Books: Please Yourself

THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS (124 pp.)—James Thurber—51mon & Schuster ($2.50).

Once upon a time there were 13 clocks that wouldn’t run. A cold, aggressive Duke had killed time seven years before, wiped his bloody blade upon his beard, and left time lying there on the cold stones of Coffin Castle, bleeding hours & minutes, while he hurried off in search of a kitten to tear apart or a handsome young prince to feed to his geese.

Alas, the geese were very fat, for many a princeling came seeking the hand of the Princess Saralinda, the winsome ward of the dastard Duke, and all of them met a dire fate—all, that is, except Prince Zorn of Zorna.

The Thirteen Clocks is James Thurber’s fairy tale of how Prince Zorn, with the help of a mysterious character named Golux, brought time to life, Saralinda to wife, and the Duke to a hideous hereafter. Like all good fairy tales—and The Thirteen Clocks is one of the cleverest that any modern writer has been able to tell—Thurber’s story may mean only what it says; it may also mean a good deal more that the author has characteristically made no attempt to spell out.

Guggle to Zatch. Children will perhaps know best what to make of the evil Duke who sets good Prince Zorn such a fearful price for the hand of Princess Saralinda.

“I give you nine and ninety hours,” said the Duke, “to find a thousand jewels and bring them here. When you return, the clocks must all be striking five.”

“And if I fail?” asked Zorn.

“I’ll slit you from your guggle to your zatch,” the Duke replied, “and feed you to the Todal.”

“I’ve heard of it,” said Zorn, and shuddered as he thought of the Todal—”a blob of glup [that] makes a sound like rabbits screaming, and smells of old, unopened rooms.” Still worse, the Duke explained, “it’s made of lip [and] it gleeps.”

Zorn was in despair “when he felt a gentle finger touch his elbow.” It was the Golux, “a little man smiling in the moonlight. He wore an indescribable hat, his eyes were wide and astonished, as if everything were happening for the first time, and he had a dark, describable beard.”

“I must always be on hand when people are in peril,” the Golux explained.

“We All Have Flaws.” Zorn followed the Golux to Hagga’s hill, a place so high that it is dug in furrows “where the dragging points of stars had plowed the fields,” and where “there was a smell . . a little like Forever in the air.” There they found a woman who wept jewels—and sometimes, when she wasn’t really very moved, she just cried costume jewelry.

In the end, Zorn dropped a sackful of her tears in the Duke’s lap, and sailed off with the princess for “the distant shining shores of Ever After.” The Duke “showed his lower teeth” and muttered disconsolately: “We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked.” A little while later there was a smell of old unopened rooms; then there was a sound of rabbits screaming; then there was a gleep; and then there wasn’t any Duke in Coffin Castle.

Not to Say Violent. Most Americans know James Thurber for the funny fellow who draws cartoons and who analyzed the daydream of grandeur in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Yet Thurber is only every other inch a comic writer; in between, he is a psychologist as keen as any now writing in the U.S. Like most writers of unusual, not to say violent imagination, Thurber cannot always control it. There are passages in all his fairy tales (especially in The White Deer) so loaded with verbal gems—and costume jewelry too—that they clink.

In The Thirteen Clocks, Thurber’s narrative is less bedizened with verbal gimcrackery, but it is still a bit too tricky for every taste. Nevertheless, there is no living author who moves about in fairyland with such wit and easy familiarity. As for inner meanings, please yourself.