The Blue-Bearded Fox

Once upon a time, a man and a woman got married.

As beginnings go it isn't that exciting. It's the sort of thing that happens every day. Nevertheless every story must start somewhere, and this one starts here.

The man had been married before. He was a rich widower who liked to have a woman around the house. His new wife was young and beautiful and not at all sure what she was getting into.

After the wedding she moved into his large house. Maybe mansion is more accurate. The only rule he had was that she must stay out of his study.

Is he the Beast? I hear you ask yourself.

Worse, I reply.

They settled in to married life and everything was fine for a few weeks. She cooked and cleaned and he did whatever it was that he did to earn money. It was comfortable.

Then the man was called away on business. Before he left, he warned her again to stay out of his study.

Alas she had always been curious. He'd been gone less than an hour before she'd fetched the key and was standing in the door of his study, wishing she'd listened to him. Surrounded by the corpses of his previous wives, she could do nothing but scream.

Her scream brought him back. He had never actually left. It was a test. She failed. Her punishment was to join the rest of his wives.

Eventually the man found a satisfactory woman who obeyed him completely. He also found that some of the thrill had gone out of his life.

No. Scratch that. I don't like that story at all. Do you?

Let's back up. Before the beginning. When the man and woman were betrothed.

Mary had always been curious, you see. She wasn't about to move into a house without at least seeing it first. Besides which, Mr. Fox had invited her to come see his estate. There was no reason for her to stay away and every reason to surprise him one evening.

One of the risks of surprising someone is that, not knowing your intentions, they may not be there to be surprised.

Undeterred by the owner's absence, Mary elected to explore the house on her own. It would soon be hers, after all.

She entered the grounds and walked down the path. On a series of arches between the gate and the door she read the following:

Be bold, be bold. 
But not too bold. 
Else your heart's blood 
shall run cold.

Boldness, like curiosity, was not something Mary lacked. She ignored the warning and continued into the house. It was only a matter of time before she came across her fiance's study, saw the corpses he kept like trophies.

Before she could decide what to do she heard Mr. Fox coming up the lane. Dragging the body of a young woman behind him.

Mary ran down the stairs, but she wasn't fast enough to escape the house. She ducked behind a table, hoping he'd be too preoccupied to see her. From her hiding place she saw him notice a diamond ring on his victim's figure, attempt to tug it off, grow frustrated, cut the finger off using a knife from his belt, tuck his prize into a pocket. That done, he resumed dragging the corpse upstairs. When he was gone, Mary grabbed the discarded finger and ran home.

On their wedding day, before the papers were to be signed, the families gathered to share a meal. With everyone there, Mary began to recount the tale of her visit to Mr. Fox's house. Over his repeated protests ("It is not so, nor twas it so, and God forbid it should be so.") she laid bare all she had seen, finally producing the finger of the latest woman he had killed. Mary's father and brothers wasted not a moment before leaping on Mr. Fox and hacking him to pieces.

***

The first of these stories is a French folktale called Bluebeard. It's several centuries old, possibly based on the crimes of Gilles de Rais, who lived in the early 15th century. Then again, it may predate him. The moral is clear: be obedient, not curious.

The second story, which rewards the woman for her curiosity, is an English folktale sometimes called The Robber Bridegroom and other times Mr. Fox. Again, it's hard to date this tale. William Shakespeare called it old when he referenced it in Much Ado About Nothing (Act I, scene i).

Because of the nature of oral traditions, not to mention the geographic distance between these two tales' origins, it's impossible to know which came first. But it certainly seems like one is a reaction to the other. And after all, Englad and France aren't so far from each other.

I first encountered Mr. Fox in college, in Neil Gaiman's The White Road. Gaiman elects to have Mary falsely accuse an innocent Mr. Fox, which is a choice I'm more wary of than I used to be. Still, the story captured my imagination at the time. It burrowed into my subconscious and stuck with me.

Years later, I cam across Bluebeard in a collection of modern retellings of fairy tales. I was intrigued enough to briefly look up the original tale, but Bluebeard didn't entrance me. Though it did haunt me, feeding on my love of vampires and driving me to distrust Mr. Rochester.

After I read White is for Witching, I went looking for more of Oyeyemi's work. It took me a while to actually pick up another of her books, but Mr. Fox has been on my mental book shelf since I heard of it. I love literature that takes apart and examines fairy tales. I knew Mr. Fox was concerned with Bluebeard. Oyeyemi is both vicious and smart, and I was eager to see her take on this particular tale.

Of course, I got caught up in other things. My sister-in-law told me she hadn't liked Mr. Fox, which caused me to hesitate, even as I saw praise for it all over the internet. Then my book club chose White is for Witching and I decided it was the perfect opportunity seek out Mr. Fox once and for all.

Ten pages in, that phrase is repeated: Be bold, be bold; but not too bold.

It was like an electric shock that sent my whole brain buzzing. I immediately found and re-read the Gaiman story. I fell down a wiki-hole, pulled books off my own shelves as I reminded myself of all the other times I had encountered those words, that story. I learned more, saw for the first time how the two tales comment on each other. I finally came up for air, eager, prepared for this book. I am intimately familiar with the framework, now, prepared to digest Oyeyemi's take.

By a stroke of luck, I also have Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride sitting on my to-read stack. I bought it on the same day I bought Mr. Fox, simply because I can't pass up a cheap copy of an Atwood book. It's about the same thing, with the genders swapped. I'm about to fall into a foxhole, surround myself with this tale. See you on the other side.

Winter Is Coming

I've been on a bit of an epic fantasy kick lately. And I've begun to notice that nearly all of these books start in late Fall and reach their conclusion in early Spring. This probably has more than a little to do with the symbolism of these seasons. The ending of the year helps make the coming danger that much scarier. All of the really dire stuff happens in the dead of winter. Then Spring comes and with it, new hope.

George RR Martin draw this out in his series. Seasons can last for years in his world, which helps keep us on the bring of winter for five whole books. But many other authors are guilty of using this device to create maximum emotional impact in their stories. Here are the books I've read recently (or not so recently) that follow this pattern (so far, at least)

• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
• The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
• Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind
• Goodkind manages to do this two books in a row by manipulating certain facts. In the first book, the bad guy must be stopped by the first day of winter. In the second book (The Stone of Tears), the bad stuff is all going to happen on the Winter Solstice of the same year. Somehow there is a month or two between these two dates, which are traditionally the same day.
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• The framing story does this, not the flashbacks to Kvothe's life

Can anyone else think of other stories that follow this pattern? Now that I've noticed it, I'm having a hard time unseeing it.

Happy Coincidence

I was on the metro coming home and re-reading American Gods again. I finished The Graveyard Book over the weekend and started Slaughterhouse Five last night. So, naturally, I was thinking to myself "Man, I should really get back to A Feast For Crows" (I was also thinking, "I'd really like to live in Lakeside", but that's beside the point.) I'm still only halfway through the fourth ASOIAF book, even though I started it a month ago. But I hate the Ironborn so much, and all of the Dornish characters still confuse me and there aren't nearly enough Sansa or Arya chapters, so I've been drifting towards other books.

Anyway, I had just recommitted myself to AFFC when the lady sitting next to me needed to get off the train. I let her out and scooted toward the inside and noticed a book sitting between the seat and the wall. I'm all set to call after the woman that she left her book when I see a notice taped to the cover:

Traveling Book 

I'm not Lost - I'm on a journey

I turned the book over and discovered a classic: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. There are instructions for registering the book on a website to track its journey and pass it on when you've finished.

Now if you know me, you know I'm not one to pass up an opportunity to read a book. Especially since The Graveyard Book, which I'm still kind of ambivalent about, was based on The Jungle Book. It's like the universe telling me I have to read this book to gain a better understanding of the book I just finished. Or at least a really awesome coincidence.

So now A Feast For Crows has been pushed back another week while I dive into The Jungle Book.

There are just way too many books out there that I want to read.

Pale Blue Dot

Honestly, I have two more book reviews in my drafts and nothing else.  I figure I should break things up a bit.  I really like this image and the quote that goes along with it.  Enjoy!

Look again at that dot.  That's here.  That's home.  That's us.  On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.  The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known

-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

I also think this quote pairs nicely with one from Sandman, spoken by Destruction:

I like the stars.  It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend.

-Destruction, Brief Lives

Sure makes you feel small

Geeking Out About Kings and Gods

HBO appears to be going after the geek demographic.  They started True Blood several years ago, which was a smash success and begins its fourth season in June.  This Sunday marks the premiere of The Game of Thrones, based on George R R Martin's book series A Song of Ice and Fire.  These books are epic and long, and I've only read the first one, but I look forward to reading the rest.  I'm sort of holding off until after the TV series starts, though.  Then, they announced today that they bought the rights to Neil Gaiman's American Gods and are going to produce a mini-series based on the novel, with Mr. Gaiman signed on as one of the writers.

Be still my geeky heart.

Anyway, it worked.  I convinced Boyfriend to add HBO to our Verizon subscription (by promising to pay for it), and I can't wait to see these stories translated to the small screen (which is actually pretty big these days).

American Gods was basically my introduction to Neil Gaiman.  I'd read the first Sandman graphic novel, Preludes and Nocturnes, and was saving up to buy the rest of the series.  Then an ex-boyfriend gave me American Gods because he thought I'd like it, and he was right.  I finished the book before I realized that it was written by the same guy as Sandman and immediately started seeking out his other work.

This novel isn't for everyone. It's a slow burn book. There's more introspection and philosophizing than action and adventure. It's based on the premise that all the immigrants brought their gods to America with them. Over the years, those gods have been lost or forgotten. They've been replaced by the newer gods of television and telephone (now being replaced by the gods of Google, Netflix, and Facebook, of course). And the old gods are pissed. They're looking for a fight. One last moment of shining glory before they are forgotten completely.

The protagonist is a man named Shadow, a former convict.  He is released from jail just in time for his wife's funeral, after which the mysterious Mr. Wednesday (Norse god Odin) offers him a job as an assistant.  Together they travel across America, gathering up the old gods and convincing them to fight in the impending war.  As I said, the story is slow.  But I'm in love with the premise.  I think it does a lot better on a second read through.

I've been meaning to re-read American Gods anyway.  I recently discovered that a version was released in 2005 with 40 extra pages.  My copy is from 2001, so I'm anxious to know what I'm missing.  Boyfriend kindly went and bought it, but he's reading it now.  I'll have to wait until he finishes.  Even though I could probably read the entire thing before he got around to picking it up again.  Oh well.  If you've seen my currently reading/to read list, you'll know that I have plenty to keep me occupied in the meantime.  As long as I get around to it before the series premieres on HBO.  Which, let's be honest, is probably years away and might not even happen.  (Fingers crossed it does)

In the meantime, I'll leave you with one of the most famous and oft-quoted passages from the books, Sam's "I believe" speech, which is available on a t-shirt

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledly lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Also, allow me to geek out because Game of Thrones premieres this weekend!  This book was awesome.  There are a lot of characters, which can be a bit of a brain stretch.  The chapters switch off perspectives between several characters and locations.  But you end up with a whole lot of threads weaving together into an epic political intrigue.  With dragons (eventually).

Seriously guys, dragons make everything better.

Game of Thrones also has a bunch of strong female characters.  There are queens and princesses telling their story right alongside the kings and princes.  And all of them are interesting, fleshed out characters.  I really can't wait to see how this translates to the screen.  Here's a preview:

So much intrigue!  Here's a slightly less cryptic trailer:

That first scene was lifted straight from the book.  And the landscapes!  It all looks so gorgeous and wonderful.  Plus, Sean Bean!

Winter is coming...