JOHN UPDIKE ON OSCAR WILDE'S FAIRY STORIES

MANY YEARS AGO, in the early days of We Too Were Children, I invoked Rachel Cohen's superb book A Chance Meeting, which describes the ways in which literary lives are intertwined as one writer meets another, in some cases only once, in others in lasting friendships over many years, and that author meets another and so on, drawing a haphazard line through the history of literature. On We Too Were Children, the authors and illustrators might never have met in person, but one book leads to another, which leads to another, which often leads back to another book I have already covered. For example, Nancy Ekholm Burkert, who I most recently wrote about in relation to Randall Jarrell, I first wrote about over three years ago in relation to John Updike. Jarrell contributed translations of two volumes of fairy tales--Grimm and Bechstein--to a series spearheaded by Michael di Capua at Macmillan in 1962, something I discovered when I set out to write about Jarrell's other children's books. And it wasn't until one of those books was in my hands that I even discovered on the back of the book that it was part of a series, and that one of the other illustrious writers who had contributed to the series, in this case an introduction, was an author I had already covered, John Updike. A "chance meeting" indeed.

John Updike's introduction, entitled "Forward For Young Readers," graces a volume of three fairy tales by Oscar Wilde. Wilde published two collections of fairy tales in his varied career, many of the stories first appearing in magazines: The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888) and House of Pomegranates (1891). As Updike reminds us, "Oscar Wilde wrote in a time when grown men wrote very seriously for young readers." Updike, who in 1962 was about to publish his first children's book, wrote his "Forward For Young Readers" just as seriously. He opens with a discussion of the etymology of the word "Fairy," which he uses to segue into the way in which Christianity drowned out pagan beliefs in Europe, leaving only fairy stories, "the substance [of which] is pagan wood, but the taste and glisten is of Christain salt."

In the modern age, fairy stories become necessary, Updike says, "For if men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money. This danger was not so clear until machines entered the world in force and began to make men resemble them."

Updike does manage to introduce the actual stories contained in the volume, "The Young King," "The Devoted Friend," and Wilde's most famous children's story, "The Happy Prince," teasing each one with a cryptic image central to each respective story. Then he warns us that the stories, unlike "so many modern books for children," do not "skip the subject of suffering. On the contrary: suffering is exactly what they are about....But," he goes on, "if you dare read them, you will enter a rich and precious world."

As with all of his writing, Updike brings to his introduction deep intelligence, visceral language, and humor. In some ways, his essay is more enjoyable to read than Wilde's overwrought stories. It is amazing to read in his attached bio that he was only thirty years old when he wrote it. "As the father of Elizabeth, David, Michael, and Miranda," he adds, "he has a special interest in fairy tales and storytelling." His own children's books followed in the subsequent few years.

Updike included "Foreword for Young Readers" in his first collection of nonfiction, Assorted Prose, but as near as I can tell, the essay is currently out of print. I have scanned the entire thing, and posted it below. If you click into each image, it should be easy to read. It's short, and worth it.

In addition to Updike and Jarrell, the Macmillan series of "marvelous tales" included introductions by Jean Stafford, Elizabeth Bowen, and Isak Dinesen, which I plan to write about in upcoming posts.

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JOHN UPDIKE: A HELPFUL ALPHABET OF FRIENDLY OBJECTS

IN 1957 JOHN UPDIKE PUBLISHED his first book, The Carpentered Hen and other tame creatures, a collection of poems that had appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1954. His second child David had been born the year before, and included at the end of the book is a series of poems collectively titled A Cheerful Alphabet of Pleasant Objects with the dedication "to David." What follows is twenty-six poems, one for each letter of the alphabet. Apple, Birdbath, Cog, Doily... Most are not subjects that would generally appear in a child's abecedaria--Ottoman, Trivet--and the poems are not really for children. From Ottoman: "Lessons in history: the Greeks / Were once more civilized than Swedes. / Iranians were, for several weeks, / Invincible, as Medes." There are cute observations and some concrete poems (see below), but overall the poems are weak, and Updike chose not to include them in his 1993 collection, Collected Poems: 1953-1993.

 From The Carpentered Hen reprinted in Verse (1965)

From The Carpentered Hen reprinted in Verse (1965)

Two years after Collected Poems, Updike published his final children's book, A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects. This time, David, now forty-two and with a son of his own, provided the photographic illustrations, which are largely of Updike's grandchildren (with a cameo by Updike himself). This time the dedication is to the grandchildren: "For Anoff, Kwame, Wesley, Trevor, and Kai cousins all." With the exception of Apple, none of the objects from the first alphabet are repeated in the second, and now the traditional Bird, Cat, Dog appear. The verses are simpler too: "A bird has a beak, / a bright eye, / and wings. / In the sky, / it flies; / in the tree, / it sings." There is one concrete poem.

From A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects (1995)

David Updike is an author in his own right, having published a number of short stories in The New Yorker, two collections of fiction, and several picture books, including a quartet of books about a boy Homer and his dog Sophocles, one for each season.

It is fitting that John Updike's writings for children started and ended with his own children and grandchildren.

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JOHN UPDIKE: BOTTOM'S DREAM

AS PROMISED YESTERDAY, I have posted Bottom's Dream adapted from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream by John Updike with music by Felix Mendelssohn and illustrations by Warren Chappell in its entirety on my Flickr. To fully understand Warren Chappell's book design, it's important to see the way the music is integrated into the text, the black and white spot drawings that work as marginal illuminations, the typesetting, the use of color, and the full page color drawings. On every page is a mix of many disparate graphic elements all brought together in a carefully measured way. Enjoy.

Coming Soon: Warren Chappell

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JOHN UPDIKE: WARREN CHAPPELL'S MUSIC SERIES

OUTSIDE OF HIS MAGAZINE WORK, it is hard to imagine John Updike as a hired writer. But his entry into children's literature was just that, as a hired writer. Through the 1960s, Updike wrote three adaptations for Warren Chappell's music series: The Magic Flute (1962), The Ring (1964), and Bottom's Dream (1969). All of the books follow the same form as Chappell's other books  in the series, which can be gleaned from the highly accurate credits. For example, Bottom's Dream adapted from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream by John Updike with music by Felix Mendelssohn and illustrations by Warren Chappell. In short, a synopsis of the source music's story with selections of staff music and Chappell illustrations throughout.

So who just decides to "hire" John Updike to write the text for a children's book? To give you a sense of who Warren Chappell was, I quote from his autobiography:

"I had thought of The Magic Flute for a very long time but wondered about a writer who could tell the story in the mere three thousand words which were mandated by the format. The one person who seemed right was John Updike, and I inquired to find his editor at Knopf. It turned out to be Alfred himself who served as contact."

In case you missed that, it was Alfred Knopf himself that made the introduction. At this point, Updike had published a book of poetry, a book of short stories, and only two novels. He was a rising star--that second novel was Rabbit, Run--but was still a relatively young and new talent. It was Chappell, illustrator, designer, author, typeface designer, who was the great master.

He continues:

"John agreed to the Mozart and then suggested The Ring. Finally, we did Bottom's Dream, the dream sequence from A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a very satisfying collaboration, and that promise made by Bottom, the weaver, that he would get Peter Quince to write up his experience and it would be called Bottom's Dream, had finally come to pass."

Chappell is best known now as a typeface designer and as the author of A Short History of the Printed Word (1970), but his work in books is so long and varied that it is hard to condense while still giving it the necessary weight. He worked on well over four hundred books published over fifty years including editions of Winnie the Pooh, Moby Dick, and Don Quixote, not to mention any additional works set in the types he designed, Lydian series, Trajanus series, and Koch Uncial (co-designed with Paul Koch). I will skim the surface of that career and talk more about the music series in a future post.

As for Updike's texts in the series, they serve their purpose. The prose is unmistakably Updike, but all of the weaknesses of the original stories are carried into the books, which makes for thin and confusing children's books.

The best of the books is undoubtedly The Ring. Even people without any knowledge of the Wagner opera can follow Updike's telling of the story, which reads like a children's version of Lord of the Rings.

"This is a story of greed and love, of giants, dwarfs, and gods. It happened long ago, in Germany, the land of the mighty river Rhine. Even to this day the river glitters as if with gold--but people say it is just the sun striking the water.

In those old days the gold was real."

In all three of the books, the amount of text and the complexity of the language make these suited for elementary school age children.

I have posted all of Chappell's color illustrations for The Magic Flute and The Ring on my Flickr page. I hope to post Bottom's Dream in full later this week to better show Chappell's overall design, and the way music is integrated into the text. The quotes and background material for this post come from Warren Chappell's autobiography in volume ten of Gale's journal Something About the Author (1990).

Coming Soon: Warren Chappell

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JOHN UPDIKE: A CHILD'S CALENDAR

JOHN UPDIKE was one of the most decorated American authors of the second half of the twentieth century. He won two National Book Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, three National Book Critic Circle Awards, two O. Henry awards, the PEN/Faulkner, the PEN/Malamud, the William Dean Howells Medal, and others. He published, depending on how you count, seventy books in his lifetime, comprised of novels, short stories, poetry, criticism, drama, and non-fiction. But most important to We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie, he also published five children's books. The first of those books to be wholly of original material (the others are adaptations and will be discussed in a future post) is A Child's Calendar (1965).

A CHILD'S CALENDAR is a collection of twelve simple poems, one for each month. They attempt to be distillations of those months, ostensibly from a child's point of view. However, they seem more concerned with the sun, sky, and earth than most children probably are ("hot dogs, fries, / And Coke" yes; "The blushing, girlish / World unfolds" less so). As James Dickey wrote in his New York Times review "there is too much sense of clever over-simplification about [Updike's] verse; one is aware of the adult straining for the child's approval, and I should think that the child would also sense it."


Dickey did note that "A Child's Calendar is an attractive little book," which is something of an understatement, illustrated as it was in 1965 by Nancy Ekholm Burkert, Caldecott honor recipient and original illustrator of James and the Giant Peach. And Burkert was only the first Caldecott artist to illustrate the book, which was reissued in 1999 with illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman whose edition was itself a Caldecott Honor book.

What is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this book as an Updike text arises out of the existence of the two editions. It is hinted at in a note in fine print on the copyright page of the Hyman edition: "The text for this new edition incorporates a number of changes by the author." Those changes, for the most part, deal with updating the text for modern readers, eliminating references to burst milk bottles in January (replaced by parkas) or ashes spread on icy streets in February (replaced by salt). While these "corrections" have some nostalgic interest, an ah-how-the-world-has-changed, they also reveal something about how Updike specifically sees the world as having changed. A change of "ice-cream cones" to "hot dogs, fries," or "The playground calls," to "Little League" seems unnecessary (not counting edits made to retain a rhyme, of course) as the originals would still hold interest for children today. Those changes suggest, perhaps, new observations of grandchildren instead of observations of his own children. But the most important change appears in "April."

The original in 1965 reads:

Each flower, leaf
And blade of sod--
Small letters sent
To her from God.

In 1999:

Each flower, leaf,
And blade of turf--
Small love-notes sent
From air to earth.

Why the elimination of God? Especially when the next two lines in both versions are "The sky's a herd / of prancing sheep," which in the original reads like an allusion to God as shepherd and His faithful as a flock, but in the second is just a hackneyed metaphor for clouds. And even more odd is the choice in the final verse to retain the cultural aspect of religion, "At church, they bring / The lilies in," after having so deliberately removing the Deity in the first part of the poem. All of this is further complicated by the poem for November, which contains in both editions the lines "Tall God / Must see our souls." Why eliminate God in the first instance, while not casting Him out of the book as a whole? Unfortunately, the simple children's text does not offer a solution.

THE MOST DISTINCTIVE ASPECT OF BOTH EDITIONS OF A CHILD'S CALENDAR is the illustrations. Nancy Ekholm Burkert and Trina Schart Hyman are simply two of the best children's book illustrators, and both of their interpretations of Updike's text have much to recommend them. Hyman took her cue from Burkert with both editions featuring a spot illustration on the page with the poem and a full page illustration on the facing page. Beyond that, Hyman truly put her own stamp on the material, but not without inserting other quiet homages to Burkert. The upper image above is Burkert's spot illustration for "December." The lower is Hyman's spot illustration for the half title.

Below: Nancy Ekholm Burkert, April (l.), Trina Schart Hyman, March (r.)

Below: Nancy Ekholm Burkert, February (l.), Trina Schart Hyman, November (r.)

Below: Nancy Ekholm Burkert, July (l.), Trina Schart Hyman, July (r.)

HYMAN'S EDITION is still in print, and I encourage everyone to track down a copy. I have posted all of Burkert's illustrations on my Flickr set here, but for those of you who don't also have access to the Burkert text, I've included an appendix below of all of the textual changes between the editions (hopefully that will format properly in whatever reader you're using). Updike, while writing copiously on everything, has done frustratingly little writing on children's literature (as near as I can tell). If anyone knows of anything that he's written that might be relevant, please let me know.

Coming Soon: Nancy Ekholm Burkert

APPENDIX

January: Milk bottles burst / outside the door.
                And parkas pile up / Near the door.
February: And ashes fly / From the old town truck.
                 Though road salt flies / From the old town truck.
April: Each flower, leaf / And blade of sod-- / Small letters sent / To her from God.
           Each flower, leaf, / And blade of turf-- / Small love-notes sent / From air to earth.
June: The playground calls, / The ice-cream man, / And, after supper, / Kick-the-Can.
          There's Little League, / Hopscotch, the creek, / And, after supper, / Hide-and-seek.
July: America: / It makes us think / Of ice-cream cones, / And Coke to drink.
         America: / It makes us think / Of hot dogs, fries, / And Coke to drink.
September: Burning brush, / New books, erasers, / Chalks, and such.
                    Drying grass, / New books and blackboard / Chalk in class.
                   (Also "And" to "While" in third stanza)
November: In its distress
                    Nevertheless
December: Downtown, the stores
                   The toy-packed shops

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