alexandra alger

Neil Gaiman and The 13 Clocks

Neil Gaiman has lured me into the Wall Street Journal Book Club. He’s chosen, as a guest book-club leader, James Thurber’s “The 13 Clocks.” In an interview with a Journal a few weeks back (where I learned about this book club), Gaiman said he’d loved this book since he was eight and some years back was flabbergasted to find it was out of print in the U.S. He offered to write an introduction if a publisher would reissue it, and in 2008 the New York Review Children’s Collection reprinted it.

I’d never heard of it. But who can resist a book that Neil Gaiman calls “like nothing anyone has ever seen before?”

“The 13 Clocks” is a singular fairy tale, published in 1950. (Gaiman says it isn’t really a fairy tale, even if it takes place in a fairy-tale world. Splitting hairs, surely?) There’s an evil Duke, who could not be more sinister, living in a castle where all 13 clocks have all stopped; a princess whom he’s keeping captive; a wandering minstrel (a prince in disguise) who teams up with a magical being, a Golux, to rescue and marry Princess Saralinda.

Thurber! He’s a master of making dark things funny. On page one, a description of the Duke, who is always cold and therefore always wears gloves: “He wore gloves when he was asleep, and gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult for him to pick up pins or coins or kernels of nuts, or to tear the wings from nightingales.” Wearing gloves to bed—silly, yes? I’m guessing the average kid would think so. And then a sensible list of things that are indeed hard to do when you wear gloves. And then at the end, like a punchline: A horrifying act—no, it sounds like more of a hobby, tearing the wings off nightingales, plural. Horrifying, and yet, because it’s unexpected, at the end of a list that’s otherwise banal, you (I, anyway) end up chortling at the incongruity.

And this: “The Duke limped because his legs were of different lengths. The right one had outgrown the left because, when he was young, he had spent his mornings place-kicking pups and punting kittens. He would say to a suitor, ‘What is the difference in the length of my legs?’ and if the youth replied, ‘Why, one is shorter than the other,’ the Duke would run him through with the sword he carried in his swordcane and feed him to the geese. The suitor was supposed to say, ‘Why, one is longer than the other.’”

Terrible that he’s kicking pups and kittens (no! I can hear a child cry), but for that to be the reason his legs are of different legs…I’m not even sure how to explain how that tickles my funny bone.Some animals lovers may, in fact, not find that part funny.

Gaiman makes much of Thurber’s language, and it is wonderful, alive and zany and mystical all at the same time. I’m not as enamored of his made-up words as Neil is—words like “zatch” for throat and “guggle” for stomach (or possibly the other way around.). The honest reason is, I’m feeling a sense of been-there-done-that because of Roald Dahl and books of his like “The BFG,” overflowing with hilarious made-up words (remember the snozzcumber?) I’m realizing now that “The 13 Clocks” predates “The BFG” by thirty-two years. Thurber should get the credit I’m giving Dahl. If only I’d read Thurber first!
Thurber turns language inside and out in the most delightful and unexpected ways. The Duke commands his men to take the minstrel to the dungeon: “Feed him water without bread, and bread without water.” Saralinda: He doesn’t compare her to a rose, but writes this: “It was not easy to tell her mouth from the rose, or her brow from the white liliac.” The Golux: “The Duke is lamer than I am old, and I am shorter than he is cold, but it comes to you with some surprise that I am wiser than he is wise.”

There’s a woman, Hagga, who weeps jewels. I’d forgotten about the vuluptuous joy of reading about jewels, masses of jewels, jewels in a big heap. I can’t even remember a story with a good heap of jewels. This may be the very best. Hilariously, Hagga can’t be counted on to produce precious stones, which the minstrel-prince must bring to the Duke. “Hagga laughed until she wept, and seven brilliants tricked down her cheek and clattered to the floor. ‘Rhinestones!’ groaned the Golux. “Now she’s weeping costume jewelry!’”

Have I convinced you to run out and buy “The 13 Clocks”?

In mid-July Neil himself will lead a live video discussion of the book. So I have two weeks to think of perceptive things to say.

Anxiety dreams

I still get college anxiety dreams. Had two just in the last week. I never have exactly the same dream, but I’m always either late for an exam, for which I haven’t studied, or I suddenly realize, OMG, I haven’t been going to any classes and midterms are coming. In fact, wait–where are my textbooks? Why I get these kind of dreams, decades past college, is beyond me. I don’t remember collegiate life being all that stressful–at least nothing I couldn’t handle. What gives, subconscious? I’m guessing these dreams are protection against the source of my real-time anxiety, my writing, or more specifically this manuscript. that I am still fixing, several months past the deadline I’d set for myself. Things could be worse. I could be dreaming about agents rejecting me, or editors hating any manuscript I send. These are nightmares that could be all too real.

Kids these days, under more pressure than previous generations, are going to have much richer fodder for anxiety dreams. My poor 16-year-old, Vanessa, has been feverishly studying for a European history exam that’s going to include such questions as, “Compare and contrast all the wars of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries,” and “How do social constructs differ from the 18th century to the 20th century?” She not only had to study all the major developments in Europe from 1400 on, but be prepared to tackle sixteen different short answer questions and a half-dozen essay questions. 

I’m feeling grateful at how easy creative writing seems in comparison. Thank you, Vanessa! She should be out of her exam about now. Her work’s over; time for mine to begin.

Picture Books: Do They Ever Get Easier?

When the amazing, inimitable writer-illustrator-teacher Pat Cummings told me about the PB contest organized by Atlantic Avenue merchants (we’re talking Brooklyn here), I thought, “Why not?” It’s a writing contest in my own backyard with cash prizes  (a grand for first place!) and a fantastic panel of judges (Bruce Degen!).  

Then I sat down to write. Immersed in a MG world for the last several years, I had forgotten all about the easy treachery of the picture-book manuscript. Do you know what I mean? I had an idea. I jotted down a few notes. I wrote a few lines. I liked them. I kept going. In no time I had three hundred words. The perfect length. (Have you noticed how few words BPs have these days?) I stopped, rather smug about doing such a good first draft. I read it over the next day, and it was terrible! Not total crap, but not good, either. And then I remembered my stack of PB manuscripts that were never quite…right. Rapunzel, who got put in the tower because she liked math. The blankie story. The sex book. (If only I were Dr. Ruth, I might’ve sold it.)

Not that I’ve given up. Nope. I haven’t given up. I’m going to keep trying. I’ll send something to the Atlantic Avenue BID. I have almost two weeks…no, actually, I’ve got just over a week to craft this baby. I have nothing to lose, right?

If anyone reading this wants to know more about the contest, go to atlanticavebid.org. The deadline’s Nov. 1 at the stroke of midnight.