Recent Fairy Tales

Tolkien On Fairy Stories suggests the vastness of Faerie and, though I suspect I am both the unwary and overbold traveler he mentions, let us presume for the sake of time and argument that there are two forms of fairy story in general publication today--with the truest explorations of the horizons of that wild land so rare and incategorizable as to be beyond our capacity for easy examination.

The first of the two forms concerns itself with the trappings of fantasy muddled together with little concern for theme or symbolism. These stories dump a medley of mythological creatures down to fight and fuck and call it a day. In the bookstore, look for the covers of sexy people wielding knives and making out with vampires and you'll be in the right neighborhood. The shortcoming of the form (for those as care about such things) is that the fantastic, the brush with faerie, is nearly extraneous to the story. It adds little to the story aside from a dash of set dressing and, if the series is fortunate enough to run to a dozen volumes, the dressing starts to lose its flavor and the mystic becomes indistinguishable from the mundane.

The second form uses Faerie to add depth to its story and enhance the mortal themes already present. Frankenstein and Dracula are archetypal examples where the fantastic elements are central to the narrative and allow for a deeper exploration of the themes of Romantcism and Victorian sexuality. In this form, faerie and narrative are woven together so that they enrich each other and become more than the sum of their parts.

The Bear and the Nightingale gives us a fairy tale of Russia under the Mongol Empire. In rural Russia, the people are Christian but continue to celebrate their pagan ways and leave offerings for the spirits of the house and field. Vasya can see the spirits and grows wild learning their secrets. Her mother died in childbirth and, as is common in such tales, Vasya's father remarries so she will have a new mother, a devout Christian horrified to discover the rural peasants still leaving offerings to the spirits of the land. She sends off to Moscow--raised to rule as the Mongol tax collectors--for a priest to turn the people away from idolatry and then winter comes...

The Golem and the Jinni is set a little closer to home in late 19th century New York. Chava is a golem on the run from her creator, a mad kabbalist, and hiding among New York's Jewish community. Created to serve, she feels the pull of others' desires fights the compulsion to serve in order to live free and understand her own identity. Ahmad is a jinni who was--come now, I'm sure you know this story--imprisoned in a tin lamp by a mad Bedouin until released in New York by a young Syrian tinsmith. Bored by the world of people and unable to return home, Ahmad takes to wandering the streets where he and Chava are inevitably drawn into each other's orbits...

The Bear and the Nightingale's faerie elements reflect a tribal, pagan Russia transitioning to a unified, Christian state. The arrival of the Christian stepmother and the priest are each presaged by political machinations of the factions in a distant Moscow vying for control of the Rus state and using their vassal states as pawns in that game--the meat of our story is actually entirely secondary to the power brokers of Moscow--while the conflict between the Church's representatives and the nature spirits materializes the religious transformation. As such, the story's faerie elements arise directly from and enhance the historical context rather than being dropped into an unrelated story. If I were to point to a weakness, it would be that the nature of the faerie elements at play is ultimately arbitrary in its relation to the underlying story. Which brings us back to...

The Golem and the Jinni excels because of the multiple levels at which the fantastic elements echo the human narrative. As fantastic creatures living among humans, Chava and Ahmad personify the American immigrant experience at the turn of the 20th century. Strangers in a strange land, they are outcast from mainstream American culture although their cultural ties to the Jewish and Syrian communities give them a home. Their struggle is foundationally mythical and yet fundamentally human and inextricably linked to the time and place in which they find themselves. Chava is especially interesting as she reflects themes of both immigrant and woman as viewed through a feminist lens. She was designed to be an obedient wife--a role commonly ascribed to women at the time--and her compulsion to listen and serve the whims of others is a literalization of the socializing forces that frequently operate on women.

Have other examples of these kinds of fairy stories? Think this categorization is nonsense? Let me know in the comments!