At the Town Pump March 26, 1996 The Saxon Shore Jack Whyte Viking Books What started out as a short novella explaining how Arthur drew Excalibur from the stone now stands at four full- length novels, with no end in sight. And I, for one, am not complaining. In an age of Arthurian trash (like last summer’s First Knight, or Joan Wolf’s pathetic The Road to Avalon), Whyte’s interpretation is a refreshingly engaging, superbly-researched historical revision of the mythological Arthur. Whyte has removed all traces of the supernatural from his writing, instead trying to place a historical Arthur within a historical framework. This is not the first time that the Arthurian legends have been scoured of the supernatural (both works mentioned aboye take this approach), but it is quite possibly the best. In The Saxon Shore, Merlyn Britannicus (yes, that Merlyn. You’ ll notice that ‘Britain’ is derived from his family name. This is no minor take-on Arthur; this is pulling out ail the stops) becomes keeper of the babe Arthur (who had just shown up at the end of book three. Remember, this was only going to be a novella). Though he plays his history fairly close to the actual facts, Whyte has taken some. liberties. He has introduced stirrups to England a good hundred years early, and is setting up to introduce the cavalry lance a few centuries early as well. Still, this is grand historical fiction. He is allowed to take a few liberties: The Cycling Adventures of Coconut Head Ted Schredd Whitecap Books Local radio personality and environut Ted Schredd went on a bike ride a few years back. Kriowing Schredd (he used ~ to be Vancouver’s only traffic reporter ona bicycle; now there are none), this is not unusual. What stands outabout _ the trip is that. he went from Vancouver to Ottawa by way of California, Texas and. Florida, The trip began as an attempt to raise awareness for environmental issues. Ted and his then girlfriend (her name’s not important, she gets dumped halfway through the ride for Deanna, who Ted marries in Florida) set out with a bike a piece, some clothes, some food, a tent and $500. The money goes fairly quickly, leaving Ted and whatshername to survive on the charity of others. This is one of the main themes in the book. Be nice to strange cyclists and you might get mentioned in a_ book someday. No kidding. Every single person who showed Ted and companion charity gets named. This book could probably have been subtitled “Hand-outs across America.” Another major running thread to this book is that the best way to remember your trip is to take naked photos of yourself, your companions and your newfound friends. One has to admire Schredd’s (ahem) balls ft < trou[sers -ed.].at most every — ten months on the road, Schredd did what any good cyclist would do. He wrote a book about it. Along with thanking every single person who contributed to his Enviroride, Schredd drops important cycling tips like “Small dogs make great footballs if they get close enough,” and Eric Milner Photos April 1996 Jon Scieszka Stinky Cheese Man by Peter T. Chattaway Two years ago, a group of senior students at Vassar College met in a public ceremony to recite passages from Jon Scieszka’s The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (in which “Alexander T. Wolf” claims he was framed by the little runts). At the time, they said it was a way of marking the official end of their childhood. Their sentiments may have been a trifle misguided. Scieszka’s hilariously dysfunctional fairy tales—including The Frog Prince Continued and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales—do not mark age distinctions, but transcend them. Scieszka is, after all, the teacher who has kept his second-grade pupils occupied with Franz Kafka’s __. Metamorphosis. Bgpecially with the | legend of : Arthur being so obscured during the Middle Ages. Whyte is not the strongest writer in the world, but he is a natural storyteller, and he brings.in such élichéd elements as amnesia (not oné; but two main characters have suffered from the dreaded:“A” word so far) without losing too much face. This take on Arthur captures the love of story and history that has been missing in retellings of the Arthurian legend since Mary Stewart’s landmark The Merlin Trilogy. It’s no Le Morte De Arthur, but it is great summer reading. by Trent .. anything, don’t listen mind-poo,” section. book js that it reads like it was written with an Xacto- and..to, the..points Every ‘paragraph has at least three different ideas and up to five cities. After 100 pages of “In Dallas Joe helped us‘out. And then in the next city Mary helped us out. Wasn't she nice. And in the next city, the next person helped us out and so on and so on...,»the reader starts to get a little bored. Still, Joe and Mary are usuafly just the sort of really interesting everyday. folk.that- nobody ever notices. And because the book is so driven forward the a stark writing style, reading it never gets painful. This is the sort of book that can be plowed through in a couple hours solid reading. If you’re planning on cycling across Canada, or the states, or even just going on TourBC, I bet this book would be great inspiration. by Trent mythologized and ~they’re The one drawback to this” knife. Every sentence is short To hear:Scieszka tell it, though, his to¢grown-ups was quite unintentional dalways.intended them “primarily for a kid audience,” he says on the phone from his he “TJ taught elementary sch years, and I found the stuff that akick out of too. Then we started geting letters from. colleges all over the place. People were reading Stinky.Cheese Man and founding Stinky Cheese Cult clubs, which is:a: little feightoning but interesting!” Scieszka got a Master's Teaice in fiction writing from New .York’s Columbia University and intended to build a career writing “dense novels” until he got “sidetracked” into ateaching position. “I just enjoyed hanging out with them and being a second-grader again,” he says. “It made me realizé how funny those guys are. That’s when you really start to grow a: sense of humour, I think, which sis a pretty — educational air, The Monster at the End of This Book, in which Sesame Street's fearful Grover tries in vain to prevent the reader from turning the pages, only to discover that the monster in question is, well, Grover! “I’ve got that book!” Scieszka fairly whoops with delight: “That’s a great ten book! That’s metafiction, it plays with being a book and the whole process of was pretty much the stuff that adults get Scieszka’s newest book is Math Curse, about a girl whose day is beset with endless numerical neuroses after herteacher, Mrs Fibonacci (named after a medieval mathematician), declares that “everything can be thought of as a math problem.” It’s a fun romp, but its textbook design gives it an almost To some degree, that is intentional. “I think that’s what I’ve learned from teaching,” Scieszka says, “that the worst sort of teaching is the stand-up-and- lecture-aiid-tell-people-something sort, especially with little kids. They won’t sit still for it, I think it’s sophisticated skill.” “I like to and get them to go look Children’s books, into things and, if they however, were not so. read math and get the joke, they'll look sophisticated, so scientific up other stuff nd find Scieszka set himself to literature ‘ the:task of writing stories oC other jokes are funny or that would be “up to their Cause you can why they me be evel.” The result has ardly beat it jokes.” “been a series of stories that take familiar tales and twist them until barely recognizable. And,- together with illustrator Lane Smith and designer ' Molly Leach, these books have also. had themselves. : Take The Stinky Cheese Man, for “every ways@ story can go wrong, it does.” (A sample denoxement: “Well, as it turned out, he was just a really ugly.diickting. And he grew up to be just a really ugly duck. The-End.”) Characters walk off the page when Jack, the narrator, tries to change their lines, and the Little Red Hen keeps whining that someone’s moved the endpaper around just to confuse her. (The title story, a play on The Gingerbread Man, feels relatively tame,:perhaps because the original version already had such a downer ending.) Scieszka says his technique was inspired not by the kids in his class— though he ran his first drafts by them to get their approval—but by adult authors such as Cervantes and William Gaffe [[sp???]] “who really goofed around with the form of fiction.” Scieszka also cites the seminal influence of Dr Suess, the Grimm Brothers and Lawrence Stern, the 18th-century author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Scieszka seems particularly enthused when I compare Stinky Cheese Man to for:how bizarre nd fiin playing with the form of books book in which, according to. . e ‘cause you bizarre and fantastic it ij the nature of consciousness now, or chads'theory, that’s great stuff! That stuff applies to literary theory. It is what you get, you get some kind of Grover or Stinky Cheese thing. *And I love the way it expands people’s notions. They get kind of stuck, decimal system and think, ‘It’s always base ten, isn’t it?’ Well no, actually, our time is in base sixty, and you go, ‘Whoa! What is that?’ Or you do realize that you count in base twelve when you’ re doing the calendar year, sO you: need a little mind expanding.” Scieszka’s now thinking of expanding his portfolio. Film and TV offers have been coming his way— Now they’re just impressed that we’ve sold, like, three million books, and they’re just saying, ‘Geez, maybe you guys could do a movie!’”—and Smith worked with Tim Burton on the upcoming film James and the Giant Peach. But even Burton would probably have a hard time getting someone to jump to freedom through Fermat’s Last Theorem. a too, We take for granted that we’reina ,