No Little Prince here - Haaretz

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Thu., January 10, 2008 Shvat 3, 5768

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No Little Prince here

By Shoham Smith

Tags: nostalgia, childhood

"Nicolas hakatan: sipurim shelo ra'u or" ("Histoires inedites du Petit Nicolas"), by Rene Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempe, translated into Hebrew by Michal Assiag, Keter, 140 pages, NIS 64

"Nicolas hakatan" ("Le petit Nicolas") by Rene Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempe, translated into Hebrew by Michal Paz-Klep, Kinneret, 159 pages, NIS 69

A survey conducted a few years ago revealed that "Le petit Nicolas" ("Little Nicolas") is the French people's favorite book, even more beloved than "The Little Prince." This is surprising, not least because of the latter's canonical status in world literature for children, its mythical status (which is influenced by the aura surrounding the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a pilot who was shot down during World War II) and its impact on popular culture: Ask someone to draw you a sheep and he or she will know what you mean even without having read the book. "The Little Prince" is a wellspring of quotations; "Nicolas," by contrast, is a family album. The reasons why it has become so popular among both children and adults lie not only in what it contains, but also in what it lacks (in contrast to Saint-Exupery's text).

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Unlike "The Little Prince" or other works for children that appear ambiguous, "Le petit Nicolas" (first published in 1959) is conceptually and linguistically accessible. It requires almost no deciphering tools (children, too, can register its irony), it does not offer the adult reader a philosophical/psychological/social fable disguised as a children's tale, and, above all, its hero is not a prince, perfect and self-righteous (and lonely), observing the adult world with goggle-eyed wonder, but a boy - a mediocre student, one boy in a group of children, looking at the everyday reality he encounters at home and at school and describing it frankly in his irregular language (which does not succumb to the rules of the establishment); a language that, in its day, was seen as revolutionary.

The short stories under review here were written by Rene Goscinny (the author of "Asterix") - who based them on his own childhood - in collaboration with the renowned illustrator Sempe. Young readers will find in them amusing adventures and a chance to identify with the winning, straightforward character of Nicolas and his deliberately stereotypical friends: fat Alceste; Clotaire, the terrible student; strong Eudes; rich Geoffroy; and Agnan, the teacher's pet. This array of characters is the inevitable product of the classroom structure in the formal education system, and it therefore appeals to any graduate of that system, which is identified almost instantly with the idea of "childhood."

The "Nicolas" stories, therefore, provide the reader with a universal childhood that evokes a sweet nostalgia, which is balanced out (as even younger readers will notice) by the sharpness of a critical-ironic gaze. The narrator's pseudo-naive words are a simple and ingenious literary ploy: A paper airplane sails with ironic charm over the French education system and over the bourgeoisie as a whole.

The first work in the series, "Le petit Nicolas," appeared in new Hebrew garb two years ago, published by Kinneret in the lovely, up-to-date Hebrew translation of Michal Paz-Klep (it followed a pioneering Hebrew edition from 1988, translated by Avital Inbar). The book clearly signals that it is a classic aimed at two different audiences. The aquarelle cover (a tiny Nicolas splashes through puddles by the side of the road) has a clean design that hints at "old-fashioned" books. The creamy pages are meticulously designed, maintaining a delicate balance between Goscinny's text and Sempe's virtuoso illustrations.

The stories themselves are printed in a grayish font, without Hebrew vowel points. This volume (and may there soon be others!) includes 19 stories, each focusing on an "event" in the life of Nicolas: a soccer game, a school inspector's visit, getting a report card, meeting a girl, and so on. The recurrence of the characters, the emphasized repetition of their code names (the fat one, the strong one, etc.) and typical actions (the fat one eats, the strong one hits, the rich boy brags about his wealth) is a central stylistic device of Goscinny's poetics (which can be traced back to the stories' original publication as a newspaper column). In so doing, he ensures the reader's familiarity with the characters and creates both intimacy and a humorous effect that works extremely well on young readers.

It seems that the newer book was intended for these youthful readers: Printed in large letters with Hebrew vowel points, the volume of stories published by Keter even features an oversized Nicolas on its cover. The book offers 16 stories from a much larger collection of 80 stories compiled by Anne Goscinny, the author's daughter, who decided to publish some of the tales her late father and his co-creator had chosen to shelve. Why did she do so? The confused introduction which, unfortunately, is written sloppily and without much talent, delivers a few threadbare-sentimental reasons: "My mother came up with a plan to give the public a new opportunity to meet Nicolas and his gang," and, "I myself am the mother of a son and a daughter, and they are the reason why the time has come to publish these treasures."

Ungentlemanly maneuver

The stories, it should be noted, are not bad, nor are they an embarrassment to their creators. They include some amiable tales about buying a television set, receiving a visit from an old friend of Nicolas' father, and eating in the school cafeteria. Some are less good, such as the opening story, which, instead of following Goscinny's usual practice of describing a single event, spreads over a longer period and seems to lack focus. The division of the collection (which is not very large) into two arbitrary parts (I could not find a link between the stories in each part) is an odd editorial decision, which contributes to the sloppy impression conveyed by the introduction and by the decorated pages devoted to the artists' biographies: The writing in them is fragmented, a kind of copywriting which, above all, does not appeal to children. The graphic design also lacks care (Sempe's figures do not have enough space around them, and in some places they look enlarged and blurred).

The re-branding of Nicolas as a children's book can be seen in different ways. One can certainly understand the logic of publishing an easy-to-read Hebrew edition of the Nicolas tales, and hopefully this book will broaden their audience; however, this should only be done after the entire corpus of Nicolas stories in translation has assumed its place on local bookshelves and in local culture. Publishing the "unpublished" tales before those that have appeared in print, and certainly in the problematic format of the current edition - the translation rights to the Nicolas stories are held by a different, rival publisher - is an underhanded act, a publishing maneuver that is ungentlemanly, but so typical of our time.

Shoham Smith is an author and reviewer.

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