Platypus of Truth

The Farthest Shore  concludes the original Earthsea Trilogy. Le Guin has come back and added a further two novels after a long hiatus, but I'm never sure how I feel about their incorporation into the original set. Even The Farthest Shore  has differences in tone from A Wizard of Earthsea  and The Tombs of Atuan . For one thing, it seems as if Le Guin had encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien by the time she wrote The Farthest Shore  and that The Lord of the Rings  exercised a subtle, pervasive influence on both language and content. I was waiting in the penultimate chapter for Sparrowhawk to say to Arren "I'm glad you're with me, Lebannen, here at the end of all things". Whatever Tolkienian echoes there might be, however, The Farthest Shore  is still firmly a work of Ursula K. Le Guin. The world is her own, and she is in full command of it as Sparrowhawk and Arren go in quest of the force that is destroying all of Earthsea. No where is this more evident...

Drawing Virgil's Fields of Asphodel put me more than a little in mind of Ursula K. Le Guin. Along those lines, I began thinking of a similar scene in the Earthsea Cycle that I could draw using the same techniques. Here we have Ged in the Otherworld trapped between the Land of the Dead and the Shadow. I'm most happy with the Shadow and Ged's cape. These are the pastel pencils again (Conte) on black paper. There's a little computer editing on the midtones to bring the scan closer to the original.

Kossil is the de facto villain for most of The Tombs of Atuan . She is a reminder of the banality of Evil. Grumpy, cross, power-hungry, murderous -Kossil doesn't think of herself as these things. If we met her on the street, might we? She simply acts as the Godking's priestess, and as the Godking's priestess, any slight to her authority, any check on her power, is a slight to the Godking -is treason. What she does, she does for the glory of the Kargad Empire and the honor of its divine ruler. What does it matter if she doesn't actually believe him to be divine? He is the one in power, the Authority, and Authority must be maintained because, in the end, Power is all there is.

As I'm continuing to play with my Prismacolor brush-tip markers, my next experiment has been with layering. I'm used to working with whiteboard markers, and they do not mix without fouling up one or both markers. The Prismacolors, on the other hand, layer nicely without rubbing off on one another. Placing more or less pressure on the marker also changes the opacity. Goodness, I'm scared of markers! They don't allow for mistakes. After talking with several of my students, however, I've come to realize that I fear my tools and that has to change. I don't fear the paints when I'm working with miniatures (Warhammer, 40K, LotR) and that's why I'm able to achieve some actual competency with them. Now it's time to gain that confidence for the rest of the visual arts. So here's today's picture: the Priestess Thar from Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan . Thar is one of the sympathetic characters in the work. We get the idea that serving...

Here's my second attempt to get a feel for my new Prismacolor brush markers. Following Monday's sketch of Tenar, this is my attempt at Ged. There's no reference material in this case -just my own imagination.

Inspired by my students, I picked up a pack of Prismacolor brush tip markers on Saturday. To the left is my first attempt to get a feel for these new tools and what they can do. The image is from Yvonne Gilbert's cover for the 1984 paperback of The Tombs of Atuan  by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's the book my wife and I happen to be reading right now. I didn't discover Ursula Le Guin until I was almost out of college. It's a pity. These are the books I should have been reading back in junior high instead of wasting all that time on "The Re-Reads of Shannara". Oh well. Each thing has its season. What stands out to me about Le Guin's Earthsea, and The Tombs of Atuan  in particular, is her strict minimalism. Not only is her word count and vocabulary perfectly restrained -not a word more than is needed- but her world and its characters are too. That's nothing short of phenomenal in a genre where over-writing is par for the course. Le Guin allows her character...

We continue our journey through A Treasury of Modern Fantasy  edited by Terry Carr and Martin Harry Greenberg with tales by C.M. Kornbluth and Clark Ashton Smith. Thirteen O'Clock by C.M. Kornbluth The rise of modern Fantasy has been closely linked with that of Science Fiction.  In some pieces, it's hard to tell them apart.   Thirteen O'Clock  by C.M. Kornbluth is one of those pieces.  I'm not sure whether we're in a bad parody of Phantastes  or an episode of Buck Rogers ; possibly, we're just in a seeder part of Oz.  I think this confusion may be intentional.   Thirteen O'Clock  has all the hallmarks of a story meant to sell: genre mixing, thin characters, fast-pacing, a little sex, and lots of surprises.  This isn't a work of carefully crafted epic fantasy, but a quick yarn meant to bring home the bacon in a crunched publishing market.  In that respect, Thirteen O'Clock  reminds us that American Fantasy grew up in a v...

So, I've been working my way piecemeal through Blackwell's A Companion to Ancient Epic and noticed that Michael C. J. Putnam's take on the Aeneid seems to match fairly well with Ursula K. Le Guin's in her novel Lavinia .  Both seem to see the Aeneid as a tragic work with it's titular hero failing (perhaps inevitably) to fulfill Anchises mandate to war down the proud but pardon the defeated.  I already enjoyed Le Guin's take on the classic work, but seeing Putnam spell out the case for a more pessimistic Aeneid definitely increases my appreciation for her approach (deconstruct that as you will).  Both works are contributing to my appreciation of Virgil's masterpiece as my wife and I read through Fagles' enchanting translation this Fall (I've read Hatto and Mendlebaum prior to this).  I've never been as enthusiastic about Virgil as I have about Homer, so new insights on how to approach the man from Mantua are always welcome.  

Going through a library book sale has unearthed a few gems.  One of those was a Le Guin book I'd never heard of before: Orsinian Tales .  It's neither sci-fi nor fantasy, and that's what immediately drew my interest.  The stories of the Orsinian Tales take place in a fictional Eastern European country and follow the general history of that region.  In this imagined setting, Le Guin follows various lives of Orsinia's people through the great events of European history.  The tales in themselves are well written but only loosely connected: perfect for leisurely or sporadic reading.  If you like Le Guin, check it out.

Being sick this week has left me with some time on my hands and that means that I've had an opportunity to finish reading Ursula Le Guin's "Lavinia" and think on it for a bit.  Without further ado then, here we go. To state the premiss, "Lavinia" is a retelling of books 6-12 of Virgil's "Aeneid" in novel form and told from the point of view of the Latin princess Lavinia.  The choice is a tempting one for any author as Virgil gives this important character no lines and hardly any time on stage.  As a writer with feminist leanings, one can see why giving a "voice" to the "voiceless" and "objectified" Lavinia would be an instant draw for Le Guin.  However, given the work itself and Le Guin's afterword, it seems as if a feminist critical intervention on one of the arch dead-white-men is the furthest thing from her mind.  Instead "Lavinia" seems to spring from a deep love of Virgil's epic work and a ...

I'm working my way through Ursula K. Le Guin's novel "Lavinia" right now.  It's interesting to watch her attempt to fill in one of the gaping holes in Virgil's unfinished masterpiece.  So far, it's complex and rather interesting, not preachy or heavy-handed; LeGuin at her best.  Has anyone else read it?  Once I finish the thin up, I'll let you know what I think.

So, what else have I been reading?  Well I did finally finish "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" and "Traveling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer," and I'm more than half way through "The Guns of August."  Traveling to Ohio and California for three weeks has slowed the literary machine down a bit, but there's also a collection of short stories called "The Mammoth Book of Fantasy" to add to the list.  Basically, it's a survey of the development of Fantasy literature in the 20th century.  Practically, it's given me a chance to explore various important fantasy authors without having to hunt down out-of-print books and expensive collected editions.  In other words, it saves time, and if I don't like an author I can move on without having blown a wad of cash. That said, I thought I'd offer some thoughts on the various short stories in the collection.  I'll post the title of each one in bold, so that if you haven't read it ...

*Warning* Spoilers ahead if you haven't read "A Wizard of Earthsea" or "Phantasties" yet. I've been reading the works of two master fantasists in tandem: George MacDonald's "Phantasties" and Ursula LeGuin's "A Wizard of Earthsea." LeGuin has called MacDonald the "grandfather" of all fantasy writers, so I should have suspected that she would draw from his work ages ago.* However, the link between Ged's quest to destroy his shadow and Anodos' quest to lose his shadow only just struck me this past week. The central plot of both books is the same: young man enters into a world of magic, loses his own shadow through arrogance, experiences the destruction caused by his shadow, tries to lose it, and in the end is forced to confront and accept his own death. The question is: do both writers understand the shadow to be the same thing? LeGuin calls it the shadow of Ged's death. MacDonald seems to link Anodos...