Recent Reads--"The Uncertain Places"

"The Uncertain Places" by Lisa Goldstein is a book that unfortuntally doesn't quite live up to the promise of its summary. A description of this book certainly hightlights its strengths--this is a story that works with fairy tale tropes in such a way that seems imaginative rather than derivative. The tale follows a young man in the early 1970s who is pulled into a family that have made a bargain with the fey for good luck and kind fortune. In exchange for a girl each generation falling asleep for seven years (the "bondmaid"), members of the family are granted lives that fall into place with ease where no one ever so much as accidentally breaks a glass or needs to make a reservation. Their businesses and dreams prosper--the family vineyard survived Prohibition and one of the sisters at the heart of the story sees her star rise as an actress. Interestingly though, the family's romantic relationships do no run as smoothly as the rest of their lives.

The story of the family bargaining away years of their daughter's wakeful lives was said to have almost made it into the Grimms' collection before being suppressed by the faeries themselves. The write up of the lost fairy tale is very fine and will likely have you pulling down your copy of "The Complete Works of the Brothers Grimm" to see if you can find the story of the Bondmaid in its pages. But sadly the entire book is written in a style that, while coming across as simple and elegant in short piece, does not hold up as well for an entire novel. Most notably the characters are weirdly flat and lacking in individual voice. For a book that ends by lamenting the "magic" of the 1960s and early 1970s the characters come across as oddly cold. We get no true hints of the impassioned conversations the narrator refers to and I was never convinced that hippy/immediate post hippy California in any way held a candle to Wonderland.

I sound like I'm being hard on this book and I realize that many of my issues are at least partly my own fault. I think that this is a book that would work best if read in one or two sittings and my personal circumstances forced me to spread my reading of it out over a couple of weeks. In chasing after a new baby I found myself in much the same zombified state as the sleeping bondmaids and I wasn't able to supply the nuances of character from my own imagination the way I have been in the more rested times of my life. I think that this is a book that is certainly worth returning to when I'm mentally able to take some of the hints suggested in the story and really let my mind run wild with them.

For there are plenty of hints of greatness here. I mean, if the idea of Prohibition-era bootleggers set upon by faery pirates doesn't set your heart racing just a bit I have to wonder why you would be reading this sort of fantasy novel in the first place. And the scenes with Those People--the odd cleaners who sneak through houses in the dark of night were properly creepy and disturbingly believable. I also have to commend the author for not making the entire book about rescuing the "princess." Though the book sets up the wakening of the current bondmaid as the driving force at the start. This is a story that tackles the "okay dog, you caught the car, now what" aspect of what happens *after* the goal of the quest has been achieved. It doesn't shy away from the fact that while those who touch magic in this world may pay a price, there is also a price for turning your back on magic as well.

As a whole though this is one of those good books that misses out on being truly great. The ideas presented here are powerful, but the bland characters keep it from sparking to life as it might have. I'd still recommend it to those who enjoy fairy tales and I would indeed like to read it again.

Approaching Easter

An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves "Alice"

DEAR CHILD,
Please to fancy, if you can, that you are reading a real letter, from a real friend whom you have seen, and whose voice you can seem to yourself to hear wishing you, as I do now with all my heart, a happy Easter.

Do? you know that delicious dreamy feeling when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window--when, lying lazily with eyes half shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or waters rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure very near to sadness, bringing tears to one's eyes like a beautiful picture or poem. And is not that a Mother's gentle hand that undraws your curtains, and a Mother's sweet voice that summons you to rise? To rise and forget, in the bright sunlight, the ugly dreams that frightened you so when all was dark--to rise and enjoy another happy day, first kneeling to thank that unseen Friend, who sends you the beautiful sun

Are these strange words from a writer of such tales as "Alice"? And is this a strange letter to find in a book of nonsense? It may be so. Some perhaps may blame me for thus mixing together things grave and gay; others may smile and think it odd that any one should speak of solemn things at all, except in church and on a Sunday: but I think--nay, I am sure--that some children will read this gently and lovingly, and in the spirit in which I have written it.
For I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into two halves--to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place to even so much as mention Him on a week-day. Do you think He cares to see only kneeling figures, and to hear only tones of prayer--and that He does not also love to see the lambs leaping in the sunlight, and to hear the merry voices of the children, as they roll among the hay? Surely their innocent laughter is as sweet in His ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from the "dim religious light" of some solemn cathedral?

And my turn comes to walk through the valley of shadows. if I have written anything to add to those stores of innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back upon without shame and sorrow (as how much of life must then be recalled!) when

This Easter sun will rise on you, dear child, feeling your "life in every limb," and eager to rush out into the fresh morning air--and many an Easter-day will come and go, before it finds you feeble and gray-headed, creeping wearily out to bask once more in the sunlight--but it is good, even now, to think sometimes of that great morning when the "Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings."

Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this--when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters--when angel-hands shall undraw your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day--and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past!

Your, affectionate friend
LEWIS. CARROLL
EASTER, 1876.

I find this such a lovely, powerful piece.  I hope to make it something of an Easter tradition to read it to my daughter for years to come.

I know the first time I read this I was overly struck by the lines, "Do you know that delicious dreamy feeling, when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window—when, lying lazily with eyes half shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or waters rippling in a golden light ? It is a pleasure very near to sadness, bringing tears to one’s eyes like a beautiful picture or poem." It was a bit eerie to me to read that Carroll had written such words. While I know it it not an unusual sentiment, the strongest I have ever felt that very feeling was while walking in the Christ Church meadows at Oxford, through fields that must have been almost daily seen by the author. I remember walking along those paths, almost overwhelmed with emotion thinking, "if this is sadness, I might never wish to be happy again." I'm not sure exactly what trick of the land is there to stir such feelings. It was nice to read years after the fact, that one of my favorite writers had indeed felt something akin to that emotion.

I was at Oxford for a summer (Exeter College) and I spent a lot of time around Carroll's/Dodgson college of Christ Church. I even went and read Alice in those meadows one day. The college offered tours of what had been Carroll's apartment and I was deeply torn about whether or not I should visit. I knew he was a private person in many ways and I wasn't certain what he would think about strangers tramping through his home. It is the only time I can think such a thing bothered me, and after a great deal of internal debate, I wound up never going through those rooms. Sometimes I wish I had, and sometimes I'm pleased with my decision. It seems rather odd that I had few qualms about tramping through his diaries and letters published after his death. But as badly as I wanted to see the place where Dodgson had lived, in my mind it was an intrusion I simply could not make at the time.

May your Easter holiday be bright!

Fairytales and Wonderland

This weekend is the "Alice" episode for "Once Upon A Time" and I am happily bouncing in anticipation. While Rumpelstiltskin has been my favorite character since almost the moment he first appeared on screen, that doesn't mean I'm not also thrilled to get another version of The Mad Hatter. I'm laughing that we're going to be getting yet another tea cup carrying fellow on the show. Honestly, at this rate the show should release an official OUAT tea service.

I know some of the fairy tale scholars (and some casual fans) are sniffing a bit at the idea of "Alice" being lumped in with fairy tales. Spoilers for the episode indicate that Wonderland is going to be another alternate world and not just another country in Fairytale land; I think that is a nice nod to the idea that the place Alice goes when she steps through the Looking Glass or falls down a rabbit hole is *not* the same place that Snow White grew up. However, I don't have quite the same problem taking Alice and Cinderella in the same breath that some people do. I think part of the fact is that I'm simply a lover of variations on a theme and am greedy enough to take new tellings of my favorite tales where I can find them. And Alice is one of my very favorite colors to see storytellers paint with. (Indeed Carroll/Dodgson is also one of my favorite "characters" to see reworked as I have a bit of a pet hobby of tracking down books that feature fictionalized versions of this fascinating man.) I'm rather old-fashioned in that I tend to prefer reading new tellings of my favorite stories to reading tales that are (well, that try to be) totally new and original.

One of the things that hit me very hard during the Jabberwocky fight of during Tim Burton's Alice movie was the fact this is a story that originally came out of one man's head. And it just floored me as someone who spends a lot of time surrounded by fairy and folk tales. Sure, Carroll didn't pull the story from thin air, but we know who wrote the Alice stories in a way we certainly don't know who first told a Cinderella story. And it amazes me that these images that carry so much mental and imaginative weight with me--the Cheshire cat's smile, the Mad Tea Party, the fall down the rabbit hole--can clearly be traced back to one author (and illustrator to give Tenniel his due).To think that such a collection of magical moments can be traced back to one man living in Oxford rather than a thousand and one men, women and children sitting around fireplaces in a a thousand and one lands! To have the chance to watch these two books enter the culture through all the different movies/theater productions/short stories/tv shows/fanfics is just fascinating to me. It's interesting to see what particulars of the original are magnified and which are discarded in each new telling! I can't help but wonder if this is what it is like to watch a folktale being born.

And I think that this distillation and dissemination of story elements is one of the things that is letting me consider Alice, and the Hatter, and Cheshire Cat as fairy tale characters. While we know who came up with these characters, they've been re-envisioned and retold in so many ways in the years since Carroll's publication. With the OUAT previews, already people are bringing up the SyFy "Alice" Hatter of a few years back. In fact, I think I've seen the Andrew Potts Hatter referenced more than the Carroll/Tenniel Hatter. That version of the character has become more "real" to some people than the original. And to me personally that is not only one of the best things about fairy tales but one of the defining things about them--the fact that there are many different versions that are accepted as the "true" version.

 

This is actually one of my favorite things about the internet and one of the reasons that I intellectually believe that fanfic is a positive cultural artifact--not something to be tolerated (or worse yet outlawed). I believe that with the advent of the printing press, and especially as books became cheaper and literacy grew more widespread came a decline in the art of oral storytelling. And as people came to look to books, radio, TV, and movies as their sources of "story" entertainment, I think that we all started getting a bit more passive about our interaction with tales and their telling. When we read Cinderella out of a book we are consuming the tale in a less active way then if we were telling our friends a version that combined the "Cinderella" our grandmother told us with the "Cinderella" our best friend liked (and maybe throwing in a bit of our favorite "Beauty and the Beast" for good measure.) I'm not saying that people have stopped telling children stories all together and that people weren't pondering alternate endings to stories well before the internet. But the sharing and conversing that goes on over ff.net and blogs makes me think of people sitting around taverns and fires in the (perhaps mythic) past and distilling out the parts of stories that most resonated with their own towns and lives.