Brothers & Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales (review)

Fairy tales are often, but not always, formulaic. They frequently begin "Once upon a time" and end with the satisfying, "And they lived happily ever after." Or so we believe. However, between the two stylistic bookends of this flexible genre that appeals as much to adults as children comes the all-important middle where the characters, the action, and the magic reside. Without a compelling story, no fairy tale or would-be literary fairy tale can survive, despite the use of a well-established opening or conclusion. No amount of allusions to the dark woods, menacing wolves, or princes, happy or unhappy, is going to save it.

That's the problem with Kate Bernheimer's Brothers & Beasts. It is a decidedly uneven anthology of personal essays, stories, and poems by twenty-three male writers who were invited to submit a personal essay on fairy tales. Bernheimer tried to keep the essays open-ended rather than asking the writers to limit their discussion of fairy tales to issues of gender or childhood. The collection starts out well with a brief foreword by Maria Tatar and ends with a thoughtful afterword by Jack Zipes that reminds the reader that fairy tales "cannot thrive without innovation, just as we cannot thrive without innovation" (184), and that the genre encourages writers to play with endless variations of the key elements.

But many of the contributors, like princes in fairy tales, get lost in the woods. For instance, the first essay by Steve Almond examines how he incorporated Betty MacDonald's Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories into his life as a ten-year-old boy. The only problem is MacDonald's books aren't fairy tales. Several of the contributors seem to have trouble distinguishing the forest from the trees, or in this case, the teller from the tale.

One of the best essays in the volume turns out to be Bernheimer's introduction, and it should have served as a model for the other contributors. Her insightful meditation explores the reasons for her childhood preference for Hansel over Gretel in Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel" despite her knowledge of the scholarship that praises Gretel's agency in the tale. Growing up a timid child with an equally shy younger brother and a dominating older sister, Bernheimer seems to have thrown her lot with her male sibling who was more a Charlie Brown than a handsome prince. Bernheimer is both a talented writer of The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold (2001) and the Complete Tales of Merry Gold (2006), as well as the editor of the literary journal The Fairy Tale Review. Her introduction reveals a deep knowledge and appreciation of fairy tales. If only her contributors shared her love of fairy tales.

That is not to say that there aren't a number of excellent personal essays that explore the influence of fairy tales on the emotional, intellectual, and writing lives of the male contributors. Like the beautiful bird that rises from the brother's bones in the Grimm's "The Juniper Tree," several of the selections soar over the rest, including Robert Coover's "Tale, Myth, Writer," Neil Gaiman's "Four Poems," Eric Kraft's charming "I Consider My Luck," and perhaps, most importantly, Gregory Maguire's "The World Turned Upside Down." After reading Maguire's essay, one is quick to realize that those years of working as a professor and associate director of the Center for the Study of Children's Literature at Simmons College were not wasted and were pivotal in the composition of his novels Wicked (1995), Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999), and Mirror, Mirror (2003). These writers keep focused on fairy tales, but too many of the other contributors wander off topic.

Many use fairy tales as a spring-board to discuss something else, often times themselves. Rather than the subtitle An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales, a more appropriate one might be "What We Write About When We Free Associate About...