Welcome!
Let’s begin the main series on Coville. Today we will be discussing his earliest book that I have read personally, The Monster’s Ring (1982). Coville authored two earlier books, The Foolish Giant (1978) and Sarah’s Unicorn (1979), but they are less often reprinted and I suffer a limited ability to review them. So:
Wander back with me to the era of power suits and hair metal, of aerobics and Reaganomics. Thriller is at the top of the charts; E.T. is at the top of the box office. At Carnegie Mellon, emoticons have to be typed out, one :-) at a time; meanwhile, the first computer virus is spamming across Pennsylvania on 5 ¼-inch floppies. Lech Walesa is behind bars in Poland; the Phalanges Libanaises are unleashed upon Beirut. In the Rust Belt, steel production falls off a cliff. The Satanic panic (which I imagine as a fearlessly fashion-forward way to panic) is ramping up.
The last clock to strike was the grandfather clock in the study. It made a noise like a steamer trunk full of tin plates falling slowly and solemnly down a flight of stairs.
John Bellairs, The House with a Clock in its Walls
John Bellairs is collaborating with Edward Gorey. Bruce Coville publishes a fantasy novel, at the climax of which a boy named Russell transforms into the devil. Well, a devil. “A king among monsters.” But fear not: Russell has the time of his life.
Simplicity
This is a plain, spare, lean novel. I’m serious. Not only does the vocabulary utilize probably the most common 1,000 words in English, not only is the rhythm built on short sentences and short paragraphs. But the ideas, you know? Each image, each emotion is stated very plainly. There’s a sentence break. Then, an explicit link, a logical connection to the next image. Bedroom. Stairs. Front door. That kind of thing. Magic ring. Magic words. Success!
An adult reader will remark that the book is short, and it is short at 128 pages double-spaced, but not every kids’ book, even of this length, is so simple. I mention this because it seems inescapable to me that the writer must have chosen the subject matter to fit these stringent constraints, not the other way around. “Great, a 200-page, fair-to-middling vocab monster story. Aw, rats; the kids say it’s a bit too hard. Just a quick revision …” It would never work. The characters, the props, the entire drama must have been shaped by compromise: to accommodate very young readers, and still guide the reader through some premeditated thought process toward “meaning.”
Russell wanted to be a monster for Halloween—but this wasn’t what he had in mind!
cover copy
To a kid, you know, the real world is just as new as an imaginary world.
If you were inspired to write a novel that very young children could follow and retain, what would you say in it?
Sub-genre
Coville places this book in his Magic Shop series, and it shares a very regular formula with later entries. The formula begins with exactly two mundane problems: a tragic problem that stems from the protagonist’s tragic flaw (hubris etc.) and a story problem in which their environment, in the guise of consequences of the tragic flaw, attacks them because they are undeveloped (small, weak, naive). The attack is embodied by a school bully; the hero flees; the setting is a town “too small to get lost in,” inspired by Coville’s own childhood home in upstate New York (way upstate); the sensation of fear magically transports the hero to the magic shop. A Bradbury-esque modern American wizard, characterized as “a weird old man,” sells the hero a magical item for a quarter (not 25¢), seizes them by the wrist, and utters a crucial piece of advice, which the hero will later—and we can all relate to this—forget. The magic item turns out to be a perfect compliment to the hero’s strengths and flaws; they begin making progress on their tragic flaw.
They also learn to love magic, but because they failed to follow the important advice, magic causes them to become slightly “weird” themselves, and for the rest of their life they can never fully immerse themselves in a gray, conformist existence again—but maybe, just maybe, dear reader, maybe that’s for the best.
Synopsis
So, obviously in The Monster’s Ring, Russell’s flaw is that he is actually too tractable, trapped in his timidity, unable to form honest relationships because he knows he’s expected to be “nice.” The dramatic foil is Eddie, an emotionally abused child who can’t get a break because, presumably, American men have a lot in common with Phalangists. The magic shop owner is Mr. Elives, explained in an author’s note as, “Mystery Lives.” (What, is Coville afraid that it has all withered and died?) The magic item is a ring that can turn you into a little monster, or a lot of monster (or a demonic creature). Russell, fan of E.T. and voracious reader of campy comic books, knows exactly how to take advantage of this power for the love of Halloween.
For the first time he must deal with the consequences of not acting “nice” enough; he hides the horns on his head from his mother and she accuses him—him! of all children—of stomping around upstairs; he attracts unwanted attention from his classmates; he yearns to be timid again. He has a devil of a time; raises hell; speaks to Eddie in the language of threats, the only one he understands. He considers abusing some civilians since they’re in his power, but discovers that behaving like a Phalangist actually feels like crap; God knows why people do it. Agoraphobic so far outside his accustomed role, he pines for his parents and their vapid aspirations; but saves himself from that whitewashed, concrete world by inhaling the musk of autumn leaves and the steam from spiced cider. Too late, he remembers that the moon is full and therefore using the ring is forbidden; plus, Mr. Elives warned him that turning into a fiery red demon would be a brick too far.
Something evil’s lurkin’ in the dark / Under the moonlight
lyrics written by Rod Temperton and popularized by Michael Jackson
To reiterate, there’s no room for asides in a novel of this design. For the first eight out of thirteen chapters, with the possible exception of the scene inside the magic shop, every single event portrays the emotional pendulum Russell is living out: first he burns up inside under the pressure of obedience, then, with the ring’s influence, he lashes out. This pattern reaches its climax in chapters nine and ten, at which point something must be done to curb the effects. In chapter eleven, “wrapping up,” rivals cooperate; disguises are shed, but too late; and the reader grasps the true scale of Russell’s built-up resentment and the consequences thereof.
Chapter twelve: everything is cured by a good night’s sleep.
Chapter thirteen is the denouement: Russell sheds his shyness. Then, epilogue, another denouement: something of the devil is with him still. Iris-out on a harvest moon.
The novel’s first and last meaning
If you had the inspiration for a genre novel that was pared down to the ultimate simplicity, what would you want that novel to say? Russell, here, learns to stand up for himself, but if I had to paraphrase the novel’s meaning, I would go one step deeper, and ask how we know who or what to stand up for to begin with: “What do I stand up for when I stand up for myself?” The Monster’s Ring says, “Your interests, your tastes, your feelings are inherently true because they are true to you, and therefore they are never immature, undignified or inappropriate. When you stand up for yourself, defend your right to joy.” If that sounds too precious, well, maybe our labeling the child-hero’s tragic flaw as “timidity” should have been a warning to you. So, how did I reach this conclusion?
Repression, not bedlam, is the novel’s antagonist.
In fantasy we engage in magical thinking, in which, even if the hero couldn’t use magic to do anything, it so happens they can use magic to do their favorite thing. The themes of the fantasy genre include wish fulfillment and finding your heart’s desire. Russell lives in suburban ‘82. The reason Mr. Elives sells him the monster’s ring is that, for Russell, there’s nothing better in the whole shop—nothing in the whole world. Does the novel say to the reader (who still has their shoes stuck in the concrete), “You’re gonna get your heart’s desire?”
Obviously not—not without caveats. Recall the limits of magical thinking in folktales, such as The One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, the source where Coville must have gotten the “twist it once, twist it twice” theory of magic rings. In folktales, a jinn or slave may attempt to subvert their orders if they deeply hate their master, which, inexplicably, they always do, the spiteful creatures. Therefore a wish, granted, frequently backfires.
Maybe the novel says, “There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.” But I could have figured that out myself. And frankly, it’s not at all clear in The Monster’s Ring that Russell suffers from too much pulp fiction horror in his life. At the very end of the book, he’s perfectly happy to bear the lingering stain of magic on his soul. He would hate it if his life were boring! And he’s not alone. When his school buddies finally witness “their” monster, it’s love at first fright, and they lead him down the hallway with their arms around his hunched back. During the novel’s wrapping up moment, we learn that, if things had played out only a little differently, foil Eddie could have felt the same. Turns out Eddie speaks at least one language besides Threats, after all; he also understands Cool, and Satan is Cool.
Even during the novel’s most uncomfortable scenes, real danger arises from (socially conservative) human behavior in human situations. Local police are ill-equipped to prevent Russell chasing cars; uncontrollable children pull his horns and hair, asking to see how they’re glued on; at the height of his power, Russell seriously considers doing real harm, since there’s nothing to stop him, and since some people, arguably, deserve it. Repression, not bedlam, is the novel’s antagonist.
This hero, small, polite, clean, resigned Russell, is a deeply repressed character, hardly a glutton for power or violence. Power in this story, normal mundane power such as that of a parent, or of men, is wielded without shame; Russell loves genre fiction precisely because it supplies a more complete palette of emotions, ironically, than his real life does. If he is exaggeratedly naive, so is the rest of Syracuse, NY. His use of the ring forces him to learn how to stand up for himself for the first time; the novel is hardly a cautionary tale against doing so.
He took an instant dislike to the handsome prince.
Bruce Coville, The Monster’s Ring
The key to the story is the hero’s learning process. From page 1 to page 128, what changes? Russell learns that wielding strength and violence with no consequences is too much? Nonsense; he hates violence. When he interrupts shameless, sadistic abuse, even his own indignation actually frightens him. Perhaps Russell learns that he was destined to grow up eventually, and—good fortune—as you grow up, fewer people are your direct superiors. Well, Russell doesn’t grow up during this novel. The Magic Shop books are not coming-of-age stories; they are unambiguously children’s stories. Childhood lasts a long time; children learn and grow as children. And Russell learns to stand up to his superiors; that’s the whole point.
But here’s one thing that does change. One page 1, Russell is already a little weird himself—he’s probably heard of this Michael Jackson guy, you know, and is that music really part of our virtue-signaling, white American culture?—and he believes this is a flaw in himself. In fact, he believes any number of things about his life are personal faults, including his small size, yes, but also his supposed cowardice; his love of comic books; his resentment toward his mother for babying him; even his father’s pedantic habit of speaking over him. One page 128, all of these facts still obtain, but he no longer believes they are his fault. This is especially true of his relationship to his own imagination.
Magic in fantasy raises a question that I have always found very meaningful … beautiful, even. “To have what you wish, must you know what you wish?” Or, in keeping with our folktale inspiration, “Suppose you were going to be granted one wish, fully, freely granted, so that all social and practical concerns were lifted; even then—especially then, lacking all context—how do you decide?” In fantasy, we play through the inconvenient consequences of our wish as a way of finding out whether it was all worth it. Dear Diary, chased by cops … got away … could have gotten caught; if seriously threatened with arrest, might well have bitten their faces off to get away … must be sure not to take this risk when I use monster’s ring again tomorrow night :-) Fantasy can also help to disentangle our true feelings from social expectations, as the child whose mother needs to back off, despite still being his mother. It can help to disentangle our true feelings from costs we have resigned to pay, as the bully’s victim who is unjustly instructed not to lash out, as if the victim, by being attacked, became responsible for keeping the peace. This is one of our most difficult challenges in real life. We compare our feelings to those of the fantasy characters, in order to learn … how to learn … our own wishes.
At the beginning of this novel, the protagonist feels dullness; at the end, joy. This is how I discovered that the novel compares all of our real-life expectations, our tangles, to Russell’s exaggerated submissiveness, because they both feel dull. It advises us to search for a joy that fulfills us the way Russell is fulfilled by becoming a comic book creature—and not to apologize for that joy. “Human beings have an inherent right to joy; to embody our joy and, when others have difficulty understanding our weird campy freak shit, to defend our joy, to express ourselves without fear of persecution.” If the monster’s ring has words engraved on the inside of the band, I think that’s pretty close to what they would say.
What is not the meaning?
Other reviewers have characterized The Monster’s Ring as a story with an anti-bullying message, and I got to tell you, folks, the way I see it, the man wanted to sell books. Nineteen Eighty-Two was a good year to make noise about bullying.
Sure, the Magic Shop books don’t exactly convey a pro-bullying message. But Russell’s tragic flaw certainly isn’t being a bully. It’s not being a victim, either; that wouldn’t even make sense. Eddie is characterized as a bully, but Russell’s relationship with him is ancillary to Russell’s monster fantasy. For that matter, if the book’s meaning were to say that other children can and should deal with bullies the way Russell deals with Eddie … maybe it wasn’t just Satanic panic after all, right? More like bearing Satanic witness. No, this book gives no realistic advice about bullying, no message; it’s just part of the landscape.
By the way, it really bothers me when people mistake communication for “messaging.” Whatever’s your cause, sure, bullying, if we must … making it look bad won’t help you. That’s messaging. But bullying is already bad; and everyone already knows that. Ideally, people should engage with the problem, not just “message” about it. Now, meaning, on the other hand, is when a book actually provides some insight into the problem—the problem itself, not people’s supposed superficial grasp of the problem, or changing consumer trends as a result of the problem, or something. How many child bullies have grown up to become inspirational speakers who do nothing all day but accept payment to speechify toward captive audiences in school auditoriums? So, an assembly convinces some of these parents that the administration is doing something about the problem? Come on! We can all do better. Anyway, enough of that.
Based on reading Coville’s later books, and indeed other genre fiction, I considered whether The Monster’s Ring asks the reader to sympathize with those who are different from ourselves. On the contrary, the monster’s behavior is portrayed as something Russell gets away with, never something to emulate, never something that needs sympathy.
The ring, except during the full moon when he was forbidden from using it anyway, throws him into a state resembling shock or an extreme adrenaline rush, combined with unmistakably animal thinking. He experiences uncontrollable impulses to chase, to scratch, to flee. He is easily disoriented by a smack with a broom. Windows are too small for him to climb through. After turning back into a child again, his memories return with a selective focus, and out of order, when they return at all. Most of all, his monster self feels an unfamiliar instinct to frighten—not only an instinct, but a joy, unsurprisingly, because everyone knows monsters love to frighten people. I love this feature of the story and spent a lot of time thinking about why Coville envisaged the transformation as so psychedelic. But whatever the author’s creative process, the character’s psychological separation from his monster self creates a narrative separation that prevents the reader sympathizing with the monster at all—in contrast to Coville’s way of writing space aliens, goblins, talking animals, ghosts or indeed A.I. The reader comes to feel about the monster the same way Russell himself does: frightened, perhaps ashamed, sometimes all too familiar, sometimes a little wiser for the experience.
And the shock, you know, the lightheadedness, the adrenaline: is this any less than the way we all feel when we first learn to stand up for ourselves?
I feel compelled to address the comparison with The Lord of the Rings, less because I see anything there than because I’ve never seen someone else address it. Coville had certainly read Tolkien. Both stories achieve high drama when a character finally realizes their magic ring is antagonistic, but can no longer resist. And although the two fantasies strongly contrast in their portrayal of magic—for Tolkien, the ring is a Freudian psychoanalyst, which dredges up the evil lurking in the id of otherwise heroic men (and women); whereas for Coville, the good, nice boy is a repressive, frustrated mess, and the ring complements his personality and aids his growth—in both works, magic is discussed in vague enough terms that any investigation into the narrative significance of each would require very close reading.
But it seems clear that Coville, not to mention Tolkien, recognized a nice juicy symbolism in the wearing of rings as a signifier of social status, emotional connection, self-image, in a word, magic, something children can playact using rings made of tin or for that matter Play-Doh. And if wish-fulfillment can work on an imaginary ring, well, there you go.
A tin ring is a great toy; that’s why The Lord of the Rings is a great fantasy.
Lastly, The Monster’s Ring has a recurring motif that can only be called “nakedness.” When Russell runs from Eddie in the first scene, it’s because no other human being is nearby to protect him. When he runs home in the second-to-last scene, his clothes have been destroyed as if by the power of Grayskull. The first time he transforms, he is intoxicated by the pale moonlight. And in the scene where he terrorizes the school until this behavior backfires, he flees once again, precisely because the adults are incapable of protecting him from the mob; he is alone, and his personal space, his body, are no longer respected.
Genre fiction has an interest in the contrast between nature and artifice. Is this novel a treatise on that contrast?
Scrambling up an old oak, he hid behind the scarlet leaves, where he leaned against the trunk, gasping for breath.
Bruce Coville, The Monster’s Ring
In real life, the human body is manufactured by nature but sustained by other people; these people have intellect and theory of mind; we share traditions and tools, architecture and accumulated wealth; so society is counter-natural, or artificial. For a monster to hide in a tree is only appropriate because a monster exists in the category of nature; but to transform back into a child and still hide in a tree is to be robbed of society’s protection. The contrast interests the reader, whose body is also animal, whose social role is also contingent, who daily confronts the reality that they are, you might say, naked under their clothes. But the contrast especially interests the child reader, who has only partial membership in society. The child is well aware that they have more limited means of demanding inclusion—protection—than adults do.
Well, “nature and artifice” does not describe the pendulum action of Russell’s feelings. And we already established that Coville makes no claim to be an authority for children on how to achieve safety in an unsafe world; that claim would be irresponsible anyway. Let’s settle for reading nakedness, aloneness, the visceral feeling of a lack of the protection needed for human life, as an authorial impulse to honesty. It’s not that, when the inspiration for a novel of elevated simplicity arrived, that inspiration already spoke to this motif. It’s just that, obviously, children think about nature and artifice, about visceral feelings, about personal space and other kids’ lack of respect for it. So this motif, like bullying, is part of the palette.
Coville wouldn’t want the monsters of the real world to respond to his novel the way Russell responds to fifth-grade storytime, by taking “an instant dislike to the handsome prince.”
If we were in fifth grade together and played a game during recess called Monster’s Ring
It’s easy to tell what the game would look like. I jump; you roar. This one glowers; that one gives chase. After five minutes each of us touches our right ring finger, grinning, reciting the spell to change back, but gripped instead by the ring’s magic. In Halloweentown, it’s always the night of the full moon. Oh, no! The game must go on.
Not exactly a world-spanning fantasy epic, our Monster’s Ring. Very limited interpersonal intrigue. But Coville is at his strongest with embodied drama, physical self-expression, somatic imagery, somatic symbolism, somatic play. This feature has got to be the kernel that inspired The Monster’s Ring—inspired the inaugural magic shop book, and told him this was the time for an exercise in simplicity. That directness, you know? He’s striving for a practice of storytelling that touches you right on the belly button and says, “Visceral.”
Aren’t we all?
