#uncle benjamin

Uncle Benjamin is back! Let's celebrate Canada Day with a Hey-it's-that-Canadian-actor fancast poll!

How are we all imagining Uncle B? So far, he's sort of been the Michael Scott of the Stirling clan (as one bookclubber has pointed out, he loves getting everyone together to come up with a plan, but his plans don't actually amount to much). For all his presence in the story, though, we don't have a lot to go on by way of physical characteristics.

He's "a wealthy and childless old widower." How old is "old"? We know from Edward Beck that Valancy considers 48 to be "old", but we're not sure of the exact age "old" begins for her (though presumably it's well after 35).

He has pudgy hands: "Uncle Benjamin punished his pudgy left hand fiercely with his pudgy right." Hmm. Is this more of LMM's fatphobia? Or is it establishing Uncle B as one of those clan members who, while being visibly well-provided-for themselves, were constantly judging Valancy for being skinny while never doing anything to help her family in their straitened, penny-pinching circumstances? As a store proprietor, Uncle B was in a good position to at least bring by some bruised produce for the poor widow's household occasionally (and make a big deal out of his generosity in doing so), but we don't ever hear of him doing that.

He's "wheezy":

Uncle Benjamin would ask some of his abominable conundrums, between wheezy chuckles, and answer them himself. Uncle Benjamin, wheezy, pussy-mouthed. With great pouches under eyes that held nothing in reverence.

For those of you who are tempted to Google "pussy-mouthed," let me just warn you now that that is a Bad Idea. The OED suggests that it could be a corruption of "pursy-mouthed", which most likely means puckered (but coincidentally "pursy" could also mean wheezy or fat). Maybe the folks working on original drafts and translations have a better sense of this one?

He asks the same dreadful riddles over and over, but when he bothers to come up with new material he can actually be funny:

You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don’t you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don’t succeed. “It’s a pity you couldn’t have had your premonition a little sooner,” said Uncle Benjamin drily.

And while Uncle James is the clan oracle, Uncle Benjamin does seem to be the self-proclaimed clan organizer ("Let us be calm", "We must be guided by developments", etc.) Does the rest of the clan just go along with it because of his money? Or is his busybody energy just that strong?

All that said, on to fancasting!

I have no idea how Bookclubbers are envisioning Uncle B (or how old everyone thinks "old" means), so I'm going to offer a whole range of possibilities, ordered from youngest to oldest.

Also - because I think it would be hilarious to cast a genuinely talented comic actor to deliver all of Uncle Benjamin's terrible jokes and get called out by Valancy for his lack of success at being funny, that's who I'm focusing on in this poll. (For non-Canadian bookclubbers, comedy is one of Canada's prime exports, so we're spoiled for choice here.)

Finally - while you all probably know by now that I try to keep a hypothetical modest CBC-style production budget in mind when fancasting, I'm aware that some of the "Hey, it's that guy" actors here are pretty deep cuts for bookclubbers who are not Canadian (and even for Canadians who aren't familiar with the generation of comedians who came out of the Toronto Theatresports scene / Second City / The Red Green Show), so I'm throwing in some more famous options here as well.

Valancy:

Uncle Benjamin:

“YES! I have a stuffed koala named Puffy. I got it from Uncle Benji! He won it for me at the arcade. It’s one of the last items I have left of Australia.”