One danger of reviewing a book is the temptation to create an ideal version of it, against which the real book cannot hope to compete. This is especially tempting when reviewing a book written outside one’s own discipline, as the methods and goals employed by the author trained in other fields can vary widely. Folklorists in particular face this problem because their subject matter—the folklore itself—is used by so many other scholars.
Consider the case of the werewolf. It is a creature of legend, which for folklorists means that there is at least a kernel of belief at the center of the tale as it flows through the oral tradition. That’s of less concern to, say, literary and film scholars who handle werewolf narratives, since no one believes in the veracity of the popular-culture manifestations of this monster.
This temptation also arises in cases where a scholar treats material from another discipline in a casual (or perhaps careless) way. This is a difficult temptation to overcome when the author, in this case Brent A. Stypczynski, writes, “Young adult literature is also closer to fairy tales and folklore than most adult literature. Therefore, it is closer to archetype and the collective unconscious” (2). This statement is not followed by a discussion of archetypes, the collective unconscious, or folklore; it is taken for granted. It is typical of the treatment of folklore throughout the book, which is unfortunate but also not unexpected in a book that declares in its title that it is about literature.
So it is difficult not to compare Stypczynski’s book to an ideal: to wish that Stypczynski had begun with a more complete discussion of the folkloric and medieval literary sources upon which his analysis of twentieth and twenty-first century fiction relies; to wish that he had included more plot summaries of the books in question to keep his readers oriented in case they were unfamiliar; and to wish for a more fleshed-out discussion of the shape-shifter archetype.
That is not to say that the book needs more discussion of the nature of archetype. In fact, the Jungian influence is most notable in the discussion of the author’s assertion that the shape shifter is a separate archetype from the more commonly identified trickster. It’s not the most compelling argument, since the nature of the concept of archetype is never fully discussed, but it is also not the crux of the book. The quotation above reveals Stypczynski’s approach to werewolf stories in The Modern Literary Werewolf. He is Jungian, but he chooses not to employ the more controversial reliance on the collective unconscious. Mostly, he’s just engaging in what amounts to a very deft textual analysis peppered occasionally with references to the potential psychological benefits of reading these stories.
Stypczynski does his best to trace lines of influence where he can (though scholars who engage in fieldwork will perhaps wonder why he doesn’t simply write to Terry Pratchett or J.K. Rowling to ask them if they’re aware of the stories to which their own writing bears resemblance; they might not reply, but there’s no reason not to try), but that aspect of the book—his attention to whether or not werewolves take off their clothes before they change shape, for example—is less compelling than his analysis of the werewolf as a figure who pushes boundaries, his observation and interpretation of the fact that popular-culture werewolves have often become mentors who simultaneously affirm and question the line between humanity and the other, or his delineation of the role that genre plays in the modern manifestation of the werewolf.
The Modern Literary Werewolf is a book about recent genre fiction, following similar threads and themes as they are manifested in werewolf characters. Stypczynski devotes chapters or portions of chapters to works by Jack Williamson, Terry Pratchett, J.K. Rowling, Charlaine Harris, Charles de Lint, Philip José Famer, Robert Weinberg, Jane Yolen, Larry Niven, and others. Reading through this book will no doubt be a pleasure to those (including this reviewer) who enjoy reading acute analyses of stories they’re already familiar with, and getting introduced to a few new books along the way. Stypczynski ends by calling for more scholarship on the werewolf, which is appropriate given the character type’s prevalence in contemporary popular and literary culture. It is easy to create an ideal version of what a folkloric foray into that field might look like.
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[Review length: 731 words • Review posted on March 26, 2014]