Why the Ugly Duckling?

Does it matter in the least having been born in a duckyard, if you come out of a swan’s egg?

In our book, each concept is illustrated by reference to Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Ugly Duckling.” To all readers, we suggest reading both a clean copy of the story as well as a version where the work’s scenes, series, and theme are delineated according to the process begun in the first chapter (What is a Scene?).

People ask why I chose “The Ugly Duckling,” and I’m not sure I have a real answer.

Every teacher wants to appear completely prepared, but the fact is before my first class at Grub Street, I didn’t have a good exemplary text. I went looking in my older daughter’s room for something that wouldn’t be too long. “The Ugly Duckling” fell into my hands.

I say fell, but I really mean gently opened—after all, this is one of my wife’s prize possessions, the copy of Andersen’s Fairy Tales from her childhood. The fact that it is such a masterpiece of craft, and that it illustrates The Book Architecture Method so well is either luck or providence. And since we work in Providence, we’ll go with the latter.

Through the years of working with “The Ugly Duckling,” we’ve heard a bunch of good stories surrounding it:

• Andersen was the illegitimate son of the Crown Prince of Denmark, and “The Ugly Duckling” was a tribute to his secret lineage;
• The original title of the story was “The Young Swans” which, besides not being terribly evocative, gave away the whole plot so it had to be changed;
• After Andersen wrote it he finally had the courage to add back into his dedication that these fairy tales were for “adults, as well as children.”

Some people find the story to be excessively moral, and object to the way everything is tied up in a neat package. A particularly savvy group of writers once protested my using “The Ugly Duckling,” so persuasively (see below) that I yielded some ground and we studied the film “The Social Network” (2010) according to The Book Architecture Method as well.

I really just wanted something that we had all read, so if we all saw the same movie that would be good, too. But while I’m in confessional mode, I do think “The Ugly Duckling” is a good exemplary text. I think there’s a reason it sold out in five weeks the first time it was published on November 11, 1843.

Yes, there is a picture of me with the statue of Andersen and the duckling in Central Park. But that doesn’t mean you, too, can’t marvel at the intersection of art and science which “The Ugly Duckling” represents, and which the The Book Architecture Method aspires to reach.