I am a grrr-eat fan of the late Chicago children’s author, musician and former Playboy cartoonist Shel Silverstein but had somehow never read his fabulous fable from 1963 — reissued this week by Pushkin — about a lion who learns to shoot like a man. Uncle Shelby (for which read Shel himself) is the narrator here, and tells us the story of a cub’s progress.
It’s more than that, of course, for this is Silverstein, the deep thinker with the feathery touch, and so the issues of dissatisfaction management, the burden and responsibility of power permeate.
The story begins when the young lion, drawn with the author’s naive knowing, becomes a mean shot after eating a hunter and appropriating his gun. News of the lion’s skill travels and he’s lured away from the jungle to join the circus. Lafcadio, known by his jungle moniker of Grummfgff or Mmmff until the circus man gives him a fancy name, accrues the trappings of celebrity (the girls, the buttermilk, the suits, the marshmallows — it’s all very Led Zep). This last passion allows Silverstein to dance around at his playful best: “Marshmallows Marshmallows/ Marching Marshing Mellow/ Malling Mallows Marshing Fellows/ Marshy-Murshy”.
By the end, Lafcadio has changed so much he barely recognises himself and grapples with that meaty question of personal identity: how much of the person that started life survives to adulthood?
Silverstein knows that his one-time cub needs a little solitude to consider the answer and wilfully denies us a neat end. Is Lafcadio, like CS Lewis’s Aslan, a Christ figure? Has he gone on a Buddhist retreat? Om, probably neither. I think Silverstein is merely bidding us to get away from the noise, think a little. Reading this book about a lion from the king of the story jungle is a good place to start.
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Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back (7+) by Shel Silverstein, Pushkin Children’s, 110pp, £12.99. To buy this book for £12.99, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134