The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore – the Book Version

It should by now come as no surprise that we at the Jade Sphinx think writer, illustrator and animator William Joyce is a genius.  His magnificent drawings and water colors (so evocative of the Golden Age of Illustration), his delicious sense of whimsy, and his uncanny knack for finding the word that is the most fun have positioned him as the pre-eminent children’s entertainer of the early Twenty-First Century.  In an age when so much of children’s entertainment is violent or “dark,” the Joycean oeuvre is a welcome shaft of brilliant sunlight in what is often a very shadowy room.

So we approached the book version of Joyce’s Oscar-winning short silent film, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, with something bordering on trepidation.  (Joyce co-directed the film with Brandon Oldenburg.)  Why … when the film was so enthusiastically reviewed in these pages?

My initial hesitation was mainly because of the ambiguous and mystical qualities of the short film.  Surely a print version – dependent on text as well as visuals – would rob the story of some of its alchemy?

Well, I’m happy to report that the book version of Morris Lessmore is as beguiling as the video-version and the downloadable app.  If anything, the book version is more mysterious than the film version – with ambiguities of equal power and subtlety.

To recap the story – reader Morris Lessmore has his life thrown into chaos by a violent tornado.  Walking through the wreckage, he sees the vision of a beautiful girl carried away by books as if lifted by balloons.  He enters a magical library, where he spends the rest of his life caring for the books and sharing them with the world.  (Visitors to the library enter in black and white and leave in glorious color.)  After decades in the library, an elderly Lessmore leaves as a young woman comes to take his place.

While the film is dense with mystical passages, the book provides different conundrums.  With snappy pacing and retro visual style, we watch Lessmore spend his life tending books in a massive library.  But while he is caring for the books there – and sharing them with people in need of the curative powers of fiction – he also closes each day by writing in his own journal.  As Joyce writes, The days passed. So did the months. And then years.  When an elderly Lessmore finally leaves to join eternity, he leaves behind him his own book.  As Joyce writes, His life was a book of his own writing, one orderly page after another.  He would open it every morning and write of his joys and sorrows, of all that he knew and everything that he hoped for.  The contents remain a mystery to the reader, but the question must be asked: is the library really a metaphor for our lives, with each book representing every life lived?  Or is Joyce saying that each and every life is a book of blank pages, to be filled with deeds good or bad, as our final contribution to the great library of the world?  Or is Joyce saying that we must leave books of value (or lead lives of value) for those who will come after us?  (A typical Joycean detail is that the top of Lessmore's pen forms a question mark.)

The very malleability of the story is one of its great satisfactions, along with the Joycean habit of including references to beloved pop culture touchstones, including everything from Winsor McCay to Buster Keaton to The Wizard of Oz.  It is no wonder that Lessmore spent several weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists – and as the holidays near, it would make an ideal gift to a young person starting on the personal, life-changing journey of reading.  The art (in collaboration with Joe Bluhm) is transcendent — a visual feast for young and old alike.  More important, after sharing Morris Lessmore with a child (or lucky adult), it is interesting to ask the listener, what do you think it means?

In other Joyce news: two new volumes in his ongoing Guardians of Childhood cosmology are just arriving in bookstores now: Toothiana, Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies, is a young adult novel, and the picture book The Sandman: The Story of Sanderson Mansnoozie.  Expect reviews in the weeks to come.

Oscar Pick: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

It is quite possible that 2011-2122 will be remembered as banner years for author, illustrator and animator William Joyce.  First, Joyce made a triumphant return to illustrated books with The Man in the Moon and followed that with his first young adult prose novel, Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King.  In addition, he released his first animated short, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, created by his own company, Moonbot.

What does 2012 promise?  Morris Lessmore is nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, and later this year DreamWorks animation will release Rise of the Guardians, a feature-length animated adaptation of his Guardians of Childhood mythos.  On top of that, the second book in the Guardians series, this time featuring a monocle-wearing rabbit, will be out in time for Easter.

It is perhaps fitting that just as Joyce returned to books the first animated short from his studio should focus on the redemptive powers of storytelling.  Though Joyce has been involved in several large-studio productions (including Robots and an adaptation of his own book, Meet the Robinsons), there has yet to be a screen adaptation that completely captured his unique vision.  Morris Lessmore is the first animated work that completely looks like a William Joyce creation, complete with bright pastel colors and shiny Americana.  Working under his own Moonbot banner, Joyce, and co-director Brandon Oldenburg, were able to create a haunting vignette without an interfering studio inserting by-rote funk music and fart jokes.  (Morris Lessmore is also an iPad app, turning the short into an interactive ebook of sorts.)

Where to begin with Morris Lessmore?  Our main character is a beautifully animated homage to silent movie clown Buster Keaton.  Morris is a masterpiece of recreation; Joyce and Oldenburg completely nail Keaton’s persona.  Some of the physical jokes hark back directly to Keaton’s films, but, more importantly, they have captured Keaton’s magical facial expressions and dance-like movements as well.  Captured, too, is Keaton’s underlying melancholy: though Chaplin often strove for pathos, he himself was seldom a tragic figure.  Not so Keaton, whose face was chiseled in stone but his eyes were those of a wounded angel.  There is an incredible amount of tenderness in the animated Morris, and it is his face that echoes once the short is over.

The plot is surreal and allegorical: Morris, reading, is pulled by a hurricane into a magical realm.  There, he becomes guardian over an elaborate mansion of books, caring for them, healing them when ruined, and sharing them with people as if he were a celestial librarian.  Many years later, his life over, he spirits away towards heaven, young once again, buffeted by a bevy of airborne books.

With so simple an outline, Joyce and Oldenburg manage to cram into 13 minutes some of the most wistful, affecting and moving animation I’ve seen in years.  Morris is befriended by a book version of Humpty Dumpty, and in a witty animation in-joke, Humpty moves when the pages of his book turn, much like early efforts at animation.  The score is simplicity itself – mostly Pop Goes the Weasel hauntingly played on a piano heavy with vibrato.

In addition, we are treated to notations in Morris’ own notebook, penned in a simple hand.  One page reads: My further investigations have turned many of my long held opinions into mush.  The many and varied points of view I have encountered do not confuse, but enrich.  I laugh.  I cry.  I seldom understand things, but it…

On another page, Morris writes, I go round and round the mulberry bush.  Why does the weasel go “pop?”  Does it matter?  If life is enjoyed, does it have to make sense?

Like all allegories, what most people will find in The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is what they bring to it.  However, I cannot escape the sense of both irrepressible joy and gentle sadness found in the film.  One of the recurrent themes threading through Joyce’s current work is the sense of stewardship, and it’s no mistake that Morris is a Guardian as much as the other fairy tale and folklore figures he is using in his Guardians of Childhood series.  Nor can it be completely accidental that Morris’ key confident is Humpty Dumpty, who was once broken and is now rebuilt.  For this correspondent, it’s impossible to watch Morris Lessmore without a sense of melancholy and loss.  It is a unique note to find in an animated short, and the film is all the more interesting, and, yes, profound, because of it.

Whether The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore wins the Academy Award or not is mostly irrelevant.  The achievement of Joyce and Oldenburg will survive either a loss or a win.  Interested readers can see the film here:  http://vimeo.com/35404908.  It’s 13 minutes you may never forget.