J.D. HARLOCK
My Lord Marquees in(?) Boots
My Lord Marquees in(?) Boots,
I thank you for sending us your memoir (fairy tale?) (fable?)“Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté” which interestingly enough has been named after yourself (or the other way around?) and seems to prominently feature you, or a kitty kat anthropomorphized feline version of you as a miscreant dastard rogue that relies on fabrications, impersonations, intimations and murder his dashing wits and charm to grant a lowbred peasant humble commoner a lordship, which I am compelled to remind you can only be blessed to us by the munificence of his majesty Louis XIV, par la grâce de Dieu, Roi de France et de Navarre, chosen by our lord who art in heaven himself to rule over us, mortals.
My lord, as you are the Marquis of Carabas (can one of the assistants make sure this is a real marquisate?) and a man of letters in the making much as myself, I shall offer you some actionable advice on your pseudo-memoir fable.
As a start, having a peasant attain social status may not be the best way to endear them to the French public.
I mean would you be comfortable with social mobility?
Perhaps, it would be best to ameliorate your Puss’s rougher, bounderish qualities. In the story, you are Puss may be a ruthless, crafty and efficient status seeker with great taste in foot wear (as all nobles ought to have), but he is also a peasant-loving scoundrel, lacking in social consciousness. Let us not forget here that if a story is to be deemed a work of high art, its protagonists must be likable and perfect as King Louis XIV, par la grâce de Dieu, Roi de France et de Navarre, (and you, of course, My Lord), which Puss is definitely not yet on his way into self-actualizing.
And the story makes absolutely no sense suffers from some logical inconsistencies.
You mention that you Puss happens upon a castle inhabited by an ogre who is capable of transforming himself into a number of creatures. In the course of the story he demonstrates his ability by changing into a lion, frightening the cat, and is then tricked into changing into a mouse. Now that is all fine and well, but how does an ogre have a castle? That would mean that King Louis XIV, par la grâce de Dieu, Roi de France et de Navarre, has granted him some form of lordship and we all know that ogres, by royal decree, are not permitted lordships.
And, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure why no one seems to take note of the fact that a cat is talking to them or why he has boots in the first place and is so enamored with them that he makes it officially a part of his name. I may understand the psychological compulsion the deep-held desire to imbue a part of our troubled psyches ourselves in our work, but I ask you to reconsider just how much of your sad, little mind you want in your atrocious pseudo-memoir fiction (?), but perhaps you can wedge some much-needed distance between you and your work. Perhaps?
And, as we all know (but some of us might not), a good fable must end with a good moral to educate the youth while their parents are caught up in more important affairs like the arts, letters, and wild orgies. I must say, the ones (two to be precise) featured in your story are quite unique. However, though the importance of “possessing industrie and savoir faire” and the “virtues of dress, countenance, and youth to win the heart of a princess” are not in doubt, I’m afraid that they may not be the best for the children of France today who I think we both agree should be directing their energies towards living past the age of ten.
I thank you again for sending us this fable and if this is by any chance really is a memoir do not feel the psychological compulsion the need to resend this once you’ve rewritten it completely reworked it as we do not publish experimental works.
Respectfully,
Charles Perrault, The Editor of Le Magazine De La Maman Oie
Paris,
1697
J.D. Harlock is a Syrian Lebanese Palestinian American writer and editor based in Beirut. In addition to his posts at Wasafiri, as an editor-at-large, and at Solarpunk Magazine, as a poetry editor, his writing has been featured in New Lines Magazine, Strange Horizons, Star*Line, Nightmare Magazine, and the SFWA Blog.