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Where's Waldo?
On Saturday, Stacey and I met up with Jon and went to the Flea Market at DeAnza. That was largely a bust but after that, Jon and I went to the bookstore. I rummaged trough the childrens books and found that the book of Brother's Grimm I'd spied a few months ago was now of course, long gone. *sigh* Ohwell. I consoled myself with a copy of English Fairy Tales, written by Joseph Jacobs and illustrated by John Batten. Published in 1890. Nice little book. Jacobs was a member of the 'New Shakespeare Society' and prided himself to be a scientist in the collection of fairy tales, so he carefully noted where he got the story, what the origins were, local variations, and what he'd changed to make it flow and when he'd rewritten from old english or 'lower scotch' as he called it. Many of the stories are nearly identical to some of those of the Brother's Grimm and he suggests that some of them are even just alterations of Grimm's stories, already disseminated into popular culture, and a few were unique and new. I had a great deal of fun really. I had to consult my arcane dictionary (A 1950 Webster's Unabridged) about a dozen times, looking up words that while I guessed their meaning, I thought it might be interesting to look up, and generally it was.
I also bought a 1986 printing of Through the Looking Glass with the standard illustrations by John Tenniel. I did quite a lot of comparision of three different versions though and chose the one with the best prints (much to the annoyance of poor Jon, I think)
I laid in the floor and read through both of them in the order I wrote about them, pausing rather frequently to sketch random images in my head brought on by the books, sometimes relating to the scene, sometimes not. Most of it isn't worth scanning but some of it, I might.
I learned two lessons from the fairy tales. The first is never to trust a hen-wife. Even step-mothers are occassionally kind but Hen-Wives are always cruel. The second lesson (and more important) is about humility.
I went intot he stories, looking to read old versiosn that hadn't been watered down and softened for modern audiences (in fact, I compared various fairy tale books but skiping to the ends of a few stories and seeing how horribly people died). The idea in my head had been to look for some material to animate (which I found) but to retell the story more strictly in accordance with the old versions rather than the 'child safe' stories Disney and the like told to american children. What I realized, of course was that this was arrogant. All these stories had been rewritten and retold a thousand times with all sorts of local embellishments and changes to personal flavour. One might as well search for the one-true-beer.
So. Among other things, that's where I've been instead of online listening to updates about a storm half a continent away, and a government which cries out, LET THEM EAT CAKE!
I also bought a 1986 printing of Through the Looking Glass with the standard illustrations by John Tenniel. I did quite a lot of comparision of three different versions though and chose the one with the best prints (much to the annoyance of poor Jon, I think)
I laid in the floor and read through both of them in the order I wrote about them, pausing rather frequently to sketch random images in my head brought on by the books, sometimes relating to the scene, sometimes not. Most of it isn't worth scanning but some of it, I might.
I learned two lessons from the fairy tales. The first is never to trust a hen-wife. Even step-mothers are occassionally kind but Hen-Wives are always cruel. The second lesson (and more important) is about humility.
I went intot he stories, looking to read old versiosn that hadn't been watered down and softened for modern audiences (in fact, I compared various fairy tale books but skiping to the ends of a few stories and seeing how horribly people died). The idea in my head had been to look for some material to animate (which I found) but to retell the story more strictly in accordance with the old versions rather than the 'child safe' stories Disney and the like told to american children. What I realized, of course was that this was arrogant. All these stories had been rewritten and retold a thousand times with all sorts of local embellishments and changes to personal flavour. One might as well search for the one-true-beer.
So. Among other things, that's where I've been instead of online listening to updates about a storm half a continent away, and a government which cries out, LET THEM EAT CAKE!
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Drool!
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