sovay: (Default)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2021-06-04 08:17 am

I'm a mess of history with a sincere desire for you to love me

I had occasion this afternoon to mention Carol Kendall's The Gammage Cup (1959) and realized that I have never really written about it. It is one of the books that would almost certainly have been formative had I discovered it in childhood; instead I found it in early high school and still loved it. These days I have much less love for the climactic battle with the Mushrooms—it's a sharp escalation of violence in an otherwise lightly satirical, ticky-tacky-toned fable and feels intrusively pseudo-Tolkien—but I love more every time an element I first noticed almost fifteen years ago, namely that while nonconformists who become heroes are one of the staples of children's literature, Kendall is nuanced about the ways in which people do not conform.

We are introduced early on to the usual suspects of Slipper-on-the-Water, the tenth of the twelve villages scattered along the banks of the Watercress River where for eight hundred and eighty years the Minnipins have dwelt in the Land Between the Mountains:

There were three Minnipins in the village who were usually referred to by their neighbors as "Oh, Them." "They" were not considered respectable; They were a law among themselves; They lived alone instead of marrying and raising families, as normal Minnipins did; worst of all, They flaunted cloaks of such an outlandish hue that it was shaming to be seen talking to them. Furthermore, the "Oh, Thems" didn't properly work at anything: Walter the Earl spent his time digging holes in the ground in his ridiculous search for hidden treasure; Curley Green was usually to be seen sitting on her stool in a corner of the marketplace, blobbing pictures onto stretched reed paper; and Gummy—well, Gummy was bone-idle.

Specifically, Gummy spends his time composing and just as often communicating in rhyming "scribbles," so differentiated from "proper poems" because they deviate from the official model just as Curley Green's "blobs" of figurative watercolors fly in the face of the rigorously geometric style of painting that has prevailed in Slipper-on-the-Water for the last four hundred and forty years, ever since the founder of the village's first family returned in triumph from his adventures in the Land Beyond the Mountains, bequeathing his descendants a museum's worth of curiosities, a unique set of curiously punctuated names, and the last word on tradition and propriety—a narrative vigorously disputed by Walter the Earl, whose long-sought treasure is the lost history of the Minnipins. His cloak is a gold-embroidered heirloom, Gummy's a sun-colored affront to decent watercress-green, Curley Green's an even more provocative scarlet, like the door of her house which isn't watercress-green, either. Every white-plastered house has its well-polished silver doorknob, its well-trimmed reed-thatched roof, its well-watered willow tree growing out front. It's not, like, Camazotz, but so far, so Malvina Reynolds. In such a neatly conservative atmosphere, a couple of eccentric artists and a revisionist historian are pretty much the counterculture a reader of the American 1950's would expect. Hence the introduction of Muggles and Mingy, whose misfitness is more complicated and complementary and, honestly, intensely relatable.

Insofar as the novel singles out a protagonist among the five eventual Outlaw-Heroes of Slipper-on-the-Water, it's Muggles, whose mode of not conforming is initially presented as a matter of failure, not resistance. The village candymaker and the closest thing the shrine-like museum has to a docent, she's been bullied all her life into thinking of herself as simpleminded and scatterbrained instead of an inspired lateral thinker with +10 logistics and a style of housekeeping best aligned under chaotic good. (She can find anything so long as she doesn't put it away.) Her personal preference of a bright orange sash is tolerated as a benign indulgence, her tentative disagreements with the Council of Periods treated as the corrupting influence of Them, a condescending denial of her originality even though in some ways she's the most radical of them all:

"What I mean is," she went on, "well, I don't think it's doors or cloaks or . . . or orange sashes. It's us. What I mean is, it's no matter what color we paint our doors or what kind of clothes we wear, we're . . . well, we're those colors inside us. Instead of being green inside, you see, like other folk. So I don't think maybe it would do any good if we just changed our outside color. We would still be . . . be orange or scarlet inside, and, well, we would do orange and scarlet things all the time, and everybody would still—"

Watching her grow into her convictions and comfort in her own unapologetically orange inside provides the most satisfying emotional arc of the novel, not to mention several of its best callouts. My favorite character remains the least obvious of the outlaw-heroes, Mingy. [personal profile] skygiants once described him as "the town's angry, petty socialist accountant" and I do not essentially dispute this sketch. He's the farthest thing imaginable from an eccentric artist, the perpetually scowling money keeper with a deserved reputation as a curmudgeon and a rather more unjust one as a miser—he is at constant odds with the council over the disposition of the village's funds, but he's fed to the teeth watching them paid out for superficial projects like scalloping the fringe of every roof in Slipper-on-the-Water when he's argued in vain for necessary public works like repairing the dock or establishing a sick fund "to take care of folk when they have bad luck or can't work." (If the Land Between the Mountains industrializes in his lifetime, I fully expect him to organize its first union.) Even so, as much as he's laughed at for it, he's an elected official and he carries the force of societal disapproval or at least compliance when he warns Muggles not to get herself in trouble "hobnobbing with Them." His cloak may be shabby, but it's sensibly cress-green. And yet when Slipper-on-the-Water works itself into a moral panic sufficient to outlaw its iconoclasts, Mingy not only seats himself deliberately on the more or less literal equivalent of the Group W Bench, he walks out with Muggles after the rest of Them and, until the pseudo-Tolkien overtakes the plot, wholeheartedly throws himself into life in an on-the-fly commune, right down to rejecting any notion of money. As Muggles blossoms in her differently organized fashion, he matches her in his grouchy integrity; they make one of the rare romantic couples in children's literature that I believe and uncritically cheer for and neither of them needs to belong to the avant-garde, because community organizers deserve love, too. He does sing, badly and happily, when he thinks no one's listening.

As far as I know, Kendall wrote only the three Minnipin novels; I don't actually care all that much for the sequel The Whisper of Glocken (1965) except for its perspective on the heroes of The Gammage Cup, but I adore the prequel The Firelings (1981) with its fantastic volcanic folklore:

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.

I wish The Gammage Cup ended without feeling like it detoured through a less interesting children's fantasy on the way, but the things it does well, I return for. Like universal healthcare and finding things according to their pile on the floor. And afterward I always want some watercress and trout.
minoanmiss: Nubian Minoan Lady (Nubian Minoan Lady)

The Gammage Cup

[personal profile] minoanmiss 2021-06-04 03:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh my stars and garters. I've been remembering this book in weird fragments for years and years (of ourse not titles or anything like that). I remember reading this as a child and how enthralled I was.
sartorias: (Default)

[personal profile] sartorias 2021-06-04 03:24 pm (UTC)(link)
I too discovered it as an adult. The last bit is definitely a disappointment, but I just relish the first three quarters or so. Great post about it.
pameladean: (Default)

[personal profile] pameladean 2021-06-05 01:32 am (UTC)(link)
If anybody had described the book to me in these terms, I'd have snabbled it up any way that I could. But I just ran across innumerable iterations of "Hobbit-like creatures adventure blah blah" and ran away. I'll have to give it a try, with due wariness for the pseudo-Tolkien.
ethelmay: (Default)

[personal profile] ethelmay 2021-06-07 02:30 am (UTC)(link)
I did think of them as a Tolkien ripoff, and a slightly twee one at that (I might not think so now). I liked them okay (the first two books - never saw the third that I recall), but they never felt quite real. But I was hypersensitive toward anything I thought was thrown in because it's funny when kids don't understand things ("Etcuh? How dumb do you think I am? It's et cetera," was the sort of reaction I had).
gwynnega: (books poisoninjest)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2021-06-05 02:23 am (UTC)(link)
I knew nothing about these books, but I love the description of Muggles and Mingy.
sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)

[personal profile] sholio 2021-06-05 05:28 am (UTC)(link)
This really sounds fun. And it looks like it's still in print! I'll have to pick up a copy and try it.
mrissa: (Default)

[personal profile] mrissa 2021-06-05 11:34 am (UTC)(link)
There's a third one?????

I only had The Gammage Cup and The Whisper of Glocken, and I also loved the former and was lukewarm on the latter, and...there's a third one with volcanoes?????

It doesn't look readily available, but now I know it's a thing to look for.

(My library catalog: "Obviously you meant 'Ruth Rendell.'" Catalog, I did not.)
skygiants: the aunts from Pushing Daisies reading and sipping wine on a couch (wine and books)

[personal profile] skygiants 2021-06-05 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm so glad you did this writeup! It might be time for my every-couple-years reread ...
asakiyume: (miroku)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2021-06-06 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
I've always wondered what this book was about--and I also always wondered what movie or book Minnipins attached to, and now both points of curiosity are satisfied.

I do like what you say about Mingy--he sounds like a character I would like very much. I would have a harder time with the first three iconoclasts, and I'm neutral on Muggle.

The story of nonconformism that I really love is The Dubious Hills. I appreciate that its nonconformity was nuanced and that it respected its conformity (even while centering the nonconformists).

But there's room for more than one story in the world, thank goodness!
asakiyume: (miroku)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2021-06-06 10:17 am (UTC)(link)
I love your last edit here--I love the view of the village they're in the process of creating. It reminds me of some of the pastoral parts of the Prydain chronicles, like Medwyn's Valley, or Llonio's family--though the Prydain sections weren't focused on the challenge of figuring out how to become self-sufficient. But yes! That's a whole different, deserving-in-and-of-itself story type that definitely doesn't need a whole Heroic Battle plot grafted onto it.

And yeah: regarding the other iconoclasts, exactly. I know that creative types *are* often outsiders and iconoclasts, but it's an often-told story, and I'm especially sick of it when it's paired with "oh these awful stick-in-the-mud hidebound types who can't possibly appreciate my free spirit." Even though, I grant you, that's the sort of situation a lot of artistic, laterally thinking people do have to grow up in. (.... But you know, even then, even for those people, I feel like it's worth the effort to try see beyond Oh what fuddy-duddies, all insisting on using circular muffin tins instead of star-shaped ones.)
asakiyume: (more than two)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2021-06-07 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
That does sound more nuanced. And really it's pretty foolish of me to be talking about my reaction to a thing I haven't even read. I'd know much better whether or not it works for me if I read it! But I think Firelings would/will definitely be the first thing I try.
asakiyume: actually nyiragongo (ruby lake)

PS Firelings

[personal profile] asakiyume 2021-06-06 10:19 am (UTC)(link)
You grabbed me with no-real-villain and *definitely* have me curious with the well-handled, human-sacrifice-containing religion. Plus: VOLCANO.
sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)

[personal profile] sholio 2021-06-21 03:04 am (UTC)(link)
I read this today (well, read part of it last night and finished it today) and really enjoyed it aside from, as you noted, the tone shift in the last few chapters; "and then they ruthlessly slaughtered their enemies down to the last man" was definitely not what I was expecting from the lighter, pastoral tone of the rest!

I agree with you, though, that I love the book's unusually nuanced take on what "nonconformist outsider" looks like (Mingy was very unsurprisingly my favorite, with Muggles a close second) and all the details of life in an impromptu artist's colony, which made me suspect that the author had personal experience with that kind of thing, or at the very least had put more thought into the details of running off to start a brand-new self-sufficient society than most people do.