Word: brer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even Bugs Bunny has to hop aside when Brer Rabbit comes by. The big-eared varmint has been a folk hero since early slave days, and his sly outwitting of bullies and bosses is history disguised in fur and interpreted by the victims. Jump Again! (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; $14.95) demonstrates that a classic offers something fresh to each generation. This time it is Van Dyke Parks' riotous retelling and Barry Moser's elegant watercolors. Beneath the new surface, of course, the hero is instantly familiar, once again outmaneuvering Brer Fox, Weasel and Bear, winning the paw of Miss Molly...
...roots of the urban experience are exposed in Flossie and the Fox (Dial; $10.89). Patricia C. McKissack's comedy of a girl who has to get a passel of eggs past a predator recalls Joel Chandler Harris' Brer Rabbit stories. "See," says the fox, "I have thick, luxurious fur. Feel for yourself." Returns Flossie, "Ummm. Feels like rabbit fur to me . . . You aine no fox. You a rabbit, all the time trying to fool me." The fox spends so much time trying to convince Flossie that he is nearly undone by a dog, allowing the child to escape with...
Here is the hectoring muse of the theater, certain of every wink and diphthong. For Pygmalion, a road company Liza Doolittle is counseled on Cockney sounds: "Liar is lawyer . . . Handkerchief is Enkecher . . . Brute is not broot: it is brer-ewt. The utterance is slovenly and nasal, colds in the head being almost chronic in the gutter...
...Somewhere in a high-rise Manhattan hotel, Mammon and the Grinch negotiated free-agent compensation, the main issue in the major league players' strike-the old push-and-shove of player freedom vs. owner control. But the noises coming through the door sounded rather slow and stupid, like Brer B'ar: "Ah'm gonna knock yo' haid clean off." If the Soviet Union had invaded and installed a puppet government in Washington, one could not imagine a more profoundly un-American summer than the one that suddenly seemed in prospect...
...than five minutes is the comic The Monkey King Fights the 18 Lo Hans (demons), which is taken from a legendary novel. The Monkey King, according to the story, has been making a nuisance of himself in heaven; for his misdeeds he is consigned to a fiery furnace. Like Brer Rabbit in another legend, that seems to be just what he wanted, however, and he emerges from the flames with supernatural strength...