Nutcracker and Mouse-King - Part 4

If the comment show isn't called "Chris and Chad Crack Your Nuts" I'll be disappointed. It doesn't even have to make sense, it just seems like the right thing to do.

Robert Curtin

Chad continues his hatred with a drive by on saké again. Lol

Avlin Starfall

In his rush to interpret child murder, I think Chris missed the perhaps more likely explanation - merely plying a child with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol! Laudanum, which was a mixture of alcohol and opium was commonly used as a painkiller, including for children and infants - and Maria, having cut her arm quite badly, would probably be doped up on it. So poor Marie might just be drugged to the gills and having all sorts of weird opium induced fever dreams while 19th century physicians lean over and say "I say, have we tried giving her more drugs?" Perhaps related to the weird it was apparently Samuel Taylor Coleridge's opium withdrawal nightmares that produced some of the most striking imagery in his weird, fascinating poems

Stewart Huntsman

Maybe around 20 years ago I went down to NYC because a friend got tickets for The Nutcracker. I had ZERO expectations going in but was thrilled at the dark vibe of act one. The whiplash from the second act left me very, very confused. And at the start of you guys covering this story, I would have bet cash money that none of the second act was even a thing. The existence of this tale absolutely confounds me. Thank you for guiding us through it.

If you're driving back toward Lovecraftian themes, might I suggest a return to Janu-Irving? Washington Irving's "The Adventure of the German Student" might be a good choice: http://www.loa.org/images/pdf/Irving_German_Student.pdf https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2016/03/the-adventure-of-german-student.html?m=1

A nice Lovecraftian tale of underground horror is Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson. There’s a reason the native Americans sold Manhattan so cheaply.

Ben Gilbert

This is just the kind of frothy nonsense I needed this Christmas season. It's been a rough one for more reasons than I care to get into, but [gestures at everything] I don't think I'm alone. Listening to you guys week after week, quipping away, interpreting literature, keeps my spirits bright. I can't bring myself to agree with Chris' interpretation. I think its a bit too much of a stretch, and an unnecessarily dark conclusion to a story that completely glossed over the climactic battle between the Nutcracker and the Seven Headed Mouse King. Its a fairy tale and it gets a fairy tale ending, with a wedding and a happily ever after, however unearned and silly.

I was convinced to look up a few things in the original version after finishing these episodes. A few things stand out. First, the scene in which Drosselmeier first acts like a robot seems like it was translated pretty faithfully—it doesn’t make any more sense in the original. Second, in German, the word “confiseur” is not used, simply the German word for “confectioner.” Why change it to French? No idea. Lastly, Drosselmeier’s repeated “stupid pack” is the word “Schnack” in the original text. “Schnack” meaning something like “gossip” or “to talk in a vulgar manner.” There’s some nuance lost with my translation, but you get the idea. Merry Christmas/Frohe Weihnachten to everyone who reads this comment!

I also like Chris's horrified "She is the Consumer of Candy!" Like she was a mountain walking or stumbling. Or perhaps Galactus appearing above the Baxter Building.

Peter Larsen

I am pretty sure that "Sweetmeat Grove" was the Thursday night event at a bar I went to back in the 90s....

Peter Larsen

Thanks. Really enjoyed hearing you guys discuss Hoffman's uber-weird world. I don't have any particular justification for requesting these, but I'd really love it if you guys would cover (some? more?) Octavia Butler and Ursula K. LeGuin. You seem up for tackling novels now and either Kindred or Bloodchild or my absolute favorite The Left Hand of Darkness would be great. I know these two writers have come up, but I don't think you've dived into these particular masterpieces. IF so, then there are many others by both that could be discussed and no need to wait for women in weird month.

Found the link for the musical https://youtu.be/sSz0OJ-xlC0

Michelle Elbert

“I Am Legend” in March sounds good, but I also want to suggest (for some other month) a short story called “Evening Primrose” by John Collier. It was also a Musical by Stephen Sondheim , who passed a few months ago. It’s about a poet who wants to do the Walt Whitman thing… but instead of going off into the wilderness, he decides to hide out in the men’s dressing room of a department store and live there instead. What he finds, instead of solitude, is an absolutely bonkers society of people who live in department stores and only come out at night. I am intentionally leaving out the weird/strange element of the story (as if a national network of pensioners who live in department stores and only come out at night isn’t weird) so I don’t spoil it for you. Check out the story and the musical (which you can watch for free on YouTube), I’d love to hear what you guys think of it.

Michelle Elbert

I’d love to hear you guys cover I am Legend…though for someone reason I feel like you already have? But I can’t quite remember.

MortalGlare

So I seem to recall that the bit that happens “later” when Maria dreamily says that she would still love the Nutcracker happens like… 10 years later, and the nephew is also in his late teens/early 20’s. Or at least that’s how the illustrations in my book showed them. (I admit that it could be some revisionism on the part of the illustrator, but I’m reasonably sure the final bit happens some number of years after Maria’s visit to the four realms.)

Michelle Elbert

I came to the comments to also mention Pan's Labyrinth in terms of the two interpretations, so that makes at least two of us.

Wow, guys everyone’s being so deep. This is just a story he wrote after a weekend of hookers and blow…

Andrew Brown

Loved the coverage of this whole story. I'm sorry to say I agree with Lackey's interpretation of Maria's fate. It made me think of the movie Pan's Labyrinth; no matter how much I want to think of all the wonderful fantasy as being real, I just can't help but read it as the dying hallucinations of someone who has lived a short and painful life. ...that probably says something about me, doesn't it?

Thank you!

Jeremy Impson

One of my christmas gifts this year was the mental image of Chad, going out and supporting a local business by buying some sake. He gets home, ready to kick back and relax. And he just pours the whole bottle right into the sink and settles down for a long winter's nap

Thanks for making this holiday season even better with your awesome coverage of this crazy story. I've long thought more people should appreciate its weirdness. Loved the music and Andrew's reading, as well as your alternate takes on the ending. Happy holidays!

“ Here and there Hoffmann allows himself a little in-joke, a literary or musical reference that might well have been above the heads of child readers even in his own time. Marie's sugar figures include a tenant farmer (whom I have translated as Farmer Caraway) who is a character in a play by the dramatist August von Kotzebue, Hoffmann's contemporary. And the Maid of Orleans is from Friedrich Schiller's well-known play about Joan of Arc. Schiller's name lives on, unlike that of Peter von Winter, a member of the famous Mannheim orchestra of the time, and composer of an opera with a title that translates into English as The Interrupted Sacrifice. Hoffmann refers to it when Marie and Nutcracker (now revealed to be young Drosselmeier), visiting the Land of Toys, witness a chaotic traffic jam in the capital city.”

Here it is: https://books.google.com/books?id=Bd73AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT117&dq=nutcracker+interrupted+sacrifice+schiller&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiNssCctPr0AhVlhOAKHdkjBOsQ6AF6BAgFEAM

Ooohh, if you do more Mythos, I'd like to once again propose "The Return of the Lloigor" by Colin Wilson. It cogently points out that in a world where a lot of elder lore is true, that stuff will *still* get found and exploited by cranks.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

The bit with Confisseur/Pastrycook (as it’s in the translation I read), is one of the oddest and most existential turns in the story. As to the Sacrifices, it’s rendered as the Festival of the Interrupted Sacrifice (!) in the version I read. It seems to be an in-joke about an opera. Let me find the link…

While there is certainly a *superficial* similarity between this candyland and the one in Adventure Time, it rather ends there. After all, Adventure Time's setting only exists because it's a distant post-apocalyptic future after the Earth was nuked into oblivion during the Cold War.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

Awesome. Happy holidays!