Bound Up With Books: Winkie

My goodness – it has been awhile. It is partly a bit of laxness on my part, and partly that the review I was working on is less ready in my head than I thought. So, in the meantime, let’s talk about Winkie. The easiest way to describe Winkie is probably to say that it is The Velveteen Rabbit on acid.

Winkie is a teddy bear – he is made of excelsior and mohair, held together with rivets and stitching. His eyes, from which he gets his name, are old-fashioned dolls eyes that close when the doll is horizontal, and are made of glass and metal. A teddy bear through and through, no flesh or blood to be found anywhere. The fact that he can walk, talk, blink his own eyes and (once) give birth does not change this fact. Neither does the fact that he is bitter, hurt and despairing and not feeling particularly cuddly.

He is a teddy bear in trouble. His ability to move under his own power has put him in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he is now on trial as a terrorist. As The Terrorist in fact – the mastermind of everything threatening. Sounds absurd, but then a walking talking teddy bear is already patently absurd – so what’s a little more absurdity?  Not to mention that his very existence is threatening to the generally accepted concept of how the world works.

There is a lot going on in this book, but I’m going to focus on the idea of definition. For most of his life, as a static thing, albeit one that could think and feel, Winkie was dependent on others to define him – as he was for everything else. Including, to a certain extent, his ability to be aware. Taking his cue of his identity from his owners, he wanted them to be more so that he could be more. The fact that they fell short was something neither he, nor they (being children) could really help. Just the same, Winkie resents them for failing to live up to his expectations, to be what he needs them to be for his own satisfaction. And yet he loves them, and despairs when they finally outgrow and abandon him.  He longs to be free of them and his need for them, to be free from this conflict within himself.  And when he does gain the ability to move, he runs away.

What Winkie discovers one he gains the power of self-motivation, is that the ability to move under his own power and flee his confinement is not enough to become his own bear, as it were, and he eventually finds himself once again at the mercy of others to define what he is and what he means.

This was an excellent book – full of black humor and tragedy and absurdity along the lines of Thorton Wilder, and pokes as much fun of our fear of the unexplained (and possibly unexplainable) as it does everything else. Highly recommended.