OFFICIAL FIELD GUIDE TO SHOOSTY BUGS
If comedy is the most difficult to write then whimsy is the most difficult of comedy writing. Like the exquisite care with which Shoosty Bugs are represented the fact that the subject is light gives no leeway from the pre- cision with which they must be repre- sented. The concept of creating a gallery of fantastic insects is in the tradition of art that insists on the participation of the viewer. Both the artist and the viewer know that the bug in question does not exist in the real world. Ex- cept that it does exist in the mind of the artist and of the viewer where it stimulates that most potent human attribute — imagination. In a fantasy the key is not merely to write descriptive copy but to capture the whimsical mood of the art and to sustain the illusion that the world they create is real. The poet Marianne
Moore once said poets create imag- inary gardens in which we find real frogs. That’s what we are doing here. Fantasy is illusion. And illusion al- ways has an aspect of reality to it that anchors the viewer/reader — some- thing familiar to ease the way to the strange. In a non-fiction book of insects we might find accompanying text that describes the context within which the insects appear in various circum- stances and cultures. Shoosty Bugs borrows the style of such text (the fa- miliar) to present a strange but some- how plausible scenario. With Edward Lear on one shoulder and Lewis Carroll on the other we dove fearlessly into the deep.
Jim Boring
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