By Cameron Woodhead
Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned
Ed., Gretchen Schultz and Lewis Seifert
Fairy tales for the Disillusioned. Eds., Gretchen Schultz and Lewis Seifert
Princeton University Press, $44.95
If your gorge rises at the thought of happily-ever-afters, Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned is the perfect tonic. This updated translation of French decadents from the 19th and early 20th centuries includes subversive fairytales from the likes of Baudelaire, Anatole France, and Apollinaire. The title comes from a perverted satire of the genre in Willy's Une Passade (1894), which features among other things a conniving Red Riding Hood and a snarky Sleeping Beauty, all framed by a pointed dollop of extramarital sex. It ends with the words: "This tale has no moral." Baudelaire's overworked fairies dispense gifts in a mechanical, bureaucratic fashion guaranteed to maximise human misery; Apollinaire takes up the story of Cinderella's coachman, who buggers off to become a cross-dressing highwayman. There's much more on offer, sometimes sardonic, sometimes brutal, often blackly funny and possessed of a peculiarly modern sensibility.