HEARD THE ONE ABOUT THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE?



We all know how the hare, through intellectual arrogance, lost the race. He went to sleep thinking, hey, how can you lose to a tortoise. When he woke up, the tortoise was laughing in his face. The annoying moral has been clear for twenty five hundred years: don't count your chickens . Recently my granddaughter Hannah, aged eight, wrote a revisionist version of that fable, entitled: THE DUCK AND THE TURTLE'S RACE.

Before I give you a critical analysis of this postmodern text, note the slight change in characters. This came about because Hannah wrote the story while staying with me, and we had just been feeding a duck and her ten babies that live in a nearby pond. That explains the duck. I had told her that two years ago almost all the ducklings had been eaten by some sinister monster, probably a snapping turtle. So Hannah was really down on turtles that day. That explains why in her story the turtle does not win.

What is surprising though is that the duck doesn't win either. They both lose. Halfway through the race -- a swimming contest across the pond -- the duck falls asleep like the hare before her. The turtle, noticing this, decides on a snack break. He starts looking for goodies under water and forgets all about the race. The spectators who have brought prizes, like whistles, crayons and colored pennants (this is clearly seen in the illustrations), get bored and go home. Finally the duck and the turtle go home, too. End of story.

Now, being a postmodern writer myself, I dislike stories with easy epiphanies or morally transparent endings. (For example, I refuse to read Berenstain Bears books to any grandchild of mine.) But the ending of the Duck-and-Turtle story is perhaps too much of a good thing. Are we waiting for Godot here, or what? I talked about that with Hannah,although not in those terms, and she explained that readers like mystery and surprise. The mystery is "who'll win?," and the surprise is "nobody." I guess it's all very simple once you get past literary criticism. Good writing is just good writing.

As a reward for telling and illustrating --I did the writing-down from her dictation-- such an intriguing story, I took her to Drug Town where a new load of Beanie Babies had just arrived. They were arranged across a large table set up in the front of the store, in a mind - numbing display of cosy beaniness. Hannah stood there for a very long time, deciding which one to pick. But I didn't say anything. Anybody who can write about two single contestants both losing the race, doesn't need my help.

At Random - Adrian Korpel