One Bright Star to Guide Them
If you haven't read John C. Wright's novella, "One Bright Star to Guide Them" you're in luck.
Because you have a golden opportunity to read it the way it was meant to be read. In response to the muse, sometimes we draw the pictures in our head (or write them down) without referent to the market-place, and ideas about how accessible they should be. If we get it right, even people who haven't done the same reading, or have the same background, should be able to get something out of the picture or the story.
I think my drawing "There in the Utter West" (a Christmas card from a few years ago: the one with the ship) still works for most people, because most people know the song "I saw three ships come sailing in," butterflies are a common symbol of resurrection, and I stuck a "Gaude" in the lilies at the bottom of the scene. You don't have to know that it's a response to an idea I had that perhaps King Caspians great-grandson made a voyage to the Westernmost edge of the world, and what I imagined he found there.
But you could go very badly wrong if you made assumptions that, for example, because most of my friends online are Catholic, that the whole thing is Catholic religious symbology, and therefore felt free to upbraid me for the muddle I made of the same. And it would be your problem, and your ignorance to miss the clue from the title.
So, if you haven't read the Wright novella, take a minute and refresh your memory of classic British children's fiction. Re-read Time Cat, one of the short stories from Grimbold's Other World, anything by Alan Gardner or Joy Chant, and Puss in Boots. Done?
Now read the novella.
You'll get it.
Nearly everyone has read the Narnia books, and if they haven't they've caught a re-run of the movies on the television or picked up a DVD from Redbox. So they can still appreciate the bones of the tale. Because Narnia is part of the conversation that British children's fantasists were having: stories like At the Back of the North Wind and Five Children and It coming down the years to Narnia and past it to The Wierdstone of Brisingamen and Red Moon, Black Mountain. But it is one thread in the girdle, and not the most important one.
If you soaked in these fantastic stories when you were younger, and still love them today, Wright's novella strikes to the heart of the mythic ideal behind the story: the masculine version of maiden, mother and crone.
If you didn't and you hated that kind of thing (because it wasn't "relevant" or "useful" like books about teen pregnancy, menstruation and the civil rights movement) give it a pass. You'll hate it even more now and you won't understand it, either.
And do try to remember: sometimes a fairy tale cat is just a fairy tale cat.
Because you have a golden opportunity to read it the way it was meant to be read. In response to the muse, sometimes we draw the pictures in our head (or write them down) without referent to the market-place, and ideas about how accessible they should be. If we get it right, even people who haven't done the same reading, or have the same background, should be able to get something out of the picture or the story.
I think my drawing "There in the Utter West" (a Christmas card from a few years ago: the one with the ship) still works for most people, because most people know the song "I saw three ships come sailing in," butterflies are a common symbol of resurrection, and I stuck a "Gaude" in the lilies at the bottom of the scene. You don't have to know that it's a response to an idea I had that perhaps King Caspians great-grandson made a voyage to the Westernmost edge of the world, and what I imagined he found there.
But you could go very badly wrong if you made assumptions that, for example, because most of my friends online are Catholic, that the whole thing is Catholic religious symbology, and therefore felt free to upbraid me for the muddle I made of the same. And it would be your problem, and your ignorance to miss the clue from the title.
So, if you haven't read the Wright novella, take a minute and refresh your memory of classic British children's fiction. Re-read Time Cat, one of the short stories from Grimbold's Other World, anything by Alan Gardner or Joy Chant, and Puss in Boots. Done?
Now read the novella.
You'll get it.
Nearly everyone has read the Narnia books, and if they haven't they've caught a re-run of the movies on the television or picked up a DVD from Redbox. So they can still appreciate the bones of the tale. Because Narnia is part of the conversation that British children's fantasists were having: stories like At the Back of the North Wind and Five Children and It coming down the years to Narnia and past it to The Wierdstone of Brisingamen and Red Moon, Black Mountain. But it is one thread in the girdle, and not the most important one.
If you soaked in these fantastic stories when you were younger, and still love them today, Wright's novella strikes to the heart of the mythic ideal behind the story: the masculine version of maiden, mother and crone.
If you didn't and you hated that kind of thing (because it wasn't "relevant" or "useful" like books about teen pregnancy, menstruation and the civil rights movement) give it a pass. You'll hate it even more now and you won't understand it, either.
And do try to remember: sometimes a fairy tale cat is just a fairy tale cat.