The Frank Einstein Books by Jon Scieszka as a Variant of the Literary Game with Cultural Heritage

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the study of the literary mirror game with the cultural heritage in the Frank Einstein books by Jon Scieszka. The Frank Einstein books were first translated and published in Ukraine in 2019. This article is the first investigation of the Frank Einstein series by J. Scieszka as a literary game. Six Frank Einstein books (“Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor” (2014), “Frank Einstein and the Electro-Finger” (2015), ‘Frank Einstein and the BrainTurbo” (2015), “Frank Einstein and the EvoBlaster Belt” (2016), “Frank Einstein and the Bio-Action Gizmo” (2017) and “Frank Einstein and the Space-Time Zipper” (2019)) demonstrate vivid examples of the literary game in the contemporary children’s literature from the positions of the author as a game creator and the reader as a game opponent. J. Scieszka was born in 1954 in Flint, Michigan, USA. The future writer received a varied education. He attended the military academy, then studied English and pre-med at Albion College for his B.A., and in 1980 received a master's degree of Fine Arts in fiction writing at Columbia University. After graduation J. Scieszka worked as a teacher at an elementary school. Teaching schoolchildren, Jon re-discovered how smart they are. School children turned to be the best audience for the weird and funny stories he had always liked to read and write. The books by Jon Scieszka are based on recognizable archetypal plots and iconic characters, which are not presented to the reader in a conserved form, but focused on the current stage of culture and science development. The writer cheerfully and humorously manipulates well-known plots, rewrites established ideas, and interprets familiar literary themes, motives, characters, etc., presented in world-famous science fiction, well-known to the modern young reader. J. Scieszka says that he got his ideas from other books, his kids, kids he had taught, kids he had learned from, watching movies, playing with his cat, talking to his wife. He also includes allusions to his favourite writers – Cervantes, Kafka, Borges, Pynchon, Sterne, Barth, Heller (Scieszka, 2014). J. Scieszka uses a repertoire of prominent scientific and literary samples in his work, such as the character of the scientist Frankenstein by M. Shelley and the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, the inventor and businessman Thomas Edison, a fictional character Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the primatologist Jane Goodall. There is a mechanism of mirror doubling in the system of characters: Frankenstein and Frank Einstein, Albert Einstein and Al. Einstein, Klink and Klank, and the complex mirror refraction of Frank Einstein and Watson as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Frank Einstein and T. Edison as Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. The article analyses the well-known literary and scientific achievements that acquire a mirror replay in the books about Frank Einstein. The researcher concludes that the books by J. Sciezska are a source of vivid emotional experiences and motivation for serious readers’ reflection. The author of the article draws attention to the fact that the play field created by J. Scieszka is a product of accumulated cultural content, which activates the human tendency to imitate, assimilate and repeat. This game is a form of conscious assimilation and processing of the universe of intangible and material artifacts, objectified actions and relations created by mankind in the process of mastering nature.