The 13 Clocks

The 13 Clocks, James Thurber – 1951

If various references to Neil Gaiman haven't given the game away, I am a huge fan of his. As such, when he described The 13 Clocks as 'probably the best book in the world'1 it seemed to be worth a read, and discovering that my Mum had a copy I dived straight in. And although I have many favourite books, and there are many books that could be considered objectively better, I'm still finding it very difficult to disagree with Mr Gaiman's analysis!

The 13 Clocks is a story for children – the edition I have is only 80 pages long – an extraordinary mixture of darkness and silliness, set around the icy Coffin Castle, the villainous one-eyed Duke who rules the land, and his niece, the beautiful Princess Saralinda. 'He did not wish to give her hand in marriage, since her hand was the only warm hand in the castle'2 whilst he continually wears jewelled gloves because 'his hands were as cold as his smile, and almost as cold as his heart'3. He enjoys setting impossible tasks for the princes who come to win her hand, and to Zorn of Zorna, who arrives in the Duke's land disguised as a minstrel, he sets the task of finding a thousand gems in ninety-nine hours and placing them on the Duke's table when the Castle's thirteen clocks all chime five. Unfortunately for the prince, these clocks had 'all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten minutes to five in the castle'4; indeed, 'the Duke decided he had murdered time, slain it with his sword, and wiped his bloody blade upon its beard and left it there, bleeding hours and seconds'5. Fortunately for the prince, however, there appears before him 'the only Golux in the world, and not a mere Device'6, a strange little man in an indescribable hat, whose cunning, ingenuity and contortion of logic and language might just prevent the prince from being split 'from your guggle to your zatch'7 and fed to the geese.

As you may have noticed from the quotes, The 13 Clocks is a glorious, playful submersion into language, twisting sound and meaning alike. Almost all of the story has a constant internal rhyme scheme which means that phrases like 'the thorns grew thick and thicker in a ticking thicket of bickering crickets' are never far away. In a proto-Roald Dahl manner, Thurber gleefully makes up words – Golux, guggle, Todal – without ever veering into nonsense poetry. It is tremendous fun to read aloud and I recommend that you do so. Thanks to Thurber's skill, this, like the Golux himself, never becomes annoying or off-putting; instead it only builds the fantastical atmosphere. The Golux, a creature of near-total whimsy, gets many of the best lines; when he first appears he claims not to be 'a mere Device'8 - literally a device of the writer to get the prince out of trouble – and when the prince says he resembles one, he replies 'I resemble only half the things I say I don't...the other half resemble me.' Indeed, despite the cunning of the Golux and the Prince, the title problem of the book is solved through yet more clever wordplay: 'If you can touch the clocks and never start them, then you can start the clocks and never touch them. That's logic, as I know and use it'.


Much of what makes the story so effective is found in the symbolic clash between Duke and the Golux. There is a dark and eerie undertone to the story, and the Duke sits at the very centre of it. As well as being dark and cold – pretty standard villain specs – Thurber gives the Duke an added level of nastiness; this is the passage in which he lists the things that the Duke's gloves made difficult for him, 'to pick up pins or coins or the kernels of nuts, or tear the wings from nightingales'9. In what is a self-aware fairy-tale, the Duke is a self-aware villain and appears utterly at home within the role, joyously vicious and completely irredeemable. Most sinister of all, however, is what Thurber leaves almost entirely unsaid, as we learn 'about the children locked up in my tower'10 and a few pages later we learn 'the children are dead'11. When the Duke is finally caught by the monstrous Todal, all that is found is his sword, a 'small black ball stamped with scarlet owls'12 which is 'very like a ball the Golux and those children used to play with'13 and 'the sound of someone laughing'14. I have quoted all we ever hear about these children, and these veiled hints balance the exuberant wonder of the story with chilling insinuations.

There are also constant allusions to other works, most of which only an adult reading the book will understand. Most obviously there is the playfulness of language and form that makes Alice (both in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass) so head-spinning a read, but also nods to Gilbert and Sullivan, as the disguised prince is first described as 'a thing of shreds and patches'15 and later almost manages the entire quotation, except that he is too preoccupied with having his zatch split: 'A wandering minstrel, I,...a thing of shreds and zatches'16. As for the Duke, there is something of Richard III in his limping about the castle plotting evil deeds, but when he becomes rightly suspicious of his invisible spy, things become downright Shakespearian as he cries 'Let me have men about me that are visible'17. Most obvious are the allusions to Arthurian lore, as when someone tries to guess Zorn's parentage: 'You must be Tristram's son, or Lancelot's, or are you Tyne or Tora?'. The latter, as far as I can tell, have been made up by Thurber, while the former need no introduction. In this, along with references to Gwain, we see how Thurber borrows at will from established mythos, using them to add heroic flavour, without ever being constrained by them.

Within the silliness and darkness of the story, there is also the character of Hagga, whose cries jewels. However, her tears of laughter turn back to water in two weeks, while her tears of sorrow remain permanently jewels. In this we may, at first glance, find a mournful commentary on the transient nature of happiness and the constancy of sorrow. The 13 Clocks, however, is far too clever for this, and it is worth noting that although the jewels the Prince receives from Hagga ultimately dissolve, they have already served their purpose and freed Saralinda from the Duke's clutches. Taken with the Golux's final words to Zorn and Saralinda, 'Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After'18, we understand that although happiness does not last forever, it will last long enough, and that there is always more joy to be found.

I should also note that the edition I (my mum) own(s) is accompanied by the extraordinary illustrations of Ronald Searle, probably best known as the creator of St. Trinian's school for girls, which just reinforces the immeasurably strange atmosphere of the story.

The 13 Clocks is an extraordinarily entertaining, entirely self-aware fairy tale that is never allowed to slip into parody. Even this, however, does not do the book justice, and much as I have tried to describe it, it has to be experienced. So, if you've never read it, go on and do so! If you have read it, read it again out loud! And if you have already done so, do it again: its even better the third time!

1http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/536859/the-13-clocks-by-james-thurber-introduction-by-neil-gaiman-illustrated-by-marc-simont/9780143110149/
2 Thurber, James, The 13 Clocks & the Wonderful O, Puffin Books, 1962. pp. 8
3 pp. 7-8
4 pp. 8
5 pp. 9
6 pp. 19
7 pp. 18
8 pp. 19
9 pp. 8
10 pp. 64
11 pp. 70
12 pp. 87
13 pp. 65
14 pp. 87
15 pp. 12
16 pp. 18
17 pp. 65
18 pp. 83