Twisted Fairy Tales for Big Kids
Once upon a time, there was a magnificent golden castle on a silver cloud high up in the sky, which has nothing to do with anything because our story is about an old woodchopper who lived in a shack, but that’s a good way to start a fairy tale . . . .
Sound familiar? If you’re of a certain age and of a certain twisted frame of mind (or were of such mind a few short decades ago), then you will recognize at once the inimitable opening of yet another “Fractured Fairy Tale.”
For fans of the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoon show, the retelling of fairy tale favorites was the height of high parody during a less-than-hilarious time in Cold War history. Now comes author A.J. Jacobs, who normally works for an entertainment magazine “in a dark room in a tall tower on the island of Manhattan,” to conjure up some new tales in the fractious style of the classic TV show.
“Fractured Fairy Tales” (Bantam Books Hardcover, $19.95) is ripe with atrocious puns the cartoon was famous for but these retellings also apply a modern--often politically painful--twist to some of the baby boomers’ favorites.
Rumpelstiltskin is reinvented as a flack hired to bring fame and fortune to the miller’s daughter by planting stories in the media (“I’ll just contact Liz Smith”) about her talent for spinning straw into gold. Pinocchio is the real son of a network president and gets cast in Dad’s successful prime-time soap, “Faraway City 90210.”
In an irreverent but far less violent version than the original, Hansel and Gretel reach out to the wicked witch with career counseling. In another of the book’s 25 fractured tales, a courageous prince rescues six princesses from an evil spell--by wearing a dress. And, in “Son of King Midas,” Junior strikes out on his own to become a prince of dentistry.
“Sir, if I touch one tooth, your entire set will turn to gold.”
“Fine by me,” said the man.
And so the man got a mouth full of gold. And then he told the young man how to put his golden touch to good use. No, he didn’t tell him to open a muffler shop. He told him to become a locksmith.
What does the golden touch have to do with being a locksmith, you ask? Well, haven’t you ever heard of Goldilocks?
The bad puns don’t end there. There’s the story of “The Flying Carpet,” in which the only way to get the carpet off the ground is to sew little things that can fly--bees, in this case--into the lining of the rug. It works, of course, and the sultan flies around on his carpet every day, ignoring the occasional bee sting. So satisfied is the sultan that he lets the flying carpet salesman marry his daughter. And everyone is happy.
For after all, the carpet was a gift. And everyone knows that “The bee stings in life are free!”