 100 Best Books of 2007. I promise when I write about the books I am reading, I will not give you little stars or dry literary appraisals. This novel immediately starts tackling important issues like green cards, passports, and other every day things which happen when a new family moves into the country. If you want really good anecdotal descriptions they are here. It also shows how incredibly greedy and materialistic a lot of Americans are.

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