The 13 Clocks
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| Author | James Thurber |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Marc Simont |
| Cover artist | Marc Simont |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | January 1, 1950 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 124 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0-44-040582-5 |
The Thirteen Clocks is a fantasy tale written by James Thurber in 1950 in Bermuda, while he was completing one of his other novels. It is written in a unique cadenced style, in which a mysterious prince must complete a seemingly impossible task to free a maiden from the clutches of an evil duke. It invokes many fairy tale motifs.[1]
The story is noted for Thurber's constant, complex wordplay, and his use of an almost continuous internal meter, with occasional hidden rhymes — akin to blank verse, but with no line breaks to advertise the structure. Previous fantasy books by Thurber, such as Many Moons, The Wonderful O, and particularly The White Deer, also contained hints of this unusual prose form, but here it becomes a universal feature of the text, to the point where it is possible to predict the word order for a given phrase (for example, "the Golux said" vs. "said the Golux") by looking at the pattern of emphasis in the preceding phrase.
By the time he wrote this book, Thurber was blind, so he could not draw cartoons for the book, as he had done with The White Deer five years earlier. He enlisted his friend Marc Simont to illustrate the original edition. The Golux is said to wear an "indescribable hat". Thurber made Simont describe all his illustrations, and was satisfied when Simont was unable to describe the hat. When it was reissued by Puffin Books, it was illustrated by Ronald Searle. The book has been reprinted by The New York Review Children's Collection, with original illustrations by Marc Simont and an introduction by Neil Gaiman.[2]
Plot summary
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (August 2007) |
The evil Duke of Coffin Castle lives with his niece, the beautiful Saralinda. The castle's thirteen clocks are stopped at "ten minutes to five". After many attempts to get them working again the Duke has decided that he killed Time.
Suitors to the hand of Princess Saralinda are ordered to perform impossible tasks, and in many cases suitors have been slain by the Duke over trifles or over slight (or even imaginary) insults.
Saralinda is about to turn 21 when a mysterious minstrel named Xingu arrives in the town below the castle. The minstrel hatches a plan to gain access to the castle by singing a silly song about the Duke, as this invariably enrages the Duke (as do names which begin with X). As the minstrel finishes his song, the Golux materializes and announces his intention to help both the minstrel and the Princess.
Although the Golux admits he forgets things and makes mistakes, he is "on the side of good" and he gives the minstrel advice on how to deal with the Duke. He mysteriously vanishes as the Iron Guards arrive to arrest the minstrel.
The next day the minstrel is brought before the Duke, who, instead of killing him outright, sets the minstrel to perform an impossible task, even though the minstrel points out that "only princes may aspire to Saralinda's hand."
Back in the dungeon, the minstrel again encounters the Golux, who has mysteriously appeared claiming to have forgotten to tell the minstrel something important. He tells the minstrel to convince the Duke to make the intended task a search for 1,000 jewels, and it is now revealed that the minstrel is actually Prince Zorn of Zorna. Zorn believes that the only place to find 1,000 jewels is in his father's "casks and vaults and coffers", and that the task will take 99 days to complete: "three-and-thirty days to go, and three-and-thirty days to come back here ... [and] it always takes my father three-and-thirty days to make decisions."
Zorn is worried about completing the task, but the Golux reassures him that he has "other plans than one." On their way to the Duke's presence, a guard tells the Prince about the Todal, a creature that "looks like a blob of glup ... makes a sound like rabbits screaming and smells of old unopened rooms ... an agent of the Devil, sent to punish evildoers for having done less evil than they should."
Accompanied by his spies, Hark and Listen, the Duke reveals the task which the Prince must complete: bring the Duke 1,000 jewels within 99 hours, and return when the clocks are striking five o'clock. As the prince leaves the castle, Saralinda throws a rose to him from her window.
Not far from the castle, the Golux reappears and reveals himself to be the Duke's spy Listen. The Golux comes up with what he believes is a sure-fire plan: there is a woman nearby, Hagga, who was given the magical power to weep jewels instead of tears. The rose which Saralinda tossed to the prince serves as a compass to guide them, and they travel for two days until they reach Hagga's hut. Hagga is alive and well, but unfortunately, she has been made to weep so much in the past by people who wanted jewels that she is no longer able to weep even at the saddest stories.
Although the prince and the Golux try and fail to make Hagga weep, they find an oaken chest filled to the brim with jewels. Hagga tells them that they are "the jewels of laughter", beautiful but of no use to the Prince in his quest as they last but a fortnight, unlike the jewels of tears which last forever. As they watch, the jewels dissolve back into tears. In desperation, the Golux and the Prince try to make Hagga laugh and fail at this also. Inexplicably, Hagga laughs uncontrollably until the hut is ankle-deep in jewels. The Golux and the Prince gather 1,000 jewels, thank Hagga and leave.
At the castle, the Duke, with Hark in attendance, is waiting impatiently counting down the Prince's remaining time. He reveals his intention to marry Princess Saralinda himself when she has turned twenty-one; when Hark objects, the Duke reveals that Saralinda is not really his niece, but a princess whom he had kidnapped when she was a baby. Unfortunately for him, Saralinda's nurse was a witch, and cast a spell upon him as he fled with Saralinda.
Under the spell, he cannot marry Saralinda until she is 21 and must keep her safe from his schemes until then, he must allow princes to seek her hand in marriage although he is allowed to set them whatever tasks he pleases so that they may prove themselves, and, most importantly, "she can be saved, and [the Duke] destroyed, only by a prince whose name begins with X and doesn't." The Duke feels himself safe, but Hark gleefully reminds him that Prince Zorn of Zorna had been disguised as a minstrel named Xingu ... so Zorn of Zorna is the prince whose name begins with X and doesn't.
The Duke becomes worried that the Prince and the Golux have secretly gotten into the castle and orders all his guards (each of whom had been guarding a clock) to follow him in a search of the castle. Once the room is deserted, the Golux and Princess Saralinda enter through a secret passage, and the Golux figures out how Saralinda can start the clocks again.
When the Duke and Listen return, Prince Zorn, Saralinda and the Golux are waiting for them, with a pile of jewels on the oak table and the clocks are chiming five. While the Duke is counting the jewels, the Golux and Hark reveal that Saralinda's father is the good King Gwain of Yarrow, who gave Hagga the power to weep jewels. Hark also reveals himself to be a servant of King Gwain who was forced to work for the Duke and unable to save the princess himself due to being under a witch's spell.
The count completed, the group leaves the castle: the Prince and Princess journey together to Yarrow and then to Zorna, although Hark must remain a fortnight longer to complete the curse laid upon him, and the Golux mysteriously disappears after magically producing two white horses for Zorn and Saralinda ("The Golux makes things up, you know!").
A fortnight later, the Duke is gloating over his jewels when they turn back into tears. The room is plunged into darkness, and the Todal materializes to fulfill its function. Hark enters the room a little later to find the room completely deserted except for the Duke's sword, a small mysterious black ball stamped with scarlet owls and a puddle of tears on the table.
Stage and film
The story was set to music by Mark Bucci and appeared in 1953 as the 5th episode of The Motorola Television Hour, with Basil Rathbone as the evil Duke.[3] It was also adapted and produced by Stephen Teeter for use in the 1960s in a production in Berkeley, CA. Later it was adapted and produced by Frank Lowe for stage, and published in 1976 by Samuel French, Inc [ISBN 978-0-573-65122-9]. Audio recordings have also been produced, performed by Lauren Bacall, Peter Ustinov and Edward Woodward. The BBC produced a radio version of the story with Heron Carvic as the Golux.
In 2008, the Jackson County Stage Company, located in Carbondale, IL, produced a musical adaptation of the story, with book, music, and lyrics by Loren Cocking. The show, which premiered on May 23, 2008, was directed by John Lipe, and starred Bill Kirksey as the Golux.
References
- ^ Brian Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature, p 148, ISBN 0-253-35665-2
- ^ James Thurber, The 13 Clocks, ISBN 978-1-59017-275-9
- ^ "The Motorola Television Hour" The Thirteen Clocks (1953)
External links
- "The Motorola Television Hour", 1953[1]