John Connolly and The Little Red Riding Hood Project

I just finished The Book of Lost Things by John Conolly. It is brimming with everything that makes a good novel: affection, loss, imagination and of course, fairy tales. Connolly rewrites some of the best known fairy tales with a distinct flavor, somehow managing to be both darkly twisted and compelling cute. Besides the fact that the protagonist, David is a young boy, this must be one of the reasons it is popular among (and marketed to) both the young adult and adult reading crowd. If nothing else, Connolly shows us why this is true of fairy tales themselves. These stories would not stay alive in our imaginations if they were not capable of simple, yet profound messages.

16 different versions of Little Red Riding Hood  (dating back to the 18th century!) can be found here

...They also have a cinderella project that is equally as interesting.

The Gothic Tradition

The Monk, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and... the Harry Potter series!?

 Gothic stories almost always include what Travis Prinzi calls the “superficial trappings” of ghosts, castles, and candles. In Harry Potter’s Bookshelf, John Granger states, “Gothic stories are usually set - obviously enough - in a Gothic manor or castle…probably a ghost or two will show up eventually” (74). The Hogwarts castle is abound with touches of this Gothic scenery. In fact, Harry’s contact with the Gothic happens almost simultaneously with his first arrival at the school. When Harry approaches Hogwarts he sees a “vast castle with many turrets and towers” (SS 111). Once inside, he notices that its “stone walls were lit with flaming torches” (SS 113). Only moments later, “pearly-white and slightly transparent” (SS 115) ghosts glide through the walls of the Great Hall to greet Harry. These traditional features of the Gothic permeate throughout Harry’s time at Hogwarts.

Gothic touches such as these are meant to foster what scholar Ann Tracy calls, “nameless fears” and “familiar anxieties” (Bookshelf, 73). A large, poorly lit castle may not be a frightening aspect in and of itself. But such a setting is perfect for producing the essential atmosphere of fear in a Gothic novel. This is a type of fear that is distinguished from something merely momentarily scary. A loud noise in an otherwise quiet moment for instance, produces only a brief moment of fear followed by a sigh of relief. Instead, fear in the Gothic tradition is centered on the unknown. It is something that, as Granger states, “heightens all of your senses, makes you aware of who you are and what you’re all about” (Granger Ch. location 687, par. 30). This type of terror plays a significant role throughout the Harry Potter series. For example, even as early as the first novel, Harry has an extremely Gothic encounter when he meets Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest:

Harry had taken one step toward it when a slithering sound made him freeze where he stood. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered…Then, out of the shadows, a hooded figure came crawling across the found like some stalking beast. Harry, Malfoy, and Fang stood transfixed. The cloaked figure reached the unicorn, lowered its head over the wound in the animal’s side, and began to drink its blood. (SS 256)

This is exactly the type of nameless fear that the Gothic is all about. Harry becomes paralyzed and completely aware of his surroundings as he watches an enigmatic- but deeply frightening- scene unfold. The dead unicorn and the beastly, yet human-like figure drinking its blood evoke subtle, familiar anxieties of death, dehumanization, and purity. 

This is a part of my graduate paper written May 2012: When Gothic Meets Comic: Exploring the Ghosts of Hogwarts Castle  [EDIT] Which I am now presenting at Leakycon Portland 2013!!

the loftiest bump of humor...

For over 50 years Standford University's scientists have been working hard to develop an Artificial Intelligence to both match and augment the human mind. This week it was announced that Standford's prime AI candidate (a computer system aptly called "Watson") will go head to head with its human counterpart in a game of Jeopardy. The New York Times notes that if Watson will be able to effectively understand the key ingredient of human language, all the philosophical questions of our favorite sci-fi stories, novels, and television shows will begin to play a dominant role in today's scientific world. The article can be find in the above link, and similar discussions and articles can be found here

Wild Things

Making Mischief, a collection of Maurice Sendak illustrations and influences by Gregory Maguire shows this illustration from Sendak's Lullabies and Night Songs. The poem reads:

SLEEP, SLEEP, BEAUTY BRIGHT

DREAMING IN THE JOYS OF NIGHT

SLEEP, SLEEP, IN THY SLEEP,

LITTLE SORROWS SIT AND WEEP

SWEET BABE, IN THY FACE SOFT DESIRES I CAN TRACE

The meter and image reflect and respond to Willaim Blake's, 'The Tyger' from Songs of Experience, which begins and ends with:

TYGER TYGER, BURNING BRIGHT

IN THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT

WHAT IMMORTAL HAND OR EYE

COULD FRAME THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY?

For nearly each poem in Blake's Songs of Experience is a contrasting poem in his Songs of Innocence. Even though Sendak's illustration centers on the tiger in the foreground, he attributes to the Tyger's Innocent counterpart, "The Lamb": in the image are children climbing, yet sleeping, and either tiger and lamb can become the focus.

 If you've only seen his art from Where the Wild Things Are, check out his other works and hear Maurice Sendak talk about his life of illustrating here.