Platypus of Truth

This post is edited from a letter on Hope Mirrlees' Lud in the Mist First, thanks for passing on "Lud in the Mist". It's the kind of book I'm constantly hunting for and have increased trouble finding lately (Phantasties, Idylls of the King, The Last Unicorn, Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, The Queen of Elfland's Daughter, anything by William Morris, and the short stories of Clark Ashton Smith having already been encountered). There are very few books that I read at a positively leisurely pace for pure pleasure anymore and this was one of them. Second, I'm a historian and connector by nature and training, so I often access a book by linking it in with everything I've already read and letting my thoughts whirl like the music of the spheres. It seems like to immediately jump in to discussing Lud like that does violence to the Art. I feel the same way about Phantastes. I don't even know if Phantastes can be discussed in that way. Hope Mirrlee...

See the Lilith of the Waste Place Stand beside her spouse the Dragon

There's nothing quite like arriving late to the conversation. It's why I don't like being late to Christmas parties if I can help it. When I began reading Inklings scholarship (Tom Shippey on Tolkien, Doug Gresham on Lewis), I knew that I'd arrived late to the party. Things were being referenced or scoffed at that I didn't fully understand. Over time, I began to pick up on elements of the earlier conversation and orient myself. Recently, however, I've been able to go back and look at that earlier part of the discussion; specifically, the parts before the coming of Humphrey Carpenter and his monolithic J.R.R. Tolkien , and The Inklings . The particular works in question come not from Oxford insiders or authorized biographers but academics on this side of the pond who were willing to risk professional scorn by asserting the literary greatness of the Inklings and their associates. They are, respectively, Understanding Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings  (copyright...

George MacDonald begins his enigmatic Science Fiction novel, Lilith , with a quote from Henry David Thoreau's essay Walking .  Thoreau's haunting, yet ultimately satirical and political description of a trip down an abandoned wagon road in rural Massachusetts is transformed by MacDonald's imagination into a statement on how thin the barrier is that separates our world from other realms. The text below gives the quote from Thoreau as it appears in Lilith , which can be found in it entirety for free here . I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me,—to whom the sun was servant,— who had not gone into society in the village,—who had not been called on. I...

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...

This Christmas season's " wintry read " has been George MacDonald's Lilith .  Written as part of the grieving process for MacDonald's dead daughter, the whole book is suffused with a cold, quiet, strangeness that pairs well with the waning of the year.  It's no small tribute to the eeriness of the work that H.P. Lovecraft singled it out as one of the landmark achievements in the development of the "weird tale."  Paying the book equal homage from the other side of the pond, C.S. Lewis contributed a brilliant forward to one of the reprints (W.H. Auden has the honor of another).  Though I could compare the mesmeric effects of the work to Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kaddath , which owes even more to Lord Dunsany, I'd like to focus in on Lilith's legacy to C.S. Lewis. Lewis quite openly referred to George MacDonald as his master and claimed that there was some direct borrowing form MacDonald in everything he wrote.  This comes as lit...

September is just around the corner and that means that Summer is nearly at an end.  On that note, it's time to announce this year's winners for "The Seven Heavens of Summer Reading." Moon: Lilith by George MacDonald   Constancy and inconstancy form a central motif in this weird tale turned Universalist allegory.  As a symbol of this stand the various moons that govern the nightly changes of MacDonald's imaginary world. Venus: She by H. Rider Haggard  The colonial administrator turned author brings us a vivid picture of Venus Infernal in this seminal work of adventure pulp. Mars: Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein  One of the great soldier's novelists since Kipling, Heinlein easily captures the slot devoted to the god of war.  On the bounce! Mercury: From Alpha to Omega by Anne H. Groten  I tried to teach myself Greek this summer.  Not the best thing to try during a major move.  Still, what better book could there be for this summe...

After "The Summer of Lovecraft," I decided to scrub my brain with a little George MacDonald.  I chose "Lilith," since it seemed to complement all the weird literature from this summer's reading.  As it turns out, this was an apt choice since H.P. Lovecraft recommended it (particularly the original draft) as an excellent example of the British incarnation of the "weird tale."  After re-reading "Lilith," I find the fact that Lovecraft recommends the book distinctly odd.  After all, can there be two cosmic visions farther apart than Lovecraft's "be eaten first" and MacDonald's "even Lilith shall be saved"?  Of course, the features of the book that were most important to MacDonald the pastor are probably not the features that appealed most to Lovecraft the agnostic/atheist.  Still, it's an interesting link.

*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...