A new publication on Alan Garner

Toward the end of last summer, I wrote about Randy Hoyt’s online mythology magazine, Journey to the Sea (then relatively new). Issue 8 appeared yesterday, and in it a new essay written by me, on Alan Garner’s use of northern Germanic mythological elements in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. (I’ve written about Alan Garner here at Lingwë on previous occasions, too.) The issue also features an article on Batman — yes, the same Batman you’re thinking of — seen through the lens of myth.

If you haven’t hied thee over to Journey to the Sea yet, you definitely should. Randy has done an admirable job of presenting articles on a wide variety of multicultural mythological topics, as well as several on newer subjects examined in the context of myth (e.g., Batman, as already mentioned, role-playing games, the illustration of myths, the Native American totem pole, and so on). In addition, Randy has managed to nab a couple of very well-known figures in the Tolkien community for interviews: Verlyn Flieger and Ted Nasmith.

There’s really something here for almost anyone, so if you’ve been dithering, do yourself a favor and take a look. And while you’re there, feel free to drop a comment onto my Alan Garner essay.

Other books for Potterphiles

So now that J.K. Rowling has brought the Harry Potter series to a close (notwithstanding the possibility of future add-ons, such as the Potter Encyclopedia she has hinted at), what else are Potterphiles to turn to? I thought I would take a moment to recommend some of the books and series I have read and enjoyed myself — mainly in the domain of YA Fantasy. These are all books I’ve read myself, so it is this more than anything else which accounts for obvious omissions (e.g., the Xanth series of Piers Anthony, the Pern books of Anne McCaffrey, or Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series — they may all be great, but I wouldn’t know, never having read them myself). The list is also, by necessity, selective. I read a lot, but I obviously can’t put down everything here in a single post. So, take this for what it’s worth: it’s just one man’s opinion, and only part of it.

Lloyd Alexander
Alexander (who passed away very recently) is best known for his Prydain Cycle, five novels (plus a couple of add-ons) that take as their rough inspiration the Wales of the Mabinogion. These are wonderful, of course, but Alexander has dozens of other books to offer famished readers as well. There are the Vesper Holly and Westmark series, as well as many individual books worth reading, such as The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian, The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha, and Time Cat — and the posthumous Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio, published only last month. I’ve read almost everything Alexander wrote and can recommend all of it without reservation.

Isaac Asimov
The Foundation Trilogy. This is only the “science-fiction” on an otherwise exclusively fantasy-centered list, but I include it for two reasons: a) it’s not really conventional science-fiction, in the sense of, say, Stanisław Lem or Arthur C. Clarke), and b) the sheer scope of the imagination involved is enough to earn it a place here. Asimov did publish a lot of mainstream sci-fi, and there are also a number of add-on books in the Foundation series (which I haven’t read). These three, however, are remarkable, and will give you a whole new appreciation for the idea of “hacking history”. In fact, the science of psychohistory, as propounded in the novel, may make you think of Stanisław Lem — or Aldous Huxley perhaps.

Neil Gaiman
I’m thinking of three books in particular: Stardust, American Gods, and Anansi Boys. The latter two are related through a minor character, the African Spider-god, Anansi. Immensely imaginative, entertaining, and actually quite funny in places, all three are rewarding in their own ways. Plus, reading Gaiman makes you “cool”. ;)

Alan Garner
Garner wrote two Alderley Edge novels, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath (of which, the first is definitely the better), as well a number of wonderful individual novels — The Owl Service (like Alexander, with a nod to the Mabinogion), Elidor, Red Shift, and the more difficult Strandloper. Like Tolkien, Garner drew on a combination of local (Cheshire) history and Germanic and Celtic mythologies for his fiction. Almost forgotten today, though I don’t really know why, Garner is well worth discovering.

Madeleine L’Engle
L’Engle passed away only a week ago, and it’s another devastating loss, following right on the heels of Alexander’s passing. I haven’t read a lot of her work, but I did read three of the four books in the Time Quartet (the fourth book came too long after). They were incredibly eye-opening for me — they’re the reason I could throw around words like “mitochondria” and “tesseract” at the tender age of ten or so. I also have fond memories of watching the Wrinkle in Time filmstrip (yes, filmstrip — remember those? :) in elementary school.

Ursula K. Le Guin
The Earthsea Trilogy was a special favorite of mine, growing up, and I reread it earlier this year. Read it — you won’t be sorry! Like Tolkien, Le Guin shows a special appreciation for the power of words, names, and language. Le Guin eventually wrote several add-on books (of which I didn’t especially enjoy Tehanu; though The Other Wind was excellent). Le Guin is also a master (err, mistress?) of the fantasy / science-fiction short story. Her collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters is definitely worth making time for.

C.S. Lewis
I only read The Chronicles of Narnia at the embarrassing late date of, err, earlier this year. And while they do have their defects, they were incredibly influential (they still are), and they really are great fun to read. I could include the Space Trilogy here, but for the fact that I haven’t read it yet. Also, I don’t think it’s quite meant for the YA audience (just as Lewis’s superb novel, Till We Have Faces, is not).

Byron Preiss / Michael Reeves
Dragonworld was a great discovery for me in the early 1980’s. In some ways, it owes a large debt to Tolkien — e.g., its main character, Amsel, is a small person, very much like a Hobbit; however, it’s a world away from the rip-off work of Terry Brooks. Plus, it’s long and copiously illustrated; it’s the kind of book that you can luxuriate it. And it has some quite original ideas, too. Look for it. Sadly, Preiss was killed a couple of years ago in a car crash, a year or two after filing bankruptcy. :(

Philip Pullman
Owing an enormous debt to Milton, Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (with the add-on, Lyra’s Oxford, and the forthcoming Book of Dust) is one of the most imaginative series of recent years. The books aren’t without their faults, but they’re probably the most inventively mythopoeic works since Tolkien and Lewis — despite Pullman’s vociferous dislike of those two. I’m looking forward to the film version of The Golden Compass.

J.R.R. Tolkien
What do I really need to say? If you haven’t read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, isn’t it about time? :)

Walter Wangerin, Jr.
Wangerin is, like Lewis, a Christian apologist, but one who brooks no apologies for the disturbing nature of some aspects of the mythology. I’m thinking here of the duology of The Book of the Dun Cow and The Book of Sorrows. Owing a good deal to Celtic and Germanic mythology, Chaucer, Milton, and of course, The Bible, these books are Christian allegories told from the point of view of animals (before the arrival of Man on Earth). They are, for Christianity, what Orwell’s Animal Farm was for political ideology. The relationship between Chaunticleer and Mundo Cani is one of the more original in YA literature, and it forms the bridge to the sequel, which is (I must warn you) one of the single most depressing books you will ever read. But what did you expect from something called The Book of Sorrows?

John White
Okay, I should preface this recommendation with a caveat lector: John White’s Archives of Anthropos series is a very obvious Christian allegory and borrows pretty transparently from The Chronicles of Narnia, only published a couple of decades before. I really enjoyed the two I read as a kid — The Tower of Geburah and The Iron Scepter (which also borrows Dante’s conception of Hell from Inferno) — but I haven’t read them since. Having now read their inspiration in Lewis, I can see the obvious connections. The stories involve a group of children who get sucked into an alternate world, not through a wardrobe but through some strange old televisions in an abandoned attic (not unlike the method of ingress into Narnia in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). Character and place-names owe a lot to New Testament Greek: The World of Anthropos (ανθρωπος), Castle Authentio (αυθεντικός), King Kardia (καρδιά) — and a koine rubric of “love” that is straight from Lewis’s The Four Loves. But they were fun books to read.

What can any of you recommend?

Mything links ...

Here are some interesting and fun links I’ve been meaning to post for a few days now. I've just decided to put them all together in one post. Hope you enjoy!

First off, an online slide rule using Viking runes instead of Arabic numerals. Now, even though I have absolutely no clue what to do with a slide rule myself (there are geeks, and then there are geeks), there’s apparently a huge subculture of “slide rule nuts” still alive and thriving on the Web. They even have their own dedicated listserv (and probably more than just this one). The original poster described this latest addition thus:

Finally Norsemen, Vikings, and others who can read runes (and who have internet access), have available to them a virtual slide rule that they can use to do their trigonometric problems with [...] I hope this virtual Runic slide rule will be a great help to Norsemen everywhere in plotting courses to navigate their longships.

Second, Nick Humez — Harvard alumnus, mythology enthusiast, and pro-am folk musician — has produced an interesting new CD, Myth Songs. Seventeen tracks, spanning varied musical styles and mythologies from Greece to Iceland to Egypt and many places and ages in between. Humez summarizes each song, identifies his sources, and offers a few samples here. My favorite is definitely “Sleipnir”, a calypso number based on Old Norse legend (though wouldn’t a calypso number have been better for the Greek naiad of that name? :). The tune is extremely catchy and amusing, too. I can’t restrain myself from pointing out that Humez mispronounces Niflheim, but nobody’s perfect.

And finally, there’s a really interesting new documentary film out about the huldufólk of Iceland. Apparently, though they don’t talk about it with outsiders very often, Icelanders still believe to this day in the huldrer, mysterious little “hidden people” of folklore — think elves, dwarves, trolls, and so forth (in the Scandinavian sense, not the Tolkienian). Alan Garner used the term “huldrafolk” in the Alderley Edge books, which is where I first encountered it many years ago. And as in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, apparently the Icelanders believe they share the modern world with the last remnants of this furtive society. This also reminds me of a novel I read more recently, Troll: A Love Story, by Johanna Sinisalo. It’s a novel set in present-day Finland, where the trolls of legend still really exist. A very imaginative book! Anyway, the documentary is called Huldufólk 102 — check out the trailer — I simply have to see this!

The road not taken ... yet

You don’t hear that much about Alan Garner any more, which is a shame because his fantasy books (or most of them) are wonderful. Like Tolkien and Lewis, he plumbed mythology — mainly the Celtic and Norse — to provide depth and context for the struggles of his characters. Like Charles Williams, he brought that mythological past into the present, situating it right alongside everyday people going about everyday business, unaware. More recently, J.K. Rowling has taken this same approach, setting her magical world alongside the unsuspecting Muggle world. But unlike Tolkien and Lewis and Rowling, Garner’s landscapes and landmarks really exist.

Thinking especially of the Alderley Edge books (The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath), that landscape, the real Alderley Edge, is in modern-day Cheshire. And almost all of the natural landmarks Garner describes in Colin and Susan’s adventures were — and are — really there. The Old Quarry, the Wizard’s Well, Goldenstone, Radnor Mere, Redesmere, Macclesfield, and on and on. A visitor to north central England could, without too much difficulty, find these spots and retrace the characters’ steps. And some have actually done so!

How fantastic would that be? Can you imagine exploring the many mines and caves that dot the place, on the lookout for the svart alfar? Taking care not to get stuck in the Earldelving (which really scared me as a kid). It's no wonder Alderley inspired Garner to write stories like Weirdstone. The very landscape is so evocative and so little changed.