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Author
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Comment
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Leah
Unregistered User
(11/13/02 12:41:46 pm)
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Kate Crakernuts
Does any one know of any other versions of this, or retellings, such as the one done by Katherine Mary Briggs. Also if there are any meanings and anologies that are known i would love to hear them.
here is a link to the story if you haven't heard it
www.belinus.co.uk/fairyta...ernuts.htm
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Helen
Registered User
(11/13/02 2:14:21 pm)
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Charles de Lint...
Dear Leah:
You might want to take a look at Charles de Lint's _Jack of Kinrowan_, which plays with modern revisionings of the characters of Jack the Giant Killer and Kate Crackernuts.
Best,
Helen
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Ailanna
Registered User
(11/13/02 9:55:02 pm)
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Jack the Giant Killer
I enjoyed the first of de Lint's Jack of Kinrowan omnibus, despite outdated expressions and fashions (I seem to remember that Jacky's clothing wasn't quite as cringe worthy as Eddi's...), but I couldn't get into Drink Down the Moon, or whatever the second book is called.
By the way, Leah, Jack of Kinrowan contains other fairy tale references, too. I especially appreciated the one to The Seven Swans tale.
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Kate
Unregistered User
(11/14/02 12:26:15 pm)
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Kate Crackernuts
There is a version in Alison Lurie's collection--of her own adaptations, I believe--called "Clever Gretel and Other Tales." At least I *think* that is the book's title, but my books are all packed so I can't be sure.
Best,
Kate (perhaps a bit Crackernuts myself, in the midst of an enormous cross-country move).
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Terri Windling
Unregistered User
(11/14/02 11:39:56 pm)
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Jack the Giant Killer
Books like Jack the Giant-killer and War for the Oaks are set in a specific historic period: North America in the 1980s. The protagonists are dressed in clothing and using expressions that are appropriate to the period.
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Ailanna
Registered User
(11/15/02 8:18:41 pm)
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80s urban fantasy
Yes, indeed; War for the Oaks and Jack the Giant Killer are definitely products of the 80s. I'm sure it at one point was fashionable to wear a pink pleated skirt, gray vest, and lacy blouse all at once, and objectively speaking, I shouldn't cringe at that any more than, say, Queen Elizabeth's wheel farthingale, or the bright plaids popular in the Victorian era, both of which I find quite unattractive. However, since I spent my teen years in the late nineties, I seem to have acquired a disdain for eighties fashions that I am quite incapable of overcoming. Judging from the groan that went up when we got to eighties fashions in my History of Cloth and Costume class, many of my peers seem to have inherited the same prejudice. So, regardless of its historical authenticity, Eddi's fashion sense still makes me shudder...
And I really did like the book! Eddi's clothing was a very small part of a whole that I enjoyed very much.
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Maria
Cecile
Registered User
(11/15/02 10:16:07 pm)
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'80's Urban Fantasy
Trying to separate the fashions worn by the characters in modern urban fantasy from the story itself is rather difficult, I'm afraid. Neither de Lint nor Bull dress their characters out of thin air, just randomly describing an outfit for each scene. The fashion is intrinsic to the characterization: the particular outfit you describe illustrates a particular attitude and style that has absolutely everything to do with showing the style of music played by Eddi and the Fey and the particular subculture to which Eddi belongs. I grew up in the '80's, and immediately recognize the crowd Eddi would have been with, the places she would have gone, the styles of music she plays and enjoys. The tone of the music and indeed the novel would have been utterly different had Eddi dressed in skin tight jeans with teased big hair and bandanas tied around her ankle (hair band/stoners) or if she wore her hair in punk liberty spikes and had a chain from her nose to her ear. In fact, when Eddi dresses for the final showdown sequence, she wears a black leather outfit which Bull specifically mentions is not in keeping with the style of the band, but which Eddi wears as armor.
'80's urban fantasy is no different from any other genre, in that the costuming helps set the tone of the tale. The costuming in books is rarely a throwaway -- to enjoy WftO in spite of the fashion sense is fine, but if you don't understand what the fashion means, you're missing part of the meaning behind the story. We all put out messages through our dress and style. Eddi's clothing is not exactly, therefore, a small part of WftO. It tells us a lot about her.
Maria *still has a skinny tie and some high tops around here somewhere* Cecile
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Ailanna
Registered User
(11/16/02 9:48:45 am)
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More re. 80s fashions
>The tone of the music and indeed the novel would have been utterly different had Eddi dressed in skin tight jeans with teased big hair and bandanas tied around her ankle (hair band/stoners) or if she wore her hair in punk liberty spikes and had a chain from her nose to her ear.
Ack! Ack! Stop! Yes, all right, her clothing is fairly moderate compared to those descriptions...I didn't participate in the pop culture of the eighties, as I've already mentioned (I was barely seven when the eighties ended), and I don't have any of the associations with it that you do. I only have the very nineties disdain for the eighties. I can't disassociate myself from that; I see something that shrieks eighties, and because of its connotations for me of being dreadfully, unforgivably out of style, I wince. I was reading Georgette Heyer's Arabella, and all the daughters of Mrs. Tallant, accustomed to Regency styles, were appalled at the stiff, heavy, dark fashions of the period before.
As a costume design minor, I've noticed that a lot of the job is to make costumes that are good enough to be eye pleasing but unobtrusive. A bad costume distracts from the actor (I remember a particularly instance, when watching Turandot, that a male singer had a bright pink hat shaped like a butterfly), where a good costume is subtly augmentative, but has the chief function of being secondary to the actor's skill. If people other than costume nerds make note of the costumes, they're either really bad, or the actor is bad enough to divert their attention to the costumes. No one comes out saying, "Wow, the use of bias cut fabrics really brings out so and so's personality!" The messages given off by costume are fairly subtle, and augment, rather than define, character.
Despite my love for costumes and clothing, I don't think they're absolutely necessary to a character's essence. I don't think I'm getting less out of WftO by liking Eddi despite her clothing; Eddi's character comes across much more strongly-- and more appealingly, for this child of the nineties, I should add-- in her interactions with other people in the book.
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Y McMaggie
Unregistered User
(11/16/02 2:09:37 pm)
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Kate Crackernuts
There is a retelling of "Kate Crackernuts" in Philip Wilson's "Scottish Fairy Tales" (Lomond Books 2002) with illustrations
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Terri Windling
Unregistered User
(11/17/02 1:41:26 am)
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clothing
I have to agree with Maria Cecile on this one. The Eighties were a specific historical period, and getting the clothing right, for the subcultures that the characters came out of, was part of the author's job. Emma and Charles were both writing about subcultures in which clothing choices were important, and they portrayed those subcultures accurately. I see no need for these authors to have down-played the clothing, or any other aspects of Eighties culture, in order that readers in the future would be more comfortable. (Full disclosure: I was the editor for both books, any had many talks with both authors as they were created.)
It often happens that people develop particular dislikes for clothing styles of the previous generation - so it's natural that readers coming of age in the Nineties might find the Eighties fashions depicted in Emma and Charles' books unsuited to their personal taste. But the farther we get away from the Eighties, the more it becomes history, and then the clothing can be viewed as what it is -- historical costume -- rather than as: "oh, that silly stuff my parents wore."
Ailanna, while I disagree with your critique of the clothing in
War for the Oaks and Jack the Giant Killer for the reasons listed
above, I do believe it can be applied to the clothing in my own
Borderland series. In that case, these weren't books set in an exisiting
historical period -- they were set in fantasy world at some point
in the future. And yet the clothing was definitely influenced by
Eighties street fashion and now seems terribly outdated, I do admit.
:)
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Helen
Registered User
(11/17/02 11:26:01 am)
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Sense, sensibility, and fashion ...
I've been following this conversation with a certain degree of fascination ... the issue of identity formation is near and dear to my heart. I actually went back to _War for the Oaks_ to concentrate specifically on the outfits, as opposed to the magic ... and, I have to say, I think that on the whole, Bull handled the issue with a good deal of delicacy. One of the great fissures between literature and the more visual mediums is the manner in which a given effect is achieved (I realize that I'm stating the obvious here), and, in many ways, I think that writers have the more difficult task here.
On stage, or screen, as the case may be, there's a greater ease of subtlety. For example, in "Brotherhood of the Wolf," the lead is dressed in very heroic white garb for much of the movie, and the villain in sumptuous black furs and red velvets ... the subconcious effect is unmistakable, but it probably shouldn't stand out too much to anyone who hasn't read _The Tough Guide to FantasyLand_ and chortled over the section on color-coding.
Writers, on the other hand, have to craft their images very carefully. While they do sometimes overstep their bounds (if I read one more careful description of Anita Blake's choice of Nikes over Adidas...), Bull, and de Lint for that matter, tend to use the clothing as a way of subtly underscoring their characters. There's Willy, the half-sculpted visitor from Farie, who can't grasp the subtleties of human emotion, and who's always garbed in black and white ... our flamboyant phouka, for whom clothing is just another way to bite his thumb at humanity ... Dan's deliberate flouting of expectations with his Hawaiian shirt beneath his tux ... and, of course, the Fairie courts, both taking their cues from human stereotypes, and subverting pre-existing codes for their own purposes. Here, I'm just talking about how Bull uses clothing, as opposed to what I think of the clothing itself.
I have to admit that I don't like the phouka's tight paisely jeans any more than I liked Molly's elephant-print daishiki in _Tam Lin_ ... but, in both cases, I understand what the respective author's are saying about their character's by choosing those outfits. And I still envy the party outfit, with the midnight blue tulle with crescents and stars, and most of the phouka's selection of brocades ...
As for the Borderlands series, I think that you might be being a
bit too hard on the ambiance. I still wish that I had Wicker Leaf-and-Tree's
wardrobe budget, or Charis's freedom to consider "tight-laced
boots up to the thigh, that flashed out between layers of elvin
glitter cloth, " "are arms with silver cuffs,"
and "black glitter in [the] hair" as "[c]onservative,
but striking." Sigh ... for the mores of elvin taste. Some
of the specific episodes do seem eighties influenced - Ticker's
idea of power-dressing comes to mind - but others come from the
19th century, the 50's, 60's, or 70's, or simply from some undiscernable,
untrackable, undying ethos of coolness and rebellion. That seems
quite appropriate for a realm that exists on the fringes of time.
Best,
Helen [Who Has Just Realized Where Her Idiosyncratic, Anachronistic
Grasp on Fashion Comes From]
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Kristin
Registered User
(11/20/02 3:32:37 pm)
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Re: Sense, sensibility, and fashion ...
I didn't realize how much I noticed clothing in books until I read this discussion. I was a teenager in 80s Minneapolis and Emma's descriptions of clothing were fun to read and right on target. All the cool, alternative people in my high school were dressing that way. I always pictured the pouka as an "artist formerly known as Prince" look alike. Even though I read _Tam Lin_ years ago, I still remember cringing at a description of Molly's (?) outfits composed of multiple greens. It must be something about being a fellow red-head. I agree with you, Helen, that the descriptions of the Anita Blake's clothing are getting old since she wears the same things over and over again. I never tire of hearing what Jean Claude is wearing, though.
Kristin
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Leah
Unregistered User
(11/27/02 10:53:45 am)
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Noble-hearted kate
Noble-hearted kate by marianna mayer is a short version of kate crackernuts i found at the library.
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