Tales of Uncle Remus

Most of the time I don't enjoy these stories because, a) they weren't a part of my childhood and, 2) Brer Rabbit just strikes me as downright ornery and mean-spirited. I did like Julius Lester's tellings, and the way he slipped in some modernity (the difference between courtin' then and courtin' now, etc.). Then I thought I'd read a few of the Joel Chandler Harris stories by way of comparison. Just a few. Hmm, I looked at the dialect - maybe one. You wind up reading three or more, though, because he broke up stories like the tar baby one, I reckon to fit a newspaper column. [I actually have a childhood connection with JCH. One of his cousins lived on our street. She'd married a New York stockbroker named Brady. She was a very elegant lady, he was a very quiet gentleman with a very dry wit, and their son Petey (an adult in college when I knew them) a cheerful character who teased me about the plural of "moose." Catherine Brady would want her coffee served very, very hot but then wouldn't actually drink it until it was almost cold. We teased her husband because he seemed so sober and upright. I once took him a sponge sandwich which he had the good grace to try to eat because he could see how crushed I was that he was suspicious of it.]
Something that sort of surprised me was that both Lester and Harris use humorous conflict with their audience. In Lester's case, he is having a dialog with the reader, anticipating objections a child would throw out at him. Harris has Uncle Remus and the boy quibble back and forth. "I thought you said ..." Nebber mind! Oh, the dialect was very hard for me, and I had quickly gotten used to it in Porgy. I wracked my brain to figure out what "bleeds to" was supposed to mean. (I guess it's "pleased to," but seems to carry more connotations that pleasure, like, say, necessity.) Lester's Very Nearly Standard English version was a breeze. The stories were well told and the digressions amusing. I still think Brer Rabbit is unnecessarily mean, but then, I don't have the background where that makes sense. I had to be told what a "nee-grow" was when I was five, just in case I had come across one in kindergarten. Italians were about as exotic as my acquaintances got until we moved to Ohio when I was eight. I knew of Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus only by name and because of Catherine Brady. While I could probably sing "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Da," I had no idea where it came from. My favorite Brer Rabbit story, which is not in this Lester collection, is the one with Brer Possum and the snake under the rock. I told this story at Leath Correctional and everyone in the room could recite the moral with me: Brer Possum, Don't trouble trouble till trouble troubles you!