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‘The Waitress’On shelves July 5th

Zipes releases new dates for talks

New book format adopted for Zipes’ lat-est short story, ‘The Waitress’

New book format adopted for Zipes’ lat-est short story, ‘The Waitress’

11.5.12

7.5.12

16.4.12

25.3.12

25.3.12

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Author Profile

Author, scholar, teacher, translator, activist Jack Zipes has transformed research on fairy tales from the superficial discussions of suitability and violence to the linguistic roots and socialization function of the tales. According to Zipes, fairy tales “serve a meaningful social function not just for compensa-tion but for revelation: the the worlds projected by the best of our fairy tales reveal the gaps between truth and falsehood in our immediate society.” After Zipes, no one can view a Disney rendition with equanimity again.

A previous professor of German at the University of Minnesota, Jack Zipes has also taught at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, the University of Florida, and New York University. He has written twenty-five books, many of which are accessible to the lay reader which is in keeping with his reputa-tion as a public scholar. Titles such as Don’t Bet on the Prince and The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Ridinghood mask the serious scholarship behind the books. A PhD in comparative literature from Columbia resulted from an extended stay in Germany where he went to write a novel and discovered German which led to a reading knowledge of French, Italian, and Spanish. Political activism in the late sixties forged a critical examination of fairy tales and their role in gender directives. This background also led to the formation of the journal New German Critique and his acceptance of the editorship of The Lion and the Unicorn, a critical journal on children’s literature. He has been willing to speak to audiences as diverse as public school children and scholars of fantasy.

j a c kz i p e s

Why I Write

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Author Q & AAn interview with Jack Zipes, by Kenn Bannerman

KB) What or who, brought you into the fantasy field?

JZ) “Ever since I was eight-years-old I began writing stories and sitting on floors in libraries and reading myself into other realms. There was no major writer or book that brought me into the fantasy field. I think, like many people, I find our reality so disturbing, so unfulfilling, so corrupt, and so barbaric that I began conceiving alternatives to our social condition. All good literature provides hope, but the best of fantasy literature provides extraordinary hope, and I guess that is what I am after -- extraordinary hope.”

KB) You are considered an authority on fairy tales; do you take the title willingly?

JZ) “I dislike the term “authority”. So I don’t take the term willingly. I think I am very knowledgeable about fairy tales. I think I have a deep interest in fairy tales and I may even be obsessed by them. I feel driven to uncover tales that few people know and to share this knowledge and pleasure with other readers. I do a lot of storytelling with young people and try to animate them to become storytellers of their own lives. So, perhaps animator would be a better term to describe what I do - or mediator.”

KB) How do you think fairy tales reflect the society in which they were created?

JZ) I definitely believe (and can demonstrate and have demonstrated) that fairy tales reflect the conditions, ideas, tastes, and values of the societies in which they were created. Due to their symbolism, it is quite often very difficult to see how remarkably they comment on reality. One has to do a lot of scholarly detective work to draw parallels and to interpret their social significance. This is what makes studying fairy tales so challenging and fascinating. Once you begin to grasp the metaphors, the tales become enlightening.

KB) Within the last half century televised mythology has been supplanting the written and oral tradition of story-telling. Do you think this shows a society in decline or one in metamorphosis?

JZ) I think that the written word and the spoken word will never die out, nor will storytelling, for even on television, people are telling live sto-ries. There is obviously a danger that technology will foster more and more alienation and destroy communities. It has already happened. On the other hand, television and the internet have created new forms of communication. Perhaps the question should be rephrased. Perhaps we should ask whether we would be better off if more and more people controlled the mass media instead of corporate conglommerates. Without sounding

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j a c kz i p e s

Author Q & AAn interview with Jack Zipes, by Kenn Bannerman

KB) What or who, brought you into the fantasy field?

JZ) “Ever since I was eight-years-old I began writing stories and sitting on floors in libraries and reading myself into other realms. There was no major writer or book that brought me into the fantasy field. I think, like many people, I find our reality so disturbing, so unfulfilling, so corrupt, and so barbaric that I began conceiving alternatives to our social condition. All good literature provides hope, but the best of fantasy literature provides extraordinary hope, and I guess that is what I am after -- extraordinary hope.”

KB) You are considered an authority on fairy tales; do you take the title willingly?

JZ) “I dislike the term “authority”. So I don’t take the term willingly. I think I am very knowledgeable about fairy tales. I think I have a deep interest in fairy tales and I may even be obsessed by them. I feel driven to uncover tales that few people know and to share this knowledge and pleasure with other readers. I do a lot of storytelling with young people and try to animate them to become storytellers of their own lives. So, perhaps animator would be a better term to describe what I do - or mediator.”

KB) How do you think fairy tales reflect the society in which they were created?

JZ) I definitely believe (and can demonstrate and have demonstrated) that fairy tales reflect the conditions, ideas, tastes, and values of the societies in which they were created. Due to their symbolism, it is quite often very difficult to see how remarkably they comment on reality. One has to do a lot of scholarly detective work to draw parallels and to interpret their social significance. This is what makes studying fairy tales so challenging and fascinating. Once you begin to grasp the metaphors, the tales become enlightening.

KB) Within the last half century televised mythology has been supplanting the written and oral tradition of story-telling. Do you think this shows a society in decline or one in metamorphosis?

JZ) I think that the written word and the spoken word will never die out, nor will storytelling, for even on television, people are telling live sto-ries. There is obviously a danger that technology will foster more and more alienation and destroy communities. It has already happened. On the other hand, television and the internet have created new forms of communication. Perhaps the question should be rephrased. Perhaps we should ask whether we would be better off if more and more people controlled the mass media instead of corporate conglommerates. Without sounding corny, I think if technology served the people, instead of people serving technolgy, we would not have to worry about social decadence and decline. (Incidentally, fairy tales measure to what extend we are losing the struggle against alienation and exploitation.)

KB) Over the past half century, fairy tales have slowly been sanitised and even censored by “family values” zealots. If you look at fairy tales past, someone usually dies or gets baked in an oven or turned into butter or meets their end in some horrible way. What do you think of today’s “politically correct” stories like Care Bears or that purple dinosaur?

JZ) Personally there is something perverse about Care Bears and the inane Barney. They are so sweet and clean and antiseptic that I want to throw up. On the other hand, I find a show like Mr. Rogers very compelling because he is gentle and kind and has a subtle sense of humor. So, for the very young, ages 1 - 6 or so, I do think we should take care about what stories we tell without overprotecting the children or censoring material. The sanitization process and political correctness can be very dangerous because they lead to censorship, police states, radical fundamentalism, etc. I have raised my own daughter on all sorts of stories without censorship, with curse words and violent scenes, where appropriate in the plot. Depending on the relationship a child has to the storyteller, and depending on the context, I think it is important that the child be able to listen to any story imaginable. In fact, the children imagine stories more gruesome and more violent than we can imagine. So it all boils down to honesty -- how honest is the story or storyteller. Fairy tales, the best of fairy tales, are very honest, never mince words, and challenge everyone’s imagina-tion. They should never be sanitized.

KB) Reading Joseph Campbell’s “The Power Of Myth”, I was struck by the similarities in the creation myths throughout vastly differing cultures and ages. Despite our differences, it seems we’re all asking the same questions: where do we come from; and how do we keep doing it. In your experience, do non-religious based stories share these similarities? That is (barring cultural and environment differences) are people from Rey-kjavik telling the same stories as those from Johannesburg?

JZ) It is uncanny how similar tales -- let’s focus on oral wonder tales or fairy tales -- are throughout the world. I am presently translating Sicilian fairy tales told in the 19th century, and they are remarkably similar to many French, German, and British tales that circulated about the same time, and the peasant women who told these marvelous tales would not have known of the French, German, and British versions. How has this come

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Jack Zipes(612) 825-9060 (612) [email protected]

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Book Archive

Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (Routledge Classics)

The Complete Fairy Tales (Vintage Classics)

The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films

Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England

The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm (Norton Critical Editions)

Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre

The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood: Versions of the Tale in Sociocultural Context

When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition

Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry

Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter

Little Red Riding Hood and Other Classic French Fairy Tales

Creative Storytelling: Building Community/Changing Lives

The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World 2e

From The Beast To The Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers

Beautiful Angiola: The Lost Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Laura Gonzenbach: The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales

The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (Penguin Modern Classics)Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion:

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Book Reviews

Kenneth Negus, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Other World in The Germanic Review 41 (March, 1966):145.

Lawrence Price, The Reception of U.S. Literature in Germany in The Germanic Review 43(January, 1968): 7-77.

Hans Mayer, Zur deutschen Literatur der Zeit in The Germanic Review 44 (January, 1969): 71-3.

W. Lamarr Kopp, German Literature in the United States, 1945-1960 in The Germanic Review44 (May, 1969): 239-41.

Georg Lukács, Goethe and His Age in University Review (January, 1970): 16-17.

Kurt Böttcher, ed. Romantik in The Germanic Review 45 (January, 1970): 75-77.

Ruby Cohen, Currents in Contemporary Drama in The Germanic Review 47 (January, 1972):70-72.

John Flores, Poetry in East Germany in Allemagnes d’aujourd’hui, 31 (January, 1972): 66-8.

Nagi Naguib, Robert Walser in The Germanic Review 47 (March, 1972): 152-53.

Jost Hermand, Unbequeme Literatur in Monatshefte 64 (Spring, 1972): 90-92.

Mary Schubert, Wilhem Heinrich Wackenroder’s Confessions and Fantasies in ModernLanguage Journal 57 (December, 1973): 435-36.

C. Innes, The Theater of Erwin Piscator in Modern Language Journal 58 (April, 1974): 211-12.Special Issues of the GDR, Allemagnes d’aujourd’hu and Dimensions in New German Critique 2 (Spring, 1974): 152-57.

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