‘The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins’ (1938) by Dr. Seuss

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, published in 1938, was Dr. Seuss’s second book. It was one of my favourite books when I was a child in the 1970s; re-reading this as an adult is a bit strange as I can still remember reading it with a child’s eye. For anyone who is more used to Suess’s Cat in the Hat style, ‘500 Hats’ may seem a bit odd as it is told in a prose style and although it reads more like a normal fairy tale it is still undoubtedly an original Dr. Seuss story. The drawings supplement the text beautifully; they’re in black and white except for the hats which are coloured red. As a child I loved noticing subtle things in the pictures that were mentioned in the text and still found myself doing the same thing as an adult.

The story begins with King Derwin looking out from his mountaintop castle over his lands, which makes him feel ‘mighty important’. We then see Bartholomew looking up at the castle from his hut on the edge of a bog, which makes him feel ‘mighty small’. Seuss wastes no time with preliminaries, however, and we soon see Bartholomew going to town to sell some cranberries. When he’s in town there’s a great furore as the king and his entourage are travelling through the streets. The king stops when he notices a little boy who hasn’t taken his hat off in the king’s presence—the boy is, of course, Bartholomew Cubbins. But this is where the confusion begins because Bartholomew has taken his hat from his head, he’s holding it in his hands, it’s just that another identical red hat with a feather is on his head. To the king, this is just impertinence and when Bartholomew is unable to remove his hat without another one appearing he’s sent off to the castle to be interrogated, with red hats flying from his head and falling in his wake.

At the castle, the king, along with all the Lords and noblemen, interrogate Bartholomew, while Sir Alaric, Keeper of the Records, keeps a record of the number of hats produced; it’s not long before we’re at 135. The King is not amused and calls for Sir Snipps, hatmaker, Nadd, a Wise Man, as well as Nadd’s father and grandfather to try to unravel the mystery—but they cannot solve it. Now the King’s insolent nephew, Wilfred, gets involved and suggests using a bow and arrow to shoot the hat off of Bartholomew’s head. He has no luck as it just produces more hats; the Yeoman of the Bowmen has no more luck than Wilfred and calls it ‘black magic’. The King calls for his magicians to use their magic on Bartholomew but is furious when he’s informed it may take ten years to work. The nasty little boy, Wilfred, suggests to the King that he should just chop off Bartholomew’s head and so he’s sent to the dungeon to meet the executioner.

   The executioner was whistling and swinging his axe idly, because at the moment he had nothing to do. In spite of his business, he really seemed to be a very pleasant man.
   “The King says you must chop off my head,” said Bartholomew.
   “Oh, I’d hate to,” said the executioner, looking at him with a friendly smile. “You seem such a nice boy.”
   “Well…the King says you have to,” said Bartholomew, “so please get it over with.”
   “All right,” sighed the executioner, “but first you’ve got to take off your hat.”
   “Why?” asked Bartholomew.
   “I don’t know,” said the executioner, “but it’s one of the rules . I can’t execute anyone with his hat on.”
   “All right,” said Bartholomew, “you take it off for me.”
   The executioner leaned across the chopping block and flipped off Bartholomew’s hat.
   “What’s this?” he gasped, blinking through the holes in his mask, as another hat sat on Bartholomew’s head. He flipped this one off…then another and another.

As the executioner gives up on this technicality, the wicked Wilfred suggest just shoving Bartholomew off a tall tower. However, while Batholomew is climbing the steps to the top the hats, which have been up to now just duplicates of his original hat, now become increasingly ornate until the last hat is so beautiful with its ostrich plumes and large ruby that the King offers him 500 gold coins for the hat…and the now rich, but hatless, Bartholomew returns home.

Ok, I couldn’t resist telling the whole story, but hopefully there won’t be any children reading this blog to get upset. Anyway the fun with Seuss is the telling of the story, the wordplay and the imaginative illustrations. What a wonderful book from 1938—which was read as a part of the weeklong ‘1938 Club’ project hosted by Karen and Simon.

‘Wait Until Spring, Bandini’ (1938) by John Fante

Like many readers I first heard of John Fante from Charles Bukowski, who regularly praised his works. I’m sure that I read something by Fante during my Bukowski period but I’m now not sure which books I read at the time…it may have included Wait Until Spring, Bandini but after reading it recently I can’t say that I recognise it. Anyway, as ‘Bandini’ was published in 1938 this is my first contribution to the week-long event called The 1938 Club hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Stuck in a Book.

Wait Until Spring, Bandini is a story of an Italian immigrant family living in a small-town in Colorado called Rocklin. The father, Svevo, came to America in his early twenties; he’s now in his forties and is struggling to make ends meet as a bricklayer, especially during the winter months, which is when this novel is set.

Svevo Bandini’s eyes watered in the cold air. They were brown, they were soft, they were a woman’s eyes. At birth he had stolen them from his mother — for after the birth of Svevo Bandini, his mother was never quite the same, always ill, always with sickly eyes after his birth, and then she died and it was Svevo’s turn to carry soft brown eyes.

Svevo’s wife, Maria Bandini, loves him still, after twenty years of married life. Maria lacked a high school education, she’s religious, sickly, and she’s dominated both by Svevo and her mother, Donna Toscana, who pays infrequent visits. Svevo and his mother-in-law openly detest each other. Whenever Donna arrives Svevo has to escape from the house as her presence is intolerable to him.

Svevo and Maria have three sons; Arturo is twelve (or possibly fourteen), August ten and Federico eight. Arturo is a bit wayward and he’s often getting into trouble; at the beginning of the book he has smashed Federico’s head through the window in a fit of rage and throughout the book he often shows a temper as the frustrations of his life get to him. At one point he throws a bit of coal at a chicken and accidentally kills it, he often verbally and physically abuses his brothers, curses his parents and swears a lot. Arturo resents being called an Italian by others and wants to be considered a true American. At times he hates his mother for being so weak and foolish but his father’s brash, Italian peasant, behaviour could irritate him as well.

    Breakfast was ready. He could hear his father asking for coffee. Why did his father have to yell all the time? Couldn’t he talk in a low voice? Everybody in the neighborhood knew everything that went on in their house on account of his father constantly shouting. The Moreys next door — you never heard a peep out of them, never; quiet American people. But his father wasn’t satisfied with being an Italian, he had to be a noisy Italian.
    ‘Arturo,’ his mother called. ‘Breakfast.’
    As if he didn’t know breakfast was ready! As if everybody in Colorado didn’t know by this time that the Bandini family was having breakfast!

August is more timid. He aims to be a priest when he grows up, much to his mother’s delight and his father’s disgust. Federico is still a child, and is doted on by Maria.

Although the novel begins with Svevo as the central character, we soon get to see events through Arturo’s and Maria’s eyes. Arturo’s frustration with life is made bearable with his love of baseball and his love of Rosa Pinelli, whom he’s loved from afar for nearly two years now. Maria has only one solace, and that is her religion.

She had no need in her heart for either book or magazine. She had her own way of escape, her own passage into contentment: her rosary. That string of white beads, the tiny links worn in a dozen places and held together by strands of white thread which in turn broke regularly, was, bead for bead, her quiet flight out of the world.

With a visit from Donna Toscana imminent, Svevo goes missing; he usually goes on a drinking spree with his friend Rocco Saccone, whom Maria loathes. When her mother has left and Svevo still hasn’t returned home, Maria has to try to feed the family. But when news reaches Maria that Svevo has been seen with another woman, a rich widow called Effie Hildegarde, she becomes increasingly moody and listless, spending the day in bed, wandering about the house aimlessly and letting her sons fend for themselves. Up until now she had not had any reason to doubt her husband’s fidelity, but now she’s not so sure.

I won’t reveal any more of the plot except to say that the novel switches back to concentrate on Svevo for a while and also on Arturo’s attempts, both amusing and sad, to attract Rosa’s attention. The novel was a great read about a dysfunctional immigrant family trying to survive the depression. I liked the way that Fante let us into the heads of the three main characters of the story; all three characters love each other but events and frustrations with life force them to act in ways that antagonise each other; they act in ways that are detrimental to themselves and each other but the novel ends on an optimistic note as it looks like they may be able to resolve their issues.

Wait Until Spring, Bandini is actually the first book in a quartet; the second book in the series is The Road to Los Angeles, which was written in 1936 but not published until 1985; the third book is Ask the Dust which is probably Fante’s most famous book, published in 1939; and the final book is Dreams From Bunker Hill published in 1982, a year before his death. I shall aim to read these others as soon as possible. Have you read anything by John Fante?