The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine

 
The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine
or The Hithering Thithering Djinn
by Donald Barthelme

Amulet Books

1971, reprinted 2006
 

 

The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, or The Hithering Thithering Djinn is written in the form of a children's book, although I wonder how much any actual children would like it. Barthelme is somewhat famous as a postmodern author (supposedly his version of Snow White is very good), but this is the first work of his I've read.

 
The illustrations in the book are all lithographs, taken either from other books or maybe newspapers. Barthelme has done a bit of collage, by cutting out individual images from their context and placing them against blank but colorful backgrounds. By repeating some images, he creates recurring characters. So the protagonist, Mathilde, might have come from an advertisement for hoop toys. The djinn appears to be a racist caricature of a Chinese man, possibly from a political cartoon.

 
So Barthelme has a sequence of repurposed images, and he's combined them with text to create a children's story, or maybe a story for grown-ups that imitates the kid's book style.

 
Mathilde wakes up one morning wishing she could have a fire engine. Instead, there's a 'Chinese house' in her yard. At first it's too small to go in, but as soon as she notices that, it grows larger to accommodate.
 

Inside the house, Mathilde meets a couple guards, a rain dancer, a knitting pirate who tells her his story of being captured, the djinn, and an elephant who rolls down a hill. The djinn offers her lunch, or to change her into an adult with an interesting job, but all Mathilde wants is a fire engine. The djinn gets frustrated with her for asking so much, but the next day, when Mathilde goes outside, the house is gone, and there's a green-painted fire engine on her lawn.

 
The cover of the edition I read informs me that this won a National Book Award, but I don't understand why. I deliberately try to find books that are unusual or odd, and one of the most common ways books like that disappoint me is if they sort of seem to come to nothing at the end. I had a real that's it? there's nothing more? moment when I turned the last page. It was sort of fun, but clearly not what Barthelme's reputation is built on.

 
I think Dadaist Max Ernst did a similar exercise, creating a book by writing new text for collages made of cut-up lithographs and woodcuts, which I might try to read next year.