Thursday, February 4, 2010

Artifact of a Literary Cargo Cult

TITLE: Return to the Hundred Acre Wood
AUTHOR: David Benedictus
PUBLISHER: Dutton Juvenile

RATING
5/5 “Wrath of Khan”; 4/5 “Terminator II: Judgment Day”; 3/5 “Shrek 2”; 2/5 “Ocean’s Twelve”; 1/5 “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo”
SCORE 3/5

Christopher Robin, Winnie-the-Pooh and all their friends are back for more adventures in this loving recreation of the tone and setting of the original stories. Sadly, it's almost the inverse of the charge of the Light Brigade - It's Pooh, but it isn't magnificent.

"Return to the Hundred Acre Wood" is billed as the first sequel in 80 years to A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, but of course it isn't. Thanks to the magic of Disney, anyone born after about 1970 has been positively deluged in books, videos and toys bearing Pooh's beaming, beatific face. How can he "return" when he never left?

Ah well, author David Benedictus and the trustees of the Milne estate would rather you forget the decades of Disney marketing, and return to the kinder, simpler, "classic" Pooh. Pooh does not wear a shirt, Tigger does not bounce on his tail, and Piglet is a lovely forest green. Mr Benedictus presents us with 10 new Pooh stories that are more an act of homage than work of children's literature. The question is not really whether he succeeds, but how badly he fails.

You see, as far as most book lovers are concerned, publishing an "authorize sequel" to a beloved classic tends to rate on the literary respectability scale somewhere between ghost writing and necrophilia. There's always the suspicion that the author is lacking in talent, imagination and scruples. Sequels to classics as varied as Gone With the Wind, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Peter Pan have been met with scorn, derision and outright hostility. It isn't "necessary", fans grumble, not "respectful". The author must walk a fine line: Too much imagination smacks of adolescent fan fiction, too little, of plagiarism.

Mr Benedictus falls fairly firmly on the "too little" side of the divide.

Is the book necessary? What a rubbish question. Of course not. But then, how is Shakespeare "necessary", unless you have a draft or an especially wobbly table? Certainly, the appeal will largely be limited to British and Anglophile purists of a certain age who despise the Disney Pooh as precisely the Wrong Sort of Bear, who like all redshirts should be disposed of quickly. Mr Benedictus and the illustrator, Mark Burgess, are at pains to recreate the look and feel of Milne's originals, and in this they have largely succeeded.

Is it respectful? Heavens, yes. Mr Benedictus is positively self-flagellating in his devotion to Mr Milne. The new stories excel in following the form of the classics, but it often feels like hollow mimicry, a kind of South Pacific cargo cult pining for the 1920's. There's the same capitalization of Important Words, the same energy devoted to doing Nothing, the same idyllic world--cricket and crosswords are as exciting as this gets. But all in all, it succeeds in being merely pleasantly bland, a bit like a digestive biscuit.

Partly, I suspect, this is because of a difference in perspective. Mr Benedictus is over 70, nearly twice the age Mr Milne was when he wrote the originals. And the stories a grandfather tells his grandchildren are inevitably different from those a father tells his son. There's less adventure, more warmth and fuzziness and "In all the world, you are the one and only, incomparable Winnie-the-Pooh"-ness. The humor is of the "Spell it" "I-T" level, rather than the wry wit of the original. Mr Benedictus's one foray into new ground is the addition to the cast of Lottie the Otter, which goes about as well as you'd expect, in that Mr Benedictus has the sense to keep her appearances to a minimum.

The truth, alas, is that Mr Milne is dead, even Christopher Robin Milne is dead, and we shall not see their like again. Attempting to recreate the magic only underscores its absence. I appreciate the thought, but I'd much rather find something new that makes me feel the way I felt when I first read Winnie-the-Pooh, than sit here and pick at the loss like a hole in my childhood.

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