Tricks and 'Little Tricker'

Ken Kesey accomplishes several interesting things in 'Little Tricker the Squirrel meets Big Double the Bear'.

For one thing, this is a children's book by Ken Kesey, which is a bit like an album of lullabies played by Miles Davis: sure, it's simple stuff, but you know it's going to be done with flair, creativity, and control. Kesey avoids making the book overtly adult, adding no subtexts that would appeal to older readers but only confuse children. To return to my metaphor, Kesey approaches his subject like Miles would have approached the lullabies: trying to make the best possible of the form he's working with.

The story is full of linguistic parallels. For example, Big Double always threatens the unfortunate animals in the same way, and the animals always respond in the same way. This pattern comes to represent, in the reader's mind, a kind of prophecy. In other words, each time the same 'incantation' is repeated, the outcome is indicated. This only changes when Tricker himself encounters Big Double, and he upsets the whole linguistic ritual. This signals to a canny reader that Tricker will be the animal to defeat Big Double.

It is also interesting to notice that all of the other animals attempt to escape Big Double physically, by running, or jumping, or climbing. They all fail miserably. Only Tricker, who uses his mind against Big Double, is successful. We might take this to be one possible moral of Kesey's folktale: wits matter, too.

Overall, a very exciting and interesting piece of work. I, for one, liked it and the presentation. It was creative. I'm always up for creativity, you know.

'A Drowning Incident' - Real Horror

'The Drowning Incident' is a fascinating little story which is also quite disturbing. It begins quite innocuously, with a boy exploring an old dilapidated building, disrupting the progress of a black widow spider who is attempting to eat a grass hopper - which ended up in the web, interestingly enough, because of the boy's actions. Might we assume the boy later blames himself, similarly, for the fate of the puppies? It is clear he did not know the puppies were drowned, and his 'hollow feeling' is replaced by a 'sense of outrage' (4), directed (I would think) at his father. After all, at the end of the story, we are told he 'is waiting for him to come home' (4). What will the boy say in this confrontation?

But this does not answer our questions about why the boy does what he does with the decomposing puppy's body. The narrator tells us that this action is 'the culmination of all the schemes' formed since 'the moment the baby arrived' (4). In other words, this shock of finding the puppies has caused the boy to finally take action. In my opinion, the lie told to him about the puppies represents a severe blow to the boy's understanding of the adult world, just as the baby no doubt represented a severe blow to his understanding of his own world. Perhaps because of these similar shocks to his world view, the boy decides to put them together in the most literal way - to conflate the two betrayals into one.

Or perhaps, by the same token, this action should be taken as a threat. Perhaps he is telling his parents - though I imagine, most specifically, his father - that since he had the puppies taken away from him, he could take away the new child as vengeance. Who could say for sure?

This is a very disturbing story, in my opinion, and also a 'horror' story. It is horror in a deeper sense than vampires or werewolves, because these monstrosities - actions committed without care and without any human decency - occur in the real world every day.

A Clean, Well-Lighted log on "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"

The theme of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is emptiness and darkness. The young waiter displays a lack of understanding about the old customer's needs, as well as the older waiter's, when he says "there are bodegas open all night" (159). The young waiter, it seems, is one of those who "lived in it and never felt it" (159), meaning the nothingness and emptiness of life. The old waiter understands why the old customer wishes to stay, because this cafe is "clean and pleasant" and "well lighted". It is, in another words, a hedge against the night and the darkness. The old waiter says, "I am one of those who like to stay late at the cafe ... with all those who need a light for the night" (159). It doesn't seem, however, that the old waiter is particularly afraid of the emptiness and the darkness (represented in this story by night), as he knows "it was no fear or dread", but "a nothing that he knew too well" (159).

This story, in my opinion, is all about emptiness and darkness pitted against light. Though the waiter believes "a man is nothing" (159), he still puts stock in a clean, well-lighted place, which is of course a man-made institution. He does not believe in religion, saying "[o]ur nada who art in nada, nada be thy name ..." (159). He is left, in the end, with only the cafe as a defense against the darkness, and the company of others like himself. Hemingway touches upon a kind of existential insomnia in this story, which prevents a person from falling asleep before dawn.

But I see the story as being ultimately positive. Our old waiter works at the cafe, trying to be kind to others who need the place. And after all, dawn is nearly there when our old waiter goes to bed. As Hemingway knew quite well, the sun also rises.

(Please note: my page numbers are probably different because I'm using the tenth edition of the book. Is that OK? I hope so ... this book was expensive. :()

So this is where I put ...

... all my thrilling responses to stories.

Expect a veritable treasure trove soon.

Until next time, sports fans,
- Wade