Eru - what? Tuesday

Erudite Tuesdays at the Blethering Place

Volume 1, Number 1

Fox In Socks

Dr. Seuss

After reading Horton Hears a Who several years ago, I was dead impressed with Dr. Seuss. So when I saw this title while browsing shelves in the library, I had to pick it up.

The thing you have to know about Dr. Seuss is, he is a truly pedagogical author. This means that not only his subject matter and setting, but his voice, sense of humor, and perspective are keenly appealing to children. As with other children's writers, it also means that the picturesque and the ridiculous are mixed in equal parts with the oddly touching - just as the protagonist and the antagonist are the same person.

Now, when Tweetle Beetles fight, it's called a Tweetle Beetle Battle. And when they battle in a puddle, it's a Tweetle Beetle Puddle Battle. AND when Tweetle Beetles battle with paddles in a puddle, they call it a Tweetle Beetle Puddle Paddle Battle. AND when Beetles battle Beetles in a Puddle Paddle Battle, and the beetle battle's puddle is a puddle in a bottle, they call this a Tweetle Beetle Bottle Puddle Paddle Battle Muddle. AND when Tweetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles, and the bottle's on a poodle, and the poodle's eating noodles, they call this a Muddle Puddle Tweetle Poodle Beetle Noodle Bottle Paddle Battle. AND--"
"Now wait a minute, Mr. Socks Fox!

The main players on the stage are the Fox and Mr. Knox (who is, interestingly, initially referred to simply as "Knox"). Throughout the book the Fox attempts to get Knox to say extremely difficult Tongue-twisters that progress in complexity, culminating in a description of a Tweetle Beetle Battle: Knox has been upset repeatedly throughout the book ("I can't blab / such blibber blubber! / My tongue isn't / made of rubber") and finally explodes and pushes the Fox into the battle, simultaneously obtaining revenge and terminating the Fox's dissertation on the beetles:

"When a Fox is in the bottle where the Tweetle Beetles battle with their paddles in a puddle on a noodle-eating poodle, THIS is what they call......a Tweetle Beetle Noodle Poodle Bottled Paddled Muddled Duddled Fuddled Wuddled Fox In Socks, Sir!"

The reflections of the glorious contented past or the glittering champagne-coloured future are portrayed in a strange and specific way - the events of the book are impossible to date. The year is never mentioned. At different times I thought it was set in the 1980's, the late 1960's, the 1990's, and the '50s. It's an effective way of temporally displacing the reader in order to manufacture sympathy with -- and, conversely, distance from -- the narrator.

Knox is a weird dude. He's severely emotionally distant from everyone around him, and has an unnervingly amoral approach to life. He's mild-mannered and apathetic, and sinks himself into fantasy constantly. I was not sure which he most reminded me of - Bartleby the Scrivener or Walter Mitty.

Very well, sir.
Step this way.
We'll find another game to play.

Flashes of the profound come thick and fast in this book. Written as a verbal exchange, it is a mild series of observances about the performance of daily life as the narrator sees it pass in front of him. There are many characters that enter and exit the stage before him, and his descriptions of them are hilarious, quick-witted, misguided, sobering.

Sue sews rose
on Slow Joe Crow's clothes.
Fox sews hose
on Slow Joe Crow's nose.

I found myself very often wishing for a change in narrative perspective - searching the pages for insight into the truth about how others actually saw this character.

Well, then . . .
bring your mouth this way.
I'll find something
it can say.

The book is so funny - I started laughing out loud at around page 3, and continued to the last chapter. It won't be universally appealing: I know enough about my taste in books to know that. My sister, for one, would hate this book - primarily because she would hate the narrator, just as she loathed the Polite Elephant. I find myself alternately in sympathy and in exasperation, understanding his perspective on life even as I am wishing he would suck it up and get on with things.

Fox in socks,
our fame is done, sir.
Thank you for
a lot of fun, sir.

Keep an eye out for Dr. Seuss, if you are the type to appreciate the pain, the numbness, the conflict and the humor of the everyday.