Affirmation
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- Jun 9, 2002
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MR IMPOSSIBLE Roger Hargreaves,
World International Limited, 1976
Reviewed by Affirmation
Mr Impossible, the 25th volume of Hargreaves’ 43 book Mr Men series, breaks the formula so successfully established with the previous books, and presents the young reader with something fresh and daring.
Nearly all of the 24 preceding Mr Men books set up the eponymous Mr Man, detail his abilities and then send him on an odyssey of discovery (usually involving walks through a leafy wood, encounters with mirror images or anti-Mr Men, opening lots and lots of doors and finally a sunny and uplifting resolution to the title character’s predicament).
Mr Impossible throws away the rulebook and starts again.
This is a book full of wonderment and outlandish achievement. The message is: chaos rules; nothing is set in stone, mathematical principals cannot compete with imagination and magic, science can be wrong.
We meet Mr Impossible, as is so often the case in the Mr Men series, on page one. Roger Hargreaves doesn’t fart around with these books: bang! Straight to it. On page one, Mr Impossible leaps over a house. Right away we are given meaning to that difficult word, impossible.
Hargreaves writes:
“Mr Impossible could do the most amazing things. For instance, Mr Impossible could jump over a house. You try it. It’s impossible.”
The accompanying full-page illustration opposite these sparse but fantastically imaginative words leaves us in no doubt that it is true. Mr Impossible could jump over a house.
But that’s not all that Mr Impossible can do.
He’s not called Mr House Jumper, he’s Mr Impossible, and there are many more strings to his bow.
Page 3, and Mr Impossible makes himself invisible. He stands still in his silly hat, arms outstretched, thinking impossible thoughts of being invisible and presto: he’s invisible. (The accompanying illustration cheats a bit by depicting Mr Impossible as transparent, not invisible, but to accurately show this amazing feat Hargreaves would have had to paint just an empty background, and this would probably have proven to be too much of a mind-fuck for the kids.)
Page 5: Mr Impossible flies through the air like a purple Superman, clumsy and happy and impossible.
It’s joyous and silly and it stuffs a big custard pie in the face of boring, rigid physics.
Now, all of these feats, these remarkable demonstrations of the impossible, could be mere parlour trickery. Impressive parlour trickery, but deceptions none the less. The cynical amongst us could explain away these things in a frigid Agent Scully attempt at plausibility. We could talk of mirrors and wires and false perspective. But to do so would be to group Mr Impossible with the stage illusionists, the David Copperfields and Peter Mandlesons – slimy, creepy underhanded charlatans who manipulate and machinate in the boring world of agents and politics and tax returns.
No, Mr Impossible is no conman, no despoiler of wondrous dreams. Mr Impossible is the genuine article: he is a God.
Along for the ride with Mr Impossible is a schoolboy called William. Mr Impossible meets William on page 9, while William is walking to school. Mr Impossible, man of few words but mighty actions, says hello. “Hello,” replied William. “I’m William.” William is obviously close to Roger Hargreaves heart – he doesn’t fuck around, either. Mr Impossible intrigues William, but he’s a sceptic and he wants empirical evidence of Mr Impossible’s abilities.
Mr Impossible is not hurt by this lack of faith and, like Christ, promptly performs a miracle for his audience. William is impressed, but demands more. Again Mr Impossible cheerfully obliges, perhaps enjoying playing to the crowd (that’s you, dear reader).
William is pleased but suddenly remembers that he should be at school for elementary maths and that the nasty Home Secretary is clamping down on truancy. Bill does not want to get his parents into any heavy shit with the government, so he makes haste to school.
He asks Mr Impossible to accompany him.
“But I’ve never been to a school before,” Mr Impossible said.
“Then its time you did,” replied William.
“Come on!”
At the school, Mr Impossible sits next to William at the back of the class. The (unnamed, and therefore generic) teacher does not notice the intruder in his class, and this could be for a number of reasons: 1. He’s a lazy and downright incompetent teacher who can’t be arsed to take morning register. 2. Class sizes have reached crisis point – nobody knows who is who anymore, or 3. He’s a supply teacher, terrified of fucking up so he’s not going to say anything to anyone unless he’s absolutely certain of his facts.
The lesson is not elementary maths, its advanced maths, so all the children feel sick to their stomachs. The teacher sets his class a very difficult mathematical problem “full of multiplications and divisions and other things William didn’t enjoy”, perhaps as a result of his truancy from math lessons.
The teacher predicts that it would take the children all morning to solve his fiendish sum.
Luckily, Mr Impossible – a God, remember – is on hand to help William out.
The laws of mathematics have no chance against him.
Mr Impossible has no respect for rules or authority (why should he when he could conceivably wipe out a galaxy with his farts, or eliminate cancer while reading Marcel Proust?) so he whispers the answer to William.
William, demonstrating yet another failing, can’t stick his hand in the air fast enough, bursting at the seams to show off in front of the other kids and ridicule teacher while he’s at it.
The answer, by the way, is 23.
“The teacher was very, absolutely, totally, completely amazed.”
He obviously had these kids down as no-hopers and under-achievers and had instead set his sights on gaining a position (with a healthier salary and a good benefits package) at a Public Girls School in Kent.
“How did you work out the sum so quickly?” he gasped. “It’s impossible!”
And so, like a deus ex machina, Mr Impossible reveals himself.
“Nothing is impossible,” says the man without limits, destroying thousands of years of reason, science and philosophy. Cheers, then.
Mr Impossible spends the rest of the day at school, showing off to the children, but it’s all small-scale stuff, mere amusements for the being without responsibility. Perhaps he does it just for the reactions from the children, his disciples, and his believers.
Perhaps it amuses him to play with their expectations, and shatter their illusions founded on a curriculum of teaching so mundane that it offends him.
Maybe he revels in the irony of performing spectacles of ludicrous beauty in an establishment that frowns upon free spirits and crushes individuality.
Who can know why he does the things he does?
Perhaps in Mr impossible we have found the perfect embodiment of Einstein’s dice throwing God, playing games with the universe.
And he’s out there now, somewhere.
Mr Impossible. ■
Affirmation can do 5 impossible things before breakfast. Unless he has a hangover.
World International Limited, 1976
Reviewed by Affirmation
Mr Impossible, the 25th volume of Hargreaves’ 43 book Mr Men series, breaks the formula so successfully established with the previous books, and presents the young reader with something fresh and daring.
Nearly all of the 24 preceding Mr Men books set up the eponymous Mr Man, detail his abilities and then send him on an odyssey of discovery (usually involving walks through a leafy wood, encounters with mirror images or anti-Mr Men, opening lots and lots of doors and finally a sunny and uplifting resolution to the title character’s predicament).
Mr Impossible throws away the rulebook and starts again.
This is a book full of wonderment and outlandish achievement. The message is: chaos rules; nothing is set in stone, mathematical principals cannot compete with imagination and magic, science can be wrong.
We meet Mr Impossible, as is so often the case in the Mr Men series, on page one. Roger Hargreaves doesn’t fart around with these books: bang! Straight to it. On page one, Mr Impossible leaps over a house. Right away we are given meaning to that difficult word, impossible.
Hargreaves writes:
“Mr Impossible could do the most amazing things. For instance, Mr Impossible could jump over a house. You try it. It’s impossible.”
The accompanying full-page illustration opposite these sparse but fantastically imaginative words leaves us in no doubt that it is true. Mr Impossible could jump over a house.
But that’s not all that Mr Impossible can do.
He’s not called Mr House Jumper, he’s Mr Impossible, and there are many more strings to his bow.
Page 3, and Mr Impossible makes himself invisible. He stands still in his silly hat, arms outstretched, thinking impossible thoughts of being invisible and presto: he’s invisible. (The accompanying illustration cheats a bit by depicting Mr Impossible as transparent, not invisible, but to accurately show this amazing feat Hargreaves would have had to paint just an empty background, and this would probably have proven to be too much of a mind-fuck for the kids.)
Page 5: Mr Impossible flies through the air like a purple Superman, clumsy and happy and impossible.
It’s joyous and silly and it stuffs a big custard pie in the face of boring, rigid physics.
Now, all of these feats, these remarkable demonstrations of the impossible, could be mere parlour trickery. Impressive parlour trickery, but deceptions none the less. The cynical amongst us could explain away these things in a frigid Agent Scully attempt at plausibility. We could talk of mirrors and wires and false perspective. But to do so would be to group Mr Impossible with the stage illusionists, the David Copperfields and Peter Mandlesons – slimy, creepy underhanded charlatans who manipulate and machinate in the boring world of agents and politics and tax returns.
No, Mr Impossible is no conman, no despoiler of wondrous dreams. Mr Impossible is the genuine article: he is a God.
Along for the ride with Mr Impossible is a schoolboy called William. Mr Impossible meets William on page 9, while William is walking to school. Mr Impossible, man of few words but mighty actions, says hello. “Hello,” replied William. “I’m William.” William is obviously close to Roger Hargreaves heart – he doesn’t fuck around, either. Mr Impossible intrigues William, but he’s a sceptic and he wants empirical evidence of Mr Impossible’s abilities.
Mr Impossible is not hurt by this lack of faith and, like Christ, promptly performs a miracle for his audience. William is impressed, but demands more. Again Mr Impossible cheerfully obliges, perhaps enjoying playing to the crowd (that’s you, dear reader).
William is pleased but suddenly remembers that he should be at school for elementary maths and that the nasty Home Secretary is clamping down on truancy. Bill does not want to get his parents into any heavy shit with the government, so he makes haste to school.
He asks Mr Impossible to accompany him.
“But I’ve never been to a school before,” Mr Impossible said.
“Then its time you did,” replied William.
“Come on!”
At the school, Mr Impossible sits next to William at the back of the class. The (unnamed, and therefore generic) teacher does not notice the intruder in his class, and this could be for a number of reasons: 1. He’s a lazy and downright incompetent teacher who can’t be arsed to take morning register. 2. Class sizes have reached crisis point – nobody knows who is who anymore, or 3. He’s a supply teacher, terrified of fucking up so he’s not going to say anything to anyone unless he’s absolutely certain of his facts.
The lesson is not elementary maths, its advanced maths, so all the children feel sick to their stomachs. The teacher sets his class a very difficult mathematical problem “full of multiplications and divisions and other things William didn’t enjoy”, perhaps as a result of his truancy from math lessons.
The teacher predicts that it would take the children all morning to solve his fiendish sum.
Luckily, Mr Impossible – a God, remember – is on hand to help William out.
The laws of mathematics have no chance against him.
Mr Impossible has no respect for rules or authority (why should he when he could conceivably wipe out a galaxy with his farts, or eliminate cancer while reading Marcel Proust?) so he whispers the answer to William.
William, demonstrating yet another failing, can’t stick his hand in the air fast enough, bursting at the seams to show off in front of the other kids and ridicule teacher while he’s at it.
The answer, by the way, is 23.
“The teacher was very, absolutely, totally, completely amazed.”
He obviously had these kids down as no-hopers and under-achievers and had instead set his sights on gaining a position (with a healthier salary and a good benefits package) at a Public Girls School in Kent.
“How did you work out the sum so quickly?” he gasped. “It’s impossible!”
And so, like a deus ex machina, Mr Impossible reveals himself.
“Nothing is impossible,” says the man without limits, destroying thousands of years of reason, science and philosophy. Cheers, then.
Mr Impossible spends the rest of the day at school, showing off to the children, but it’s all small-scale stuff, mere amusements for the being without responsibility. Perhaps he does it just for the reactions from the children, his disciples, and his believers.
Perhaps it amuses him to play with their expectations, and shatter their illusions founded on a curriculum of teaching so mundane that it offends him.
Maybe he revels in the irony of performing spectacles of ludicrous beauty in an establishment that frowns upon free spirits and crushes individuality.
Who can know why he does the things he does?
Perhaps in Mr impossible we have found the perfect embodiment of Einstein’s dice throwing God, playing games with the universe.
And he’s out there now, somewhere.
Mr Impossible. ■
Affirmation can do 5 impossible things before breakfast. Unless he has a hangover.
