The Blue Fox: Cryptic Storytelling and Nonhuman Mimicry in the Work of Sjon and Jeff VanderMeer

Abstract

The lyrical novella The Blue Fox (2004), by the Icelandic writer Sjón, begins with its third-person narrator noting the uncanny ability of blue foxes (a variety of arctic foxes with dark blue, brown, or gray coats) to avoid detection in the winter by blending in with their surroundings. “Blue foxes are so curiously like stones that it is a matter for wonder,” the narrator muses. “When they lie beside them in winter there is no hope of telling them apart from the rocks themselves; indeed, they’re far trickier than white foxes, which always cast a shadow or look yellow against the snow” (3). In ethology, this ability of an animal to avoid detection by blending in with its environment is known as crypsis. Show more