(no subject)

[skygiants]

I think I just got my last read out of my childhood copy of Carol Kendall's The Gammage Cup -- the front cover has already fallen off, and the next page is soon to follow -- which I've had about as long as I can remember, though I haven't reread it in about ten years.

The Gammage Cup is a highly Tolkien-inspired middle-grade fantasy about about a community of small, plucky Definitely Not Hobbits, who live in a tragically conformist village inside a secluded valley. (Definitely resonance here with what evewithanapple mentioned the other day about kid's books written in a certain era and The Dangers Of Conformity Means Communism.)

The main plot concerns a band of misfits and artists who uncover evidence that the ANCESTRAL MUSHROOM ENEMIES of the Definitely Not Hobbits are planning to come through the mountains and attack. Alas, instead of heeding their warnings, the conformist villagers throw a hissy fit about the fact that the misfits and artists like to write in non-approved poetic forms and paint their doors non-approved colors, and kick them out of the village, where they must a.) build their own artist's colony and b.) also save the village from the invaders, using their magical swords that glow when goblins Ancestral Mushroom Enemies approach!

...on a reread, I have some Qualms about the fact that the triumphant conclusion revolves around a pacifist people rediscovering the art of warfare and slaughtering every single last one of their ancestral enemies, without any attempt at communication, and taking extra care to ensure that they can't escape the way they came.

HOWEVER, I still love Our Heroine Muggles, who is neither an artist nor a poet, but just a simple Definitely Not Hobbit who enjoys the color orange and is bummed that her neighbors won't allow her to wear an eye-searing sash in peace if she so chooses!

As a result, she accompanies the exiles on their journey, which is great because it turns out they would all literally die without her.

THE ARTISTS: Ah, freedom, away from the confinement of the village! Now we can spend all day doodling and writing blank verse -
MUGGLES: Right, sure, yes, after we have a house? We should have a house.
THE ARTISTS: Right! OK! Yes! We'll build a house! ... for a house we should find rocks I guess? ... huh, what an interestingly-shaped rock, maybe I'll write a poem about it .....? What were we doing again?
MUGGLES: ...look, I'm just going to make a chore roster.

Doing all the emotional labor for a Colony of Free-Spirited Artists honestly doesn't sound like a good time, but I appreciate that this is the heroism that The Gammage Cup chooses to celebrate! The best parts of the book are all the moments when Muggles just thinks through artist's colony survival logistics and DESPAIRS, like, 'ok, we've got to do laundry - and eventually our clothes are going to run out - and then we'll have to make more - for which we'll need cloth - for which we need thread - SHIT WE DON'T HAVE A SPINNING WHEEL, WHY ARE WE SO UNSUSTAINABLE.'

I am also very fond of Muggles' love interest Mingy, the town's angry, petty socialist accountant.

LOCAL POLITICIANS: Mingy! why are you so stingy! You complain every time we want to use the town's funds for public works projects, like painting people's houses!
MINGY: Because if we use all the money on painting houses there will be no money left for the SOCIAL SAFETY NET, assholes! UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE FOR ALL!

Then he runs off with the others and is immediately like "let's never have gold in our artist's colony, money is the root of all evil."

Eventually the time comes that the artists have to send someone to do the extremely dangerous task of sneaking into Mushroom Person territory to spy on them; everyone volunteers, and they ask Muggles to pick who will go. Muggles, no hesitation: "Definitely I am sending Mingy into this extremely dangerous task! because, unlike the rest of you, he WILL NOT GET DISTRACTED, and therefore will PROBABLY BE FINE." Romance!

Comments

[conuly]

Gammage Cup and its sequel, the name of which escapes me (Whisper of Glocken) is one of those books that shows up with surprising frequency on what was that book sites. Personally, I think I was in the wrong mindset when I first read it, and so found it enjoyable but not fascinating or life-changing.

[sovay]

Gammage Cup and its sequel, the name of which escapes me (Whisper of Glocken)

There's at least a third in the series, The Firelings (1981); it's a prequel by a couple of centuries and similarly concerns the misadventures of a group of misfits who become heroes, but with more folklore, well-deployed archaic vocabulary, and volcanoes. I'm meh about The Whisper of Glocken except for its angle on the protagonists of The Gammage Cup, but I really like The Firelings.

[conuly]

A third one! I must check it out one of these days.

[skygiants]

The Firelings is my favorite! A+ human sacrifice plot, amazing terrible traumatized teens. (I do not remember anything about The Whisper of Glocken, though I know I've read it.)

[kore]

WTF, I never heard of the other two, but Firelings sounds familiar.

[sovay]

WTF, I never heard of the other two, but Firelings sounds familiar.

"At its appointed time, the sun bobbed out of the Swollen Sea and brought to life the Scars of Cherrychoke that stood in the nest of Belcher's collarbone high above the village. One by one, like a procession of elders, the angular shafts of rock cast their shadows against Belcher's right shoulder: Old Crank and Wotkin; then Ashlar with the long-tailed rat on his head; obsequious Sadiron bowing and scraping to Toplady; several minor figures known as dworkins; and last of all and most important, Skopple Guy of the Hand. It was said that as long as Skopple Guy extended his arm above the pillow, so long would Firelings endure."

[kore]

Hunh. I am stuck in the position of "I don't think I ever read this book but somehow it sounds really familiar." Not a bad memory issue, it's happened before. Maybe something to do with L-Space.

[cyphomandra]

I am another person who had no idea there was a third! I loved the first (which I have a UK edition of, The Minnipins) and own The Whisper of Glocken but didn't like it as much. Now I have something else to quest for...

[skygiants]

If I remember the story right, my dad used to date Carol Kendall's daughter, so these are some of the first books I remember owning -- I never met anyone else who had read them, though, so I always thought they were super obscure, and it came as a surprise to me a little later to find out a bunch of people had!

[affreca]

I have fond memories reading the Gammage Cup. Carol Kendall was the "local author" my school brought in to talk to us the year they had us make a book (write, revise and draw a 10 page book). It is one of the few books I was assigned that was to my taste.

[skygiants]

That's awesome! The only local author I ever remember coming to talk to us was Brian Jacques, who roused my eternal ire by reaffirming his principles that All Rats Are Evil.

[landofnowhere]

I have vaguely fond memories of The Gammage Cup from childhood, but have not read it in years. Glad to hear it mostly holds up to reread!

[skygiants]

I think the last time I read it was in 2007, maybe? It seemed like it was time!

[sovay]

I am also very fond of Muggles' love interest Mingy, the town's angry, petty socialist accountant.

You will not be surprised to hear that I read this book quite young and that Mingy is my favorite character, but also that I love Muggles, who is anything but nice, normal, and easily led, and love both of them as a romantic couple. They are wonderful models of the kind of non-conformity that is not as obviously counterculture as the other three outlaws. Poetry, whatever. Healthcare!

(I could have sworn I had written about this book somewhere, but a DW search says not. I agree that the unproblematic slaughter of the Mushrooms is, well, a problem.)

[skygiants]

It is one of the less surprising things I've read today, yes. :P I was always extremely fond of Mingy but I never quite appreciated just HOW amazingly anti-capitalist he was until this read. I support his platform and would vote for him in a public election!

[rachelmanija]

I read this an adult and the main thing I remember about is the alarming slaughter of the goblins. I don't own it so I can't check, but I feel like there must be something in the way it's written that makes it come across as unusually WTF, because really a lot of kids' books feature the slaughter of an inhuman enemy without it really standing out as creepy. Maybe it's because they block their escape route and slaughter them as they're fleeing in terror.

[skygiants]

Yeah, it's rather horrifyingly explicit that Our Heroes want to make sure none of them escape and they all are slaughtered - and it's not like the mushrooms have particularly evil goals, either; all we know is that they want to steal gold. And they don't kill Mingy when they capture him, either, and they even try to feed him! ...admittedly he's poisoned so it's probably a matter of time before he keels over, but as horrors go it's really not that far up there.

[kore]

(Definitely resonance here with what [personal profile] evewithanapple mentioned the other day about kid's books written in a certain era and The Dangers Of Conformity Means Communism.)

Thereby confusing all of us who grew up in 1970s suburbia, where things happened like the burly intimidating guy from down the street telling my parents to take better care of their lawn because "the way it is now, it makes us all look bad."

[skygiants]

THAT TOO IS THE DANGER OF CONFORMITY

(I mean, to be fair, I do believe a lot of 1970s authors wrote The Dangers of Conformity out of a combo of cold war scare and 'screw you, suburbia, I'm a free spirit and I do what I want!')

[sovay]

Thereby confusing all of us who grew up in 1970s suburbia, where things happened like the burly intimidating guy from down the street telling my parents to take better care of their lawn because "the way it is now, it makes us all look bad."

I always took the conformity of The Gammage Cup as classic 1959 all-American ticky-tacky.

[luzula]

MINGY: Because if we use all the money on painting houses there will be no money left for the SOCIAL SAFETY NET, assholes! UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE FOR ALL!

Then he runs off with the others and is immediately like "let's never have gold in our artist's colony, money is the root of all evil."

This does not sound like a book which is warning against the evils of communism? (Unless it's, like, a social democrat warning against the evils of communism.)

[skygiants]

I don't think it's specifically warning against the evils of communism so much as, like - there was this very strong trend at a certain point in children's fiction written during the Cold War that CONFORMISM = EVIL which I don't think can be entirely extricated from the very strong trend in American rhetoric that COMMUNISM = CONFIRMITY = EVIL, AMERICA = INDIVIDUALITY = GOOD, all of which may not be tied specifically to any given author's actual political views so much as prevailing cultural context, you know?

[watersword]

Wait wait wait, the heroine's name is literally Muggles?

[skygiants]

LITERALLY. And according to Wikipedia, this actually came up in the JKR lawsuit days when it turned out that Carol Keenan had used the word before either JKR OR the person attempting to sue her! "Kendall found the incident amusing and was not ill-disposed towards either author. Speaking about the copying, she said, "I've got no quarrel with them ... There's only so many ideas and if you have one then someone else out there probably has the same one, too.""

[bookblather]

ANGRY PETTY SOCIALIST OH MY GOD that is SUCH a perfect description of Mingy. I love this book sfm.

[alchimie]

I read this for the first time last year and enjoyed it so much; I agree about the oddness of rediscovering military glory, but as a full-time homemaker I appreciated the celebration of Muggles wearing her orange sash while concentrating on everyone getting clothed and fed and sheltered.