Ramblings
I need to do another Update of Doom, I suppose. It's been way too long.
But I had a good weekend...if too short, as always!...and now I'm almost ready to go back to work tomorrow.
Also, mini-vacation next weekend! Comp hour usage! Woohoo!
But for now, just a bit of rambling on the subject of fairy tale retellings.
On the way to drinks and chilling with awesome work people Friday night, I had fifteen minutes between buses to kill in the U-District, and found myself drawn as usual to one of the used bookstores whose layout I've efficiently memorized such that i can do a mini-browse -- sweep over the young adult, the poetry, and selected authors of the fantasy -- in a short amount of time. And I was extraordinarily fortunate, because not only did they have a Robin Mckinley book (in itself unusual...I have a theory that most fans of Robin Mckinley are addicted like myself, and read the books into the ground rather than selling them to a used bookstore proprietor) but it was a collection of short stories that I'd never read. I'd actually never tried to read it, being under the erroneous impression that it was a book of very-young-children's stories that she had only edited, not actually written, but I proved to be thoroughly wrong and was very glad to acquire it at $3.50.
It was a collection of four short stories -- closer to novellas, two of them -- covering a smattering of less well-known fairy tales: The Frog Prince, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, and two others, The Stolen Princess and The Golden Hind, which she seems to have altered more markedly such that I can't quite identify the original. It was marvelous, especially tThe Stolen Princess which had an awesome Lord Dunsany "beyond the fields we know" sense to it....that is, faerie just beyond hte border, something mysterious and fantastical and, while not inherently inimical to mortal life, nevertheless perilous. I think that sense of faerie is what I find missing in most modern fantasy writing. The early 20th century writers had it, as weird and dreamlike as their stories are (I think opium helped with that). Tolkien has it. But most of the stuff you find the fantasy section of any given bookstore is....blegh. Swords and sorcery and political intrigue (and sex! Don't forget the sex!). The magical is just a tool, usually to function as a weapon. The sense of faerie, of a world just beyond vision, is completely lost. Which makes me particularly sad, because that's what always drew me to the fairy tales and the stories with the impossible.
It also, if I may sound pompous and arrogant for a minute, trained me in belief. It was a different, higher, truer thing when I began to believe in the Divine; it's a different part of my brain and my soul, something very different and much deeper from the thrill I feel when I'm rereading "The Last Unicorn". But in the way that some people find music or nature a religious experience, I think beautifully written fantasy stories, whatever the beliefs of the author, come to me as a quasi-religious experience. This is maybe why I so love Tolkien and Dunsany and Beagle and Mckinley, the authors where magic is mysterious, because my God is mysterious -- beautiful, powerful, compassionate, but above and beyond my understanding, above and beyond my ability to grasp. And experiencing that mystery on a different level in faerie stories is a little bit like prayer.
You have to have room for the mystery. Because things will never make sense, not in any way that you can truly accept, at least not this side of eternity. What drives me craziest about so much of modern Christianity is the glib answers we try to offer to the unanswerable. Better to admit that some things are unanswerable -- at least this side of eternity -- and remember that while the mysteries can be wrenching, the good things -- friendship, love, worship -- also feel at their best like doors into a different and incomprehensible world.
That was a bit more than I meant to write, and now it's time for bed. I shall endeavor to do a "What have you been DOING the last six months, anyway!?" post sometime soon, but work is crazy and I currently hold joint custody of my computer with the Queen while hers is convalescent.
But I had a good weekend...if too short, as always!...and now I'm almost ready to go back to work tomorrow.
Also, mini-vacation next weekend! Comp hour usage! Woohoo!
But for now, just a bit of rambling on the subject of fairy tale retellings.
On the way to drinks and chilling with awesome work people Friday night, I had fifteen minutes between buses to kill in the U-District, and found myself drawn as usual to one of the used bookstores whose layout I've efficiently memorized such that i can do a mini-browse -- sweep over the young adult, the poetry, and selected authors of the fantasy -- in a short amount of time. And I was extraordinarily fortunate, because not only did they have a Robin Mckinley book (in itself unusual...I have a theory that most fans of Robin Mckinley are addicted like myself, and read the books into the ground rather than selling them to a used bookstore proprietor) but it was a collection of short stories that I'd never read. I'd actually never tried to read it, being under the erroneous impression that it was a book of very-young-children's stories that she had only edited, not actually written, but I proved to be thoroughly wrong and was very glad to acquire it at $3.50.
It was a collection of four short stories -- closer to novellas, two of them -- covering a smattering of less well-known fairy tales: The Frog Prince, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, and two others, The Stolen Princess and The Golden Hind, which she seems to have altered more markedly such that I can't quite identify the original. It was marvelous, especially tThe Stolen Princess which had an awesome Lord Dunsany "beyond the fields we know" sense to it....that is, faerie just beyond hte border, something mysterious and fantastical and, while not inherently inimical to mortal life, nevertheless perilous. I think that sense of faerie is what I find missing in most modern fantasy writing. The early 20th century writers had it, as weird and dreamlike as their stories are (I think opium helped with that). Tolkien has it. But most of the stuff you find the fantasy section of any given bookstore is....blegh. Swords and sorcery and political intrigue (and sex! Don't forget the sex!). The magical is just a tool, usually to function as a weapon. The sense of faerie, of a world just beyond vision, is completely lost. Which makes me particularly sad, because that's what always drew me to the fairy tales and the stories with the impossible.
It also, if I may sound pompous and arrogant for a minute, trained me in belief. It was a different, higher, truer thing when I began to believe in the Divine; it's a different part of my brain and my soul, something very different and much deeper from the thrill I feel when I'm rereading "The Last Unicorn". But in the way that some people find music or nature a religious experience, I think beautifully written fantasy stories, whatever the beliefs of the author, come to me as a quasi-religious experience. This is maybe why I so love Tolkien and Dunsany and Beagle and Mckinley, the authors where magic is mysterious, because my God is mysterious -- beautiful, powerful, compassionate, but above and beyond my understanding, above and beyond my ability to grasp. And experiencing that mystery on a different level in faerie stories is a little bit like prayer.
You have to have room for the mystery. Because things will never make sense, not in any way that you can truly accept, at least not this side of eternity. What drives me craziest about so much of modern Christianity is the glib answers we try to offer to the unanswerable. Better to admit that some things are unanswerable -- at least this side of eternity -- and remember that while the mysteries can be wrenching, the good things -- friendship, love, worship -- also feel at their best like doors into a different and incomprehensible world.
That was a bit more than I meant to write, and now it's time for bed. I shall endeavor to do a "What have you been DOING the last six months, anyway!?" post sometime soon, but work is crazy and I currently hold joint custody of my computer with the Queen while hers is convalescent.