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Authors: KATE BERNHEIMER

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BOOK: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
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When I lecture on fairy tales, whether at museums or grade schools, I am always moved by the audience’s deep pleasure in learning about fairy-tale techniques. Fairy tales defy the status quo: a reader will easily recognize a version of “Little Red Riding Hood” that contains
no
cape,
no
woods, and
no
wolf. See Matthew Bright’s amazing film
Freeway
—in which a young Reese Witherspoon plays an abused kid who runs away from home—and you’ll understand; it’s a direct homage to “The Story of Grandmother,” interpreted in this collection by the inimitable Kellie Wells. Fairy tales have a fairy-tale likeness.
I’ve had the privilege of introducing many students to the fairy tale’s strange history, so carefully studied by such scholars as Maria Tatar and Jack Zipes, who teach us that originally fairy tales were not directed toward children, though they were overheard by youngsters around the hearth, and that they function in an almost totemic way for both young and old. My love of fairy tales drives all of my writing, whether a novel, a short story, or a book for children. I have the honor of making my day-to-day work the celebration of fairy tales. All of this—the journal editorship, the teaching of craft, the casual conversations, the life of a writer—reflects back to me that fairy tales are simply essential, and I want to share that with you.
 
But odd things, too, led me to gather this volume.
I have a sense that a proliferation of magical stories, especially fairy tales, is correlated to a growing awareness of human separation from the wild and natural world. In fairy tales, the human and animal worlds are equal and mutually dependent. The violence, suffering, and beauty are shared. Those drawn to fairy tales, perhaps, wish for a world that might live “forever after.” My work as a preservationist of fairy tales is entwined with all kinds of extinction.
I was also inspired to collect this volume based on my experience in the community of writers and readers. A few years ago I presented a short manifesto about fairy tales to a large audience of creative writing professors and students. I was on a panel dedicated to nonrealist literature. I made an argument that fairy tales were at risk—they had been misunderstood, appropriated without proper homage by the realists and fabulists alike. Only at a writers’ conference could this sort of statement provoke a gasp. (Yes, say what you will.) I am always that person in the room telling everyone, genuinely, that I love it all—realism, high modernism, surrealism, minimalism. I like stories. But apparently my defense of fairy tales, which I consider so poignantly inclusive, marginalized, and vast, was seen as outlandish. (Note: there are a lot of realists and nonrealists in this collection. Some of my best friends are realists—and nonrealists, too.) My statement, intended to be inspiring, to gather support for this humble, inventive, and communal tradition, created vibration, metallic and sharp. I realized the full weight of the fact that celebrating fairy tales in the center of a talk about “serious literature” to a roomful of writers was controversial. This surprised me—but it also emboldened me to put together this volume.
Indeed it was at that meeting that this book was born. I realized how essential this volume was, for it would gather
all
kinds of literary writers in the service of fairy tales. I realized then that while people may know and love—or love to hate—these stories, they really are not aware of the many ways they pervade contemporary literature.
As merely one example, the National Book Foundation, which administers the National Book Awards, states that “retellings of folk-tales, myths, and fairy-tales are not eligible” for their awards. Imagine guidelines that state, “Retellings of slavery, incest, and genocide are not eligible.” Fairy tales contain all of those themes, and yet the implication is that something about fairy tales is simply . . . not literary. Perhaps the snobbery has something to do with their association with children and women. Or it could be that, lacking any single author, they discomfit a culture enchanted with the myth of the heroic artist. Or perhaps their tropes are so familiar that they are easily misunderstood as cliché. Possibly their collapsed world of real and unreal unsettles those who rely on that binary to give life some semblance of order.
The fact that fairy tales remain a literary underdog—undervalued and undermined—even as they shape so many popular stories, redoubles my certainty that it is time for contemporary fairy tales to be celebrated in a popular, literary collection. Fairy tales hold the secret to reading. This book can help us move forward as readers in a moment of insecurity about the future of books.
 
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
is like a beloved, handmade, topsy-turvy, cool doll. I had one as a kid (perhaps you did, too): on one side was Red Riding Hood, and underneath, the grandmother and wolf; how it scared and delighted me! If you peek under this book’s voluminous skirt, you’ll find some wonderful creatures hiding here, lovers of fairy tales all: Angela Carter, Hans Christian Andersen, J. R. R. Tolkien, Italo Calvino, Emily Dickinson, Barbara Comyns, the Brothers Grimm. Next time you go to the library, please say hello to them, to their other fine fairy-tale companions, and to the scholars who have charted the history of the form: Maria Tatar, Jack Zipes, Marina Warner, Ruth Bottigheimer, Donald Haase, Cristina Bacchilega, and many others.
Once you start looking, it is easy to see the variety—the sheer fractal ferocity—and intelligence of fairy tales. This collection contains stories reflective of current trends (fragment, pastiche, story-in-chapters); it also contains stories told in more linear, straightforward ways. Some of the selections pay homage to midcentury and later styles; others come poetically through modes associated with the tradition of oral folklore. You will find stories that hew closely to their enchantment, and others that announce hardly any magic—until you encounter a tiny keyhole in the wall of their language. In each instance, you will easily enter these secret gardens.
The goal was to bring together a variety of writers—in true fairy-tale spirit, not only those widely known; I sought out writers whose work had suggested “fairy tales” to me, whether in obvious or subtle ways. Initiating the process, I asked merely that writers select a fairy tale as a starting point and to take it from there, to write a new fairy tale. When asked by some contributors what a fairy tale was, I would answer: You already know. A fairy tale is a story with a fairy-tale feel, I told them. And we’d continue from there.
In her book
Enchanted Hunters
, Maria Tatar describes how fairy tales are so beloved because reading them is like falling in love with reading—they’re that mesmerizing. By reading this book, you become part of a welcoming, old, nonhierarchical, and new tradition. Of course, this book can represent only a tiny sliver of the tradition. I consulted many authors, scholars, translators, students, and readers about whom to invite, and I was introduced to many new voices along the way, and lamented that the book could not be endless. I hope this is just the beginning of a brand-new acceptance of fairy tales as omnipresent. The house of wonder is infinite.
 
The stories are organized loosely by country of origin—just one of the many ways they could be organized, merely one path through their intricate forest. The contents offers the name of just one origin tale for each story, even though many of the stories draw from multiple variants from all around the world. These are not offered as definitive versions; rather, I hope that you’ll follow these little bread crumbs to fairy-tale books for additional excellent reading. I have also gathered author comments, which follow each story. In these, you will find fascinating, personal insights into how the cited tales provided the authors with inspiration. The contents also offers the opening lines of each story—each “Once upon a time,” if you will. In this way you may find a favorite writer or tale type, or simply a sentence that attracts your attention. Take these as signposts into your own, private hundred-acre woods—if that helps you. You may, of course, read the book in order—or backward! All you need to know is that no special expertise is required to appreciate
any
story in here—only an interest in reading.
I hope this book comprises not only a fantastic reading experience for you—a reintroduction to these stories with vintage and thrilling appeal—but also a call to preserve fairy tales for future generations. For in a fairy tale, you find the most wonderful world. Yes, it is violent; and yes, there is loss. There is murder, incest, famine, and rot—all of these haunt the stories, as they haunt us. The fairy-tale world is a real world. Fairy tales contain a spell that is not false: an invocation to protect those most endangered on this earth. The meek shall inherit . . . went one of the very first stories I heard as a child. I believed it then, and still do.
Fairy tales, fairy-tale readers: This book belongs to you.
KATE BERNHEIMER
DRAWING THE CURTAIN
WE’RE HERE. WE BRAVED THE CROWDS AND BUCKED THE TRENDS AND overcame the obstacles (we located correct change for the crosstown bus) and we made it on time.
No need to try to smuggle a split of champagne past the usher. We won’t need it. We have in our hands only mezzanine-seat tickets to an everyday hullabaloo. No red carpet. This isn’t going to be featured on
Entertainment Tonight
. It’s not a once-in-a-lifetime event. The domestic fairy tale, never having indulged in a farewell tour, is in no need of a comeback.
Why, then, are our hearts racing?
The excited murmur from the foyer, the boxes, the stalls, the orchestra seats, is contagious. The fairy tale is about to break upon us, once and still and again. We know what we’re in for and, of course, we also don’t, for fairy tale has more than one method by which to cast a spell. Attending, we’ll have to attend. Tolkien, that philologist turned bard and pantocratur of Middle-earth, called it faërie, that which “holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky, the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.”
Indeed, with Tolkien’s press release promising so much, we might as well know this place as the Globe Theatre, the way Shakespeare did.
And that’s why we’ve rushed to get here in time for the curtain. We’re anticipating an apparition of faërie promised, herein, as a series of episodes, all alike, all different. Whether they seem archaic or postmodern, conventional or avant-garde, whether their enchantments are apparent or invisible, in some ways they will all cavort without drawing attention to the sleight of faërie itself, which is a conjuring act that relies at once upon theatrical smoke-and-mirrors and upon deep magic.
We hold, in these initial pages, something of a program, one that contains no advertisements, no hint of coming attractions. Makes no suggestion for where to dine afterward. We’re on our own. But, riffling through, from back to front, with curiosity, impatience, perhaps a sense of entitlement—we’re not children here—what might we have come to expect?
In traditional tales the dramatis personae hail from central casting. We’ve a few moments; let’s steal backstage. Let’s open the door to the green room and peek to see who is waiting. A bevy of beauties, each more fetching, more modest, more loyal, more lovely than the next (no matter from which point you begin scanning the room). A gossiping group of grand dames, as kindly as godmothers or as corrupt as witches, or both by turns. Hags and harridans, huntsmen and hunchbacks. Kings and kings and kings, a congress of kings. Also, a sample of simpletons.
That’s not all. An evanescence of sprites and pixies and guardian angels, in shimmering gossamer threads. An abundance of adversaries (in ascending order) from dwarves to giants. A passel of princes, mostly charming, occasionally brave and clever besides. Some equally stout-hearted steeds nickering nearby; and cats watching with moon-phase eyes; and the bear who can speak and won’t is curled up next to the bear who can’t speak and will. The cock of the roost, the lark of the morn, the owl who issues the midnight summons, and the goose that lays the golden eggs. (This goose may be Mother Goose herself, fixing her eye on the proceedings, but she keeps her own counsel, delivering her elementary bounty but not her vital statistics.)
As for the setting, take a look at the interchangeable flats, the painted scrims, the wing-and-drop sets hoisted in darkness above. Most likely the settings are modest and indefinite—the garden, the kitchen; the castle, the hovel; the sea, the cave; the market, the meadow; the well, the woods; the prison tower, the island sanctuary. That’s a lot of world to be stacked backstage. But “To make a Prairie it takes / One Clover and one Bee / One Clover, and a Bee / And Reverie. / The Reverie alone will do / If bees are few—” as Emily Dickinson reminds us. To recognize a fairy-tale castle, we need little more than a Styrofoam throne. A woods is conjured by a single branch suspended on transparent Mylar fishing line. A cottage is conjured up by anyone onstage who utters the word
cottage.
Almost every spell begins with the conjure: “Now listen . . .”
BOOK: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
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