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Fairy Tales From the Brother’s Grimm by Philip Pullman

from the Anarcho-Geek Review

Fairy Tales From the Brother’s Grimm by Philip Pullman 2012, Viking Press

Content Warning: This review mentions fairy tales that have themes of incest, femicide, and assault.

I love Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, about a pair of youngsters who wander through parallel universes, make friends with armored bears and cagey harpies, and fight in an epic battle against God. I also love fairy tales — I study them. So when I came across Pullman’s Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, I picked it up excitedly. And flipped to the table of contents. And discovered that my favorite Grimm’s tale, Fitcher’s Bird, isn’t included (Pullman selected fifty out of hundreds of stories). I hemmed and hawed and waited a few weeks, but I couldn’t resist: I’m a sucker for Pullman’s narrative voice.

Pullman’s voice — however lovely — is not the crux of the book. He set out to produce a clear, readable rendition of the Grimm’s classics, and his changes are light-handed. Still, the voice seeps through. Pullman smoothes over abrupt transitions and narrative holes with inventive details (I must admit, I love the awkward gaps in folk tales, and don’t always like how Pullman explains them away). He sprinkles the text with his signature anachronistic details (the devil’s grandmother reads a newspaper and Briar Rose’s parents go on special diets to help them conceive) and has fun playing with dialogue: Snow White’s speaking-in-turn dwarves turn in to a gaggle of overlapping voices.

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm includes many of the classics canonized by Disney and children’s books, but leaves in the dark, gory imagery of the originals. Snow White’s evil step-mother dances to death in iron shoes, Rumpelstiltsken tears himself in two when his name is discovered and The Juniper Tree’s little Marleenken cries tears of blood for her cannibalized brother. Pullman also re-writes lesser known gems, like the wistful horror The Robber Bridegroom and the deeply disturbing, but powerful, Thousandfurs. (It is in the postscript to Thousandfurs that Pullman truly shows his narrative chops: he proposes a new ending with a protracted ghost story and a grisly death for the father who, in the Grimms, tries to marry his daughter — causing her to run away from his court — and is never mentioned again.) He also includes a generous dose of those “everyman” stories about boys named Hans, who are clever or lazy or lucky or bold, accomplish impossible tasks and receive princesses as their rewards.

Grimm’s tales are entertaining — often funny or sad or both — but what fascinates me most is the stories behind the stories. Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm is, thankfully, grounded in scholarship. Pullman takes a keen interest in the genre’s literary devices, discussing them in the introduction and commenting on the plot, style, and structure of the tales in his postscript to each one. He also includes juicy bits for fairy tale nerds: each story’s Aarne-Thompson tale-type (a classification system based on plot patterns; there are 2500 different plots cataloged), similar folk tales from other places (limited, unfortunately, to Europe and the Middle East) and the insight of scholars like Jack Zipes, Marina Warner, and Bruno Betelheim.

Pullman seems remarkably fond of Betelheim, the child psychologist who reduced most things fairy tale to sex, sex, sex (Boring! And short-sighted). He spoons out tidbit after tidbit of Betelheim while ignoring other, more fascinating analyses. He doesn’t discuss the stark class and gender hierarchies that inhabit fairy tales, or how tales transformed with changing social mores and the transition from oral storytelling to print. The biggest gap is probably the absence of feminist fairy tale scholarship. Sure, it’s been done to death and can, at times, edge on second-wave, but it’s also a substantial body of work that calls in to question why most of the women who aren’t beautiful and mild-mannered end up rolled down hills in spiked barrels or are sent up in smoke.

Pullman also leaves out Fitcher’s Bird. It’s the same tale-type as the French Bluebeard, but with a transgressive twist. If you watch horror films, you’ll recognize Bluebeard: A young woman is married off to a wealthy gentleman with a blue beard. Before going away on a trip, he entrusts the bride with a key and tells her that she must never open the door the key unlocks. Of course, she opens the door, sees the bloody, mutilated corpses of his previous wives and, in her horror, drops the key in a pool of blood. Bluebeard returns, sees the blood stained key and prepares to kill his bride. Her brothers — thank the patriarchy! — arrive in the nick of time to save her.

In Fitcher’s Bird, the sorcerer Fitz Fitcher gives his brides eggs that they are instructed to carry with them everywhere. They are also told to avoid a certain room in his house. One after another, they enter the room, find a bloody basin full of dismembered corpses and drop their egg in a pool of blood, staining it. The brides are murdered for their curiosity.

Unfortunately for Fitcher, his most recent betrothed (the youngest of three sisters he’s kidnapped in succession) is a total trickster and witch. She puts her egg in a safe place. She opens the forbidden door. She finds, re-assembles and revives her murdered sisters. She tricks Fitcher into carrying them home on his back (he thinks he’s carrying gold) and, while he’s gone, she invites all his friends to their wedding party. She dresses a skull in bridal garb and sets it in the window of the house, then escapes in an avian disguise made of honey and the guts of a feather bed. She meets Fitz Fitcher and his friends on the road, who don’t recognize her as the bride but as an unexplained creature they call Fitcher’s Feathered Bird. Of course, with a classic Western European fairy tale touch, her male kinfolk show up to burn down the sorcerer’s house with him and his cronies inside it. But it’s the youngest sister—referred to as Fitcher’s Bird — who does most of the tricking and saving.

The absence of Fitcher’s Bird is striking, because the eponymous protagonist reminds me so much of His Dark Material‘s Lyra. Both characters are quick-witted, strong-willed, and know the value of a well-told lie. In folk lore, most tricksters are male (Coyote of North American indigenous stories, Reynard the Fox of medieval Europe, and Loki of Norse mythology being, perhaps, the best known examples). A contemporary female trickster like Lyra is inventive and compelling, but one rooted in folkloric and oral tradition like Fitcher’s Bird is a rare and special thing.

I see the trickster echoed in the queer, anarchic communities I’m a part of. I also see other aspects of fairy tales, especially in protest stories of improbable proportions and beautifully wrought propaganda posters that identify valor, steadfastness, and hatred of the enemy as important values. Even historic episodes — like the invention of the unruly, fire-bombing (and probably mythological) petroleuses by conservatives during the Paris Commune — have roots in folklore and fairy tales.

Fairy tales are ripe for anarchic interpretations. They’ve been studied by feminists, psychologists, and scholars with an interest in socio-history. They’ve been brilliantly re-imagined and re-written by all sorts of freaky weirdo authors and collected in to volumes like My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. But there’s ample space for anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, queer, and differently-abled takes on fairy tales. There’s room (and a need, really) to explore the race and class distinctions classic European fairy tales uphold and to make non-Western tales and marginalized voices a larger part of the conversation.

Pullman’s Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm is a decent introduction to the German tales that have such a powerful hold on the American imagination. But it’s just a starting point. If you like the stories and the bits of scholarship behind them, keep reading.

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Had a fun time tabling w/ Tucson ABC today!

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First Tabling Event!

Lost Maps will be doing its first tabling event this coming Monday, Nov. 17, as part of Transgender Awareness Week at U of A. I'll be tabling alongside Tucson Anarchist Black Cross and a bunch of other bad ass organizations on the UA Mall from 10 am-2 pm. (If you're in Tucson and want me to table your zine, I'd probably love to, just get in touch!)

Check out UA Transgender Awareness Week, there's lots of awesome events: http://uaatwork.arizona.edu/uannounce/transgender-awareness-week

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6 Qs for Ben Passmore

I first met Ben because he was the hilarious, disgruntled housemate of an old friend. His comic, A Pantomime Horse, is about kids staging a revolt at reform school and is the first publication being distributed through Lost Maps (you can pick up a copy through the Lost Maps Distro). Ben and I exchanged emails, and he told me a little bit about himself, his comics and the work that inspires him.

Read Ben's blog at http://daygloayhole.tumblr.com/.

Alright, Ben. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Who the hell are you? And why do you draw these comic things?

I'm always tempted to make something up. Son of a single mother in rural Massachusetts, think maples, pines, and rednecks setting fire to abandoned muscle cars. I didn't like to go out a lot, except to go to the video store, or the bowling alley, or the drug store up the street. They sold comics at the drug store and my daily ritual was to read as many as I could until they kicked me out. I always liked comics for the reason people that want escape like fantastic things, I probably would have been really into TV and video games, but we couldn't afford cable back then and consoles weren't all affordable either back then. I went broke playing Revolution X and the Cove Lanes once a week though. I went to a reform school that was pretty close to my home town after getting a felony charge for possession of stolen property. I had a choice between that school or juvenile hall, the school seemed like the better choice at the time. When I got out I wasn't as excited with fantasy in the way I was when I was little, but I still really loved making comics. Who knows why?

Where did you get the idea for the A Pantomime Horse series?

I wanted to write something about the reform school I went to. I'm not all that excited by strict auto-biography, so I've been trying to create a story that is emotionally true to my time there. Obviously it's not all that accurate factually. The campus is the campus of my school. I went hunting through these photo archives former students have been posting on the internet. I went back a couple years ago to take pictures of the campus, but when I got there I realized that most of the buildings had been leveled to the ground. It was winter and everything that used to be the school buildings and dorms were perfectly smoothed over. It was really fucking shattering.

There were a couple things that happened at the school that I based the story of Avi and Dee on. One is a relatively peaceful autonomous revolt that some friends and I staged while we were sophomores and a really bloody riot the girls had a couple months after. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by mentioning that. I'm not even gonna start explaining the time traveling.

You describe the experience of finding the school razed to the ground as "shattering." Why? Reform schools are particularly associated with happy times, so why did it bother you so much that the buildings were gone? What changes for you when the locations of your memories are no longer physically present?

It's irrational, but I was worried that I'd made everything up. Also, when I'd go back to see my mom in Massachusetts I'd get to walk around the school's campus. It stood empty for a couple years before they leveled it. There were so many restrictions, places you couldn't go on the campus when I was a student there, it was freeing to be able to just walk wherever you wanted, break stuff, steal something you didn't need and leave by the road later. The school couldn't do anymore damage, I don't get to have that now.

What are your politics? How do they inform both your ideas about reform school and the way you write A Pantomime Horse?

Generally, I'm an anarchist. A Pantomime Horse was inspired, in part, by insurrectionist writings or at least critical theory. I don't like a lot of "political" comics, there really aren't that many "anarchist" comics, and A Pantomime Horse is definitely trying to be a series that improves on things that I think are lacking about political comics.

Why don't you like political comics? What do you think are lacking about them? How are you attempting to improve on the genre through A Pantomime Horse?

Obviously all comics are political, superman throwing bank robbers around is a political story. Some comics are trying to depict fictional and non-fictional struggles around housing, or against white supremacy, etc. and those are the comics we think of as being the political ones. I think the common problem is that they often depict instances that are supposed to be full of pathos without earning it, or reduce a story about people and a particular struggle down so much that it loses it's specificity and becomes allegory. The main reason that bothers me is that it makes the act of fighting seem remote, something fantasy characters do, not something we can learn from and mimic, or work off of. I guess some people say that comics can be journalism and that some comics are just trying to report in a clear and accessible way, but I think comics have to be one of the least affect kinds of journalism. Without letting the cat out of the bag, I would say that A Pantomime Horse is trying to earn emotions from the reader and make fighting feel present.

What writers, artists and comics inspire your work?

Lately people have been comparing me to Brandon Graham. I draw a bit like Guy Davis, which is partially on purpose. I think my writing style oscillates between Liz Suburbia and Jason. I like to think of myself as the Michael Bay of 30-something year old, bald, brown Anarchist cartoonists. Maybe "like" is the wrong word.

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"There were a couple things that happened at the school that I based the story of Avi and Dee on. One is a relatively peaceful autonomous revolt that some friends and I staged while we were sophomores and a really bloody riot the girls had a couple months after. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by mentioning that. I’m not even gonna start explaining the time traveling." - Ben Passmore on "A Pantomime Horse"

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All three of Ben Passmore's Pantomime Horse comix (about reform school and escape!) are now available via the Lost Maps Distro! 

Also check out his tumblr at daygloayhole.tumblr.com

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“Our culture has probably deliberately moved away from [re-naming] as we’ve moved towards classifying and labeling everything. If a name is seen as a

The first copies of These Tiny, Infinite Things got mailed Saturday! Order your copy in time for the next mailing. 

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New logo graphic! By Noel'le Longhaul! So purdy. 

Check out Lost Maps books and zines on our Etsy. 

Check out our other projects on our web page. 

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Available thru the Lost Maps Distro!

The first zine in W. Awry’s The Seams & the Story series, Goodbye To All That is about growing up, New York City, punk rock, anarchism and, yes, Broadway musicals.

Click here to buy a copy!

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Lost Maps Distro!

The Lost Maps Distro distributes zines, prints & media projects related to themes of anarchism, geography, documentary and community history. All of these items are purchaseable through our Etsy. 

If you’re interested in distributing your zine or media project through Lost Maps (and you think it fits in to our themes), email us at lostmaps at riseup dot net

Lost Maps is going to start distributing a limited number of zines, prints & media projects based around themes of anarchism, geography, documentary and community history. I'm looking for the first four or five items/projects to put in to distribution. Do you or someone you know produce work that fits in to these themes? Get in touch.

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These Tiny, Infinite Things is finally available to order! Purchase a copy at our Etsy store. All orders will be shipped on or just after July 22, 2014.

If you are a distributor or book store and want to stock this book, please email lostmaps@riseup.net.

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These Tiny, Infinite Things (Reading Copy)

Almost two years after the very first interviews took place, These Tiny, Infinite Things is finally becoming a book! I’m ordering a proof as I type, but wanted to release the online reading copy while the hard copies were still being printed (click the link above for the download!). Within the text, you’ll find interviews that are technically about names & namings, but wend out in all sorts of strange and beautiful directions.

Thx to  all the interviewees and to Noel’le Longhaul for the cover, Margaret Killjoy for the layout & Kyla Mulligan for the copyediting.

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Finally came up with a project description that I like!

Lost Maps produces anti-establishment radio documentaries, interviews and oral histories. We try to examine critical issues from unusual angles: we've looked at resistance to environmental destruction in Appalachia through the lens of ginseng harvesting, and used naming as an entry point in to conversations about gender, classism, racism, the patriarchy, gentrification, madness and surviving. We're particularly interested in the small stuff of everyday life, the overlooked nuts-and-bolts that make resistance possible and the way that radical histories have been remembered and recorded.

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Finally finished the covers for Lost Map’s new book, “These Tiny, Infinite Things: An Inquiry into Names and Re-Naming.” The book is a collection of interviews about people’s thoughts around their names, the historicism of naming, and the political and spiritual processes involved. Read them before the book comes out at http://lostmaps.noblogs.org/print-2/names/.

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"Our culture has probably deliberately moved away from [re-naming] as we've moved towards classifying and labeling everything. If a name is seen as a changeable, ethereal thing then it can't be so sewn on to a prison uniform. It needs to be set in stone for our culture to have something to call us and something to write up in court papers and parking tickets and everything."

Annie Jane Cotten

bex

Blake Rose

Cindy Crabb

Elizabeth/Lizbox

Erica Mulkey aka Unwoman

Hexe Fey

Inman Mountainlion

leah peachtree

Libertie Valance

Luka Miro

Margaret Killjoy

Monique Poirier

Noel'le Longhaul

Saro Lynch-Thomason

Sparrow

Sprout

Stephanie

Cover design by Noel'le Longhaul

www.lostmaps.noblog.org

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Panax quinquefolius, or American ginseng, has been a valued part of Appalachia's economy and traditions for hundreds of years. Today, American ginseng is threatened due to strip mining, development and overharvesting. Three ecological activists from three corners of Appalachia talk about their relationships to ginseng: Matt Wallace, a small farmer in Western North Carolina, reads excerpts from his essay about "hiding" endangered 'seng plants in the hills behind his home. Retired union coal miner Terry Steele phones in from southern West Virginia, where he's been hunting and selling ginseng for the past fifty years. And Carol Judy, a community organizer and herbalist from East Tennessee, tells us about "ginseng rescues": digging 'seng in areas slated to be mountaintop removed and replanting it elsewhere. To learn more about mountaintop removal visit: http://ilovemountains.org/ To hear more music by Saro Lynch-Thomason visit: http://sarolyncht.bandcamp.com/ This documentary was originally broadcast on Asheville FM www.lostmaps.noblogs.org