The 13 Clocks
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| Author | James Thurber |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Marc Simont |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Released | January 1, 1950 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 124 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
The Thirteen Clocks was written by James Thurber in 1950. The original has illustrations by Marc Simont. When it achieved acclaim, it was reissued by Puffin books, and illustrated by Ronald Searle. It is a fantasy tale 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 tale includes two mysterious beings: the Golux, who describes himself as "the only Golux in the world, and not a mere device" (although he is extremely useful to the plot) and the Todal, "an agent of the devil sent to punish evildoers for having done less evil than they should".
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.
Thurber wrote the book in Jamaica while he was completing one of his other novels.
The story was set to music and appeared in 1953 as the 5th episode of "The Motorola Television Hour", with Basil Rathbone as the evil Duke[2]. 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]. An audio recording was also produced, performed by Lauren Bacall.
[edit] External links
- "The Motorola Television Hour", 1953[1]
