My favourite kids books have a moment that break the world.
Like, the original run of Angelina Ballerina illustrated books (there are a dozen or so) are about a kid who is really into ballet who lives in that kind of traditional English village that never really existed.
Also she is a mouse. They’re all mice. They eat more cheese than you’d expect but otherwise it’s basically this series of books about Angelina in her cottage and her village-related and ballet-related adventures.
The fact she is a mouse is neither here nor there.
Except then there’s the book Angelina and Henry which explicitly mentions the frame. They go camping in Big Cat mountain, and get lost, and see (or don’t see) the mythical big cat.
There’s no mention of ballet. Just this abrupt calling out of the scaffolding of the universe. We’re no longer in a world of ballet stories told with stylised mice; we’re in a world of mice.
Another moment I remember like this is from The Wind in the Willows.
Mole, Ratty, Badger and Mr Toad have their various adventures.
It’s by turns homely and farcical – Mole starts off spring cleaning, then goes boating with Ratty, then Mr Toad gets a car and goes to prison, then there’s the battle for Toad Hall. I think Mr Toad dresses up as a washer woman at some point, all the usual stuff.
Only… you read the book, then there’s suddenly this chapter in which Mole and Ratty hang out on the river bank, and the god Pan turns up, and they gently encounter paradise or something - I forget exactly - then they go to sleep and forget the entire episode, and it’s never mentioned again.
I can’t put my finger on what exactly this chapter does to the narrative frame. It simultaneously breaks it and completes it.
In a way these are both Tom Bombadil moments.
Tom Bombadil is a character in The Lord of the Rings. He is all-powerful – at least within his domain in the woods, which he has no interest in leaving. He remembers the beginning of time. Wikipedia: the character does not fit neatly into the categories of beings Tolkien created.
He is entirely unaffected by the One Ring. An affable god.
But he’s not an intrusion of the outer reality to the inner reality of the fiction as I track with my Narcissist Creator Razor, or as least I can’t read him like that.
He’s a piece of grit in the narrative world.
So the presence of these enigmas seems to make them more real, someone.
The real world doesn’t fit neatly together. The real world contains the unexplained.
Therefore a real fictional universe must contain the unexplained too. Is that it?
Not the kind of unexplained that preoccupies everyone inside the fictional world, not like that, not a mystery. Rather: a magical nonsense which is a nonsense only to the reader, something that doesn’t fit even given our omniscient point of view, but the characters of the inner reality respectfully take it for granted.
Literary theory folks: is there a name for this device?
And for other folks who own metaphor systems – designers of user interfaces, say: is there something similar? Is there part of the classic Mac OS that utterly breaks your suspension of disbelief about the desktop metaphor and direct manipulation, yet somehow it couldn’t do without?
My favourite kids books have a moment that break the world.
Like, the original run of Angelina Ballerina illustrated books (there are a dozen or so) are about a kid who is really into ballet who lives in that kind of traditional English village that never really existed.
Also she is a mouse. They’re all mice. They eat more cheese than you’d expect but otherwise it’s basically this series of books about Angelina in her cottage and her village-related and ballet-related adventures.
The fact she is a mouse is neither here nor there.
Except then there’s the book Angelina and Henry which explicitly mentions the frame. They go camping in Big Cat mountain, and get lost, and see (or don’t see) the mythical big cat.
There’s no mention of ballet. Just this abrupt calling out of the scaffolding of the universe. We’re no longer in a world of ballet stories told with stylised mice; we’re in a world of mice.
Another moment I remember like this is from The Wind in the Willows.
Mole, Ratty, Badger and Mr Toad have their various adventures.
It’s by turns homely and farcical – Mole starts off spring cleaning, then goes boating with Ratty, then Mr Toad gets a car and goes to prison, then there’s the battle for Toad Hall. I think Mr Toad dresses up as a washer woman at some point, all the usual stuff.
Only… you read the book, then there’s suddenly this chapter in which Mole and Ratty hang out on the river bank, and the god Pan turns up, and they gently encounter paradise or something - I forget exactly - then they go to sleep and forget the entire episode, and it’s never mentioned again.
I can’t put my finger on what exactly this chapter does to the narrative frame. It simultaneously breaks it and completes it.
In a way these are both Tom Bombadil moments.
Tom Bombadil is a character in The Lord of the Rings. He is all-powerful – at least within his domain in the woods, which he has no interest in leaving. He remembers the beginning of time. Wikipedia:
He is entirely unaffected by the One Ring. An affable god.
But he’s not an intrusion of the outer reality to the inner reality of the fiction as I track with my Narcissist Creator Razor, or as least I can’t read him like that.
He’s a piece of grit in the narrative world.
So the presence of these enigmas seems to make them more real, someone.
The real world doesn’t fit neatly together. The real world contains the unexplained.
Therefore a real fictional universe must contain the unexplained too. Is that it?
Not the kind of unexplained that preoccupies everyone inside the fictional world, not like that, not a mystery. Rather: a magical nonsense which is a nonsense only to the reader, something that doesn’t fit even given our omniscient point of view, but the characters of the inner reality respectfully take it for granted.
Literary theory folks: is there a name for this device?
And for other folks who own metaphor systems – designers of user interfaces, say: is there something similar? Is there part of the classic Mac OS that utterly breaks your suspension of disbelief about the desktop metaphor and direct manipulation, yet somehow it couldn’t do without?