2025 book bingo: #2, published before 1950, "Pinocchio" (1883)

[dorinda]

Book 2 for 2025 book bingo! For the “Published Before 1950” square (so many options... I love to read older books!) I selected the original “The Adventures of Pinocchio” (1883), translated by Carol Della Chiesa in 1926.

All I knew about this book was that it was different from the Disney movie, and that instead of the wise and friendly Jiminy Cricket as Pinocchio’s conscience, there’s a talking cricket that tries to advise Pinocchio until Pinocchio smashes him to death with a hammer. (I think Stephen King mentioned this in something of his–maybe “Danse Macabre”?). So I considered myself warned, and wasn't really at risk of tonal whiplash.

As promised, this is a pretty dark story–Pinocchio is mostly a pure chaos agent, kind of like Curious George except with violence and death, plus always someone looking to trick/prey on/take advantage of you. The narrator delivers morals, but for most of the book they come across (to me, at least, in translation and from my different historical context) as brightly tongue-in-cheek, since once a moral gets set out, Pinocchio generally smashes right through it. He’s not malicious per se, but he is entirely impulsive and only does what he wants to do, and then cries about it afterward in self-pity once he has Fucked Around And Found Out. Then he gets rescued somehow, and heads back into the FAFO cycle.

I enjoyed the Fox-and-Cat sections, because of the difference between what Pinocchio knows, how the narrator describes things, and what we as readers (if we can get the hang of unreliable narration) know or intuit. They’re con artists, they have unacknowledged cover stories and nefarious plans, while Pinocchio (and the narrative) is taking them entirely at their word. I can’t remember when I first learned to navigate narrative unreliability in my own childhood reading, but I definitely came to love that feeling.

The last section of the book feels different–the stated morals start feeling more serious, and Pinocchio starts doing kind and positive things without being forced to. That means the sense of humor changes too–it kind of filters away, as does the sharp irony and the layers of unreliability. And a few earlier events get softened–like, the Talking Cricket reappears toward the end of the book without any explanation, scolds Pinocchio for the hammer thing, delivers a sententious moral, and Pinocchio apologizes and agrees with him. Definitely different than the Pinocchio of the earlier sections. (Although interestingly, Pinocchio may have Plot Armor, but even once the book has gentled a bit, other characters still die–like, Lamp-Wick, someone who convinced Pinocchio to misbehave, doesn’t get rescued from being turned into a donkey the way Pinocchio was rescued. He’s bought and then worked to death, and dies in a sad on-page scene.)

I read more about the book afterward and found out it was originally a magazine serial, so it all makes perfect sense, the episodic nature and the tone change and whatnot. Wikipedia also said that the serial originally ended fairly early on, when Pinocchio is punished by being hanged by the neck from a tree and dies (whereas in the book he’s hanged and almost dies but is rescued). (Man, my childhood books were never like this.)

It really benefited Collodi to start up again with a fixit, given how popular the happy-ending book version became all over the world. It’s hard to imagine a dead-at-the-end version becoming as beloved in places like the U.S.–at least in my sense of children’s literature at that time, it wouldn’t have much room for such a pitch-black tone.

Comments

[gwyn]

Holy crap. I mean yeah, things were darker then, but geez Louise.

[dorinda]

Right?? And I've read a lot of children's books from the same era, so it's not like I'm not familiar with the general milieu. I was browsing the Wikipedia page of "1880s Children's Books", and along with The Adventures of Pinocchio are works like Huck Finn, The Black Arrow, Five Little Peppers, The Prince and the Pauper, Kidnapped, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Treasure Island... none of those fit the vibe of Pinocchio.

Granted, the 1880s books I've read tend to be ones that have been canonized and remembered, so maybe I'm missing ones that were much darker. In the list above, books like Five Little Peppers or Little Lord Fauntleroy are extremely soft and sweet; the darkest is probably a tie between Treasure Island and Huck Finn (though some of the darkness of Huck Finn I think is context brought along by the reader, whereas Treasure Island's darkness is on the page). Pinocchio is wayyy higher on the darkness scale, even though it softens up by the end.

[sakana17]

I didn't watch the Disney movie until a few years ago (though I knew all the songs), and I found it creepy and fairly dark. The book, wow. Makes the movie seem lighthearted.

[dorinda]

It really does!

I saw the Disney movie as a child, and it's hard to remember my first impression of it, but I do remember liking the look of it very much. We had a beautiful big book of Disney art, and I really enjoyed poring over the pages about Pinocchio, especially Monstro the whale. I did end up meeting people later in life who said they were scared by that movie (one said she had to leave the theater), so it was definitely not for everybody! But I liked spooky things, so maybe that was where the movie fit for me.

I really gotta wonder what I would have thought of the book, if I had read it when I was young! I don't think it would have fit among the spooky things I enjoyed... it doesn't come across (at least to adult me) as what I would have called spooky, but instead kind of rough and unpredictable. I remember enjoying some Curious George books, but his chaos energy never truly hurt anybody, and was always warmly wrapped up by the end of each adventure...not the same as Pinocchio!