Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 9 years ago

Step One: Translating the Translated; Part 1

“Master Cat, or Puss in Boots” is a French literary fairy tale written by Charles Perrault. If you’d like a really solid understanding of what “pulling the ever-lovin’ stuffing out of it” looks like, getting yourself a copy of Jack Zipes’ translation into English is your best bet. Zipes translated the story from French to English, and I’ll be translating his translation from fairy tale to academic essay.

Here’s the first paragraph - which sets up the story - translated sentence by sentence. No mention of any details of the fairy tale here. Instead every single element of the story has been given an incredibly dry equivalent:

Through the inevitable co-mingling of nature and nurture we are educated, imbued with our own singular work ethic, and - at some point - given the opportunity to stand on our own. Sometimes, those who fall under the jurisdiction of nurturer - family, teachers, friends of family, even our own friends - aren’t wholly nurturing and drain the power of our agency without our even realizing it. After so many years of reciting facts and copying figures and following in others’ footsteps, it can be difficult to know exactly what we should do when left to our own devices.

In the second paragraph of the story, our attention is turned to the youngest son of the recently-deceased miller. We are told through the narrator’s voice that he is upset, and he himself has the first line of dialogue in the story in which he explains his difficulty and leaves an opening for the cat. Since actions speak louder than words, and speaking is a kind of dialogue, his speaking his thoughts aloud says more about him and his situation and the possibilities that surround him than anything a narrative voice might say about him; and, so each of the three parts of this second fairy tale paragraph is translated into its own academic paragraph:

As children being denied appetite-spoiling foods or made to take naps, we define freedom as being a grown-up and making our own rules. When we finally reach adulthood we find ourselves confined by larger, societal rules. Every day we see others who thrive within such conventions while we remain in our near-constant state of disbelief regarding our own adultness.

This is made more difficult by our incessant need to compare ourselves to those peers who seem to glide effortlessly from schooldays into adulting without skipping a beat. Our need to connect or fit in is a basic tenet of our humanity and the driving force behind why we try so hard to follow the exact steps to success walked by our peers. It’s what we did as kids and so - because we survived childhood - we try to do it now.

However, when we who are aware that “something is not right” just try to continue on as we always have, the smallest fallback is immensely disheartening. It drives home this idea that we are completely unprepared for the world of adulting and will be doomed forever if we cannot figure out how to do what everyone else manages to be able to do every day. Our only hope for redemption is to embrace failure as an option.

What comes next in the story is the cat, the good stuff, the thing you’ve been waiting for. Next time. 
Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 9 years ago

Past, Present, and Promise

When you spend a lot of your time unpacking fairy tales to prove to folks they have any kind of relevance today, and a lot of your time gorging yourself on every free entrepreneurial resource under the sun of the inter-webs, at some point in time your brain is going to decide something is genius. For me, that something was #PussInBootsCamp. It was a catchy name that lent itself all too easily to some good ol’ fashioned social media schmuckery.

First, it was going to be a three-day email bootcamp going in-depth on five lessons with their own catchy titles:
  1. Everybody Wants to be a Cat
  2. Put Your Best Boot Forward
  3. Map Out Your Journey
  4. Sharing The Wealth
  5. Catnaps for The Win

Then, it was going to be a five-part online course with videos which folks would find through a free-to-download ebook that gave away all the basic information culled from an excessive amount of research (an embarrassingly large percentage of which was done through a secret pinterest board as a kind of market research I’m not wholly proud of, but - hey - it happened and now there is only moving forward).

Now, I just wanna write the dang book. I just want to sit down with a copy of Charles Perrault’s “Master Cat, or Puss in Boots” as translated by Jack Zipes (who it sometimes seems is having all the fairy tale fun until I’m reminded that Maria Tatar exists) and break it apart like I would any other fairy tale. Except I’ve already done a little of the breaking down, and now I just want to go deep and pull the ever-lovin’ stuffing out of the old story and show you everything I see every time I think about this life-changing cat.

This may just be a DIY book or evolve into an online course or float around the internet like so many of the manifesto things out there. Whatever this thing is, it’s getting written. It’s getting done one keystroke at a time and you are more than welcome to take part in the ride.