Wink-wink, Nudge-nudge: But do you know what I mean?

Posted on June 21st, 2007 by Carlos

The One-Sentence Review: Winkie is a good first novel, but its author, Clifford Chase, will write better ones.

The More-Than-One-Sentence Review (SPOILERS!): The writing is solid: richly imagined, sensuous, modest and endearing. For readers like myself, writing this good is mostly what I need to get me through a book; readers like me will delight in Winkie, Clifford Chase’s first novel.

Mostly. Even as, sentence to sentence, I delighted in the turns of phrase, the way Chase describes Winkie’s discovery of his world as he comes to life, I find myself mildly balking at the plot. And not because it’s fantastic or even bizarre, but because the story doesn’t seem to have a cohesive mythos. That’s right, I said it: no mythos.

Here’s what I mean. Winkie is a teddy bear that comes to life and, in a truly spectacular opening scene, gets taken into custody by government authorities who pretty much embody all the legitimate fears that every non-comatose American should have about the Homeland Security world we’re living in. So far, so good — I personally can’t think of a better symbol to highlight the abuses enacted upon the American people and the Constitution, courtesy of the Patriot Act, than the tableau of this sawdust-stuffed bear getting shot 39 times by overzealous law-enforcement agents. T-riffic.

But Winkie eats. He doesn’t need to eat, as he goes weeks, months, even years without touching food. Moreover, he doesn’t have a throat. And I’m not just saying this based on the fact that he’s a damn toy bear, or even on circumstantial evidence, which we have in spades: since we know from the text he was created in a factory like every other teddy bear, and since the factory didn’t see a need to give each bear it made a working esophagus, stomach, intestinal tract, etc., which would make eating possible, you don’t need to spend any time in the CSI lab to figure out Winkie can’t swallow. But like I said, you don’t even need the circumstantial evidence: we are given an X-ray. That’s right: on page 18 of the 2006 paperback edition, we get an X-ray of the hapless teddy. And guess what you don’t see on the X-Ray? That’s right. A rectum.

Oh, I forgot to mention: besides eating, Winkie’s big dream is to poop, which he does, and which he likes. And see, I get it. Pooping teddy bear. Funny. And I even think I have an inkling as to why, symbolically, he poops: he’s coming to life, and living things, well, must expel waste. Right?

But this is a miracle bear with no internal organs save a little squeaker in his stomach. He — oh wait, for a while he’s a she, but gives birth while he’s a he. Long story. Cough. — doesn’t live by the same rules. And he doesn’t need to: the opening sequence is all the convincing we need to believe that this poor little bear is more than alive enough to be shot 39 times by contagious-shooting government agents. The work is done! We believe! But then Winkie starts eating and pooping, because he’s … he’s … trying real hard to become a real boy?

The story, however, becomes more overwrought, and less in control of its own myth. Winkie — at the moment, male — gives birth to a little teddy bear he can call his own. The review of Winkie at KQED described the event — brilliantly! — as an instance of “ursine parthenogenesis,” but I think that using a term like that, while accurate, makes it sound too legitimate and lets Chase off a little too easy. See, now, I’m going to say something now that’s going to be unpopular, because everybody loves Baby Winkie, the innocent, immaculately-conceived progeny of Winkie and the symbol in the story of perfect wonder and love. I could have done without him. Baby Winkie isn’t really necessary to much of anything in the story. See, because when the novel began, Winkie himself was already the symbol of perfect wonder and love. We didn’t need a female-cum-male teddy bear to give birth to an even smaller teddy bear: Winkie could have served that role in the story and made for a tighter, more elegant plot.

And to my way of thinking, Winkie didn’t need to be accused of every — I really do mean every — crime of hysteria, jingoism, and intolerance in all of American history. Our present record on these count can work synechdotally to represent all of those. It’s just one more instance to my mind of a good joke pushed too far to the realm of “Okay already. We get it.”

But that’s too harsh for this book; I feel like I’ve spent too much time bad-mouthing Winkie, when, as I said at the beginning, there is a lot to like about this novel. But I hope that Chase, in his next novel, will go beyond the great writing and the great concept. Yes, there is something more to an outstanding novel than those two things. When it comes to myth-making, Chase should have quit while he was ahead in Winkie, and stuck with the core story, which was more than enough for an excellent book.

But I have faith. This is a good first novel by a novelist who’s going to write much better ones.