I try not to get too upset about the vagaries of the culture industry, even when “best practices” extend to include abhorrent customs like the continuation of classic works by other authors. I never read these works, because they seem not only almost always terrible, but entirely useless. Other than in the case of when an author dies before completing a series, what purpose does it serve to resurrect characters closely associated with a particular author — other than the almighty dollar, of course? As a parent, though, this goal of cultural avoidance can become well nigh impossible.
My wife and I have recently begun the time honored tradition of reading chapter books to our kids, little bit at a time. My two year old mostly just jumps around and tries to get in the way, but my older child has become fascinated by them. In particular, he got really into A.A. Milne’s unbeatable Pooh stories, devouring them with relish and always begging for just one more chapter. Consequently, we breezed through Milne’s two story collections quite rapidly, at which point I wanted to stop and move on. My son, however, being a completist, noticed more books in the boxed set and begged to read them. Two we passed over on the grounds of them being poetry and, thus, not the best straight-through bedtime reading. One, however, contained more Pooh stories, and my son insisted on tearing into them.
These stories reside in Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, written in 2009 by David Benedictus, a British novelist who has produced audio book versions of Milne’s original stories. Now, I do not wish to impugn Mr. Benedictus on a personal level. He’s quite possibly a very nice person, as his avuncular author’s photo suggests. And everything I have read about the creation of the book leads me to believe that, for Benedictus at least, Return was much more a passion project than a cash grab. Nevertheless, the truth must out: Return to the Hundred Acre Wood is a trainwreck. Not just any trainwreck, one that crashes right into Milne’s grave, uproots his coffin, and spews engine grease all over his decayed corpse. Here are the most egregious slights to Milne’s memory found in the book.
The Uncanny Hundred Acre Wood
The hardest part of continuing a series intimately tied to one author has to be finding the right voice – what I imagine to be a near impossible task. No matter how hard I try, what I write always comes out as me. I could perhaps sustain writing like someone relatively close to my writing style for, say, a few paragraphs. But a whole book? The best course in these situations would be to abandon stylistic imitation entirely, and merely tell new stories with the same characters. With Milne, though, this becomes tricky, because so much of the pleasure of the Pooh stories lies in their telling. Milne is an exquisite prose stylist in the English comic tradition — his voice is as unmistakable as others in that tradition, like P.G. Woodhouse and Jane Austen.
So Benedictus attempts the gargantuan task of writing like A.A. Milne. The kindest thing to be said about his effort is that it is not a complete trash fire of a job. Benedictus has a handle on Milne’s common phrases and even some sense of his rhythm of writing. In the end, however, this actually makes the situation worse, as Benedictus gets close enough to Milne’s style to remind the reader of its greatness, but the imitation gets punctured by inconsistencies rampant enough to be extremely bothersome. This is Freud’s unheimlich (unhomecoming) written into every corner of the Hundred Acre Wood.
The Otter Indignity of It All
Benedictus does try some new things, namely adding a new character, Lottie the Otter, into the mix. She arrives, clambering up out of the vanishing river, and immediately unbalances the dynamic of our beloved characters. I definitely get why Benedictus would want to bring another character into these stories, and it is nice in some sense to have another female character to give some relief to poor Kanga. Unfortunately, the idea and the execution are very different things, and Lottie adds nothing but irritation to the experience of reading the book.
Milne’s characters, like many in children’s books, possess one or two dominant traits that make them stand out from those around them. Pooh is sweet and loyal and poetic, but very dumb. Piglet has a perpetual case of the jitters. Owl (or Wol, as he spells it) has the pretense of knowledge without its actual presence. And so on. These simple character outlines work for a few reasons; first, because Milne lovingly rounds out the edges of each character, and second, because they fit together into one complementary whole. Lottie the Otter, though, feels confused as a character, and never gels with the whole ensemble. Her schtick is sort of that she’s a fussbudget (like Rabbit), sort of that she’s energetic (like Tigger), and… she dances and has proper manners? That’s about it. Since she’s retreading ground already covered better by other characters, Lottie never rises above the superfluous, and retroactively makes the whole cast worse. It’s like when Stalin doctored photos to pretend to have been a part of Lenin’s inner circle, only more terrifying.
Sticking (It To) the Landing
Nothing attests to the sheer uselessness of Return to the Hundred Acre Wood more than this simple fact: it obliterates one of the greatest endings in all literature. This may sound like hyperbole, but it isn’t. I defy you to find a more profound, emotional ending to a children’s book than the one Milne provides for The House at Pooh Corner. It’s a perfect ending, reminding the reader in one breath how genuinely good these characters are, and how difficult it can be to let go of good things in life. The last few pages of the book make me cry every time; as I read them aloud to my son this time around, I could barely sputter out the words between choked sobs.
When Christopher Robin leaves to go to school at the end, it should close the circuit of the books; after all, somewhere out there, a boy and his bear will always be playing, suspended beyond time. For Benedictus to return us to this world at all feels jarring, like messing with the natural order. But then to have him turn around and rehash the ending of The House at Pooh Corner in a much diminished form, well, that is a bridge too far. Benedictus wraps up his collection in suspiciously similar fashion (Christopher Robin going back to school) and clearly wants to tap into the same emotional reservoirs as Milne. Instead the ending feels trite, a mere shadow of the greatness of Milne. It’s a suitably disappointing finish to a horrible simulacrum, and a strong caution against reviving the dead.
