The Nature of Magic, in Le Guin and Tolkien

The description of magic, and the underlying concept of it, is variously tackled in many a fantasy book. What does it feel like to use magic? Is it a tool, a technique? An external force? Or is it an art? A gift?

Tolkien wrote (in an undated letter, probably in 1951) that in Middle-earth, in The Lord of the Rings, there was a sort of machine-like magic used by the dark forces, used like a bulldozer to dominate or coerce, to gain Power. And in contrast, he offered the more wonderful high art of the immortal Elves, whose powers were simply “more effortless, more quick, more complete” than ordinary abilities of mere mortals.

To find an insightful description of magic and how it feels to use it, look to the writings of Ursula Le Guin, author of the famed Earthsea series, and more recently, an excellent series (Annals of the Western Shore) that includes the novel Gifts (2004), Voices (2006), and Powers (2007).

About Powers, a reviewer in Canada’s The Globe and Mail said:

What if there were a writer who exhibited all the inventiveness of genre fantasy but played out the action with a cast of nuanced, gritty, convincing characters in a prose style that was as lean, distilled and rhythmical as poetry? What if there were a writer who could invite all those readers who duck at the mention of dragons into a fantasy world that was as compelling and familiar as any in realistic fiction? . . . Peer as you might, you can’t quite see how she does it. Events from the past reappear, the future is foreshadowed and every incident is deeply rooted in character.

Gifts, the first in the series, introduces the Upland tribes, strong in magical powers that are different for each family group, gifts passed down from father to son, mother to daughter – power to see, command animals, destroy . . . with “a glance, a gesture, a word.” It focuses on a young teen, Orrec, who has a wild gift, and his friend, Gry, a girl whose powers to work with animals is taking shape.

What does it feel like to use the great powers of magic?

“But what does it feel like, to use it?”

He [Canoc, Orrec's father] frowned and thought a long time before he spoke.

It’s as if something comes all together,” he said. His left hand moved a little, involuntarily. “As if you were a knot at the center of a dozen lines, all of them drawn into you, and you holding them taut. As if you were a bow, but with a dozen bowstrings. And you draw them in tighter, and they draw on you, till you say, ‘Now!’ And the power shoots out like the arrow.”

That’s a description of magic . .  rich with the tangible imagery and cadence of poetry . . . the kind of writing that those who read Le Guin’s novels are hooked on.

 

The Magic in Fantasy that Pervades Everything

Magic in fantasy occurs as a central nervous system of the fiction. And though is it the systematic underpinning of all that happens, it is frequently mysterious, capricious, often dangerous.

Its main logic: rules are rules, and woe to the person that offends or transgresses those powers.

This is at the heart of G.K. Chesterton’s observations about key elements of fantasy (that he extends to Christian philosophy), the first being an absolute sense of wonder. And the second: that transcendent, unknowable rules need to be obeyed and heeded, even if we don’t understand them.

This is the belief that fantasy is built upon. Fantasy rests not on a block-by-block foundation of logical understanding but on a hidden bedrock of great mystery and faith.

Robin McKinley is one of those treasured fantasy writers who has written a slew of wonderful number of novels over a career, and garnered praise and big-time awards (Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine).

Sunshine, by the way, is a great work, and gave rise to one of my favorite statements from McKinley: “There is no sequel to Sunshine.” Unlike so many others, she feels no need to write sequels. She writes when she’s ready to write:

It’s not up to me! I can’t do anything unless or until a story comes to me and says, “Write me – write me now.” (. . .)

Yes, there are lots of loose ends.  I like loose ends.  Loose ends are like life, and, proficiently deployed, make a story feel like life.

Here’s her take on magic in Spindle’s End. It wonderfully mixes an original look at magic that pervades everything . . . with a delightful sense of place, all in the first pages of that novel.

The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like slightly sticky plaster-dust. (Housecleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn’t, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water. (. . .)

If you lived there, you learned what you had to do . . . like asking your loaf of bread to remain a loaf of bread before you struck it with a knife. (. . .)

Generally speaking, the more mobile and water-dependent something was, the more likely magic was to get at it. This meant animals – and,  of course,  humans – were the most vulnerable. Rock were pretty reliably rocks, except of course when they were something else that had been turned into rocks.

And by the way, about magic settling on everything . . . on her website, she claims this as a personal motto, which many of us writers share:

My favorite sofa cushion reads, “My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.”

Amen!

 

Guinea Pig Zombies

Okay, maybe not the best idea I’ve had. But it combines a couple of hot movies of the year, G-Force and (coming in October) Zombieland.

Anyhow (segue!) . . . There’s a good LiveJournal discussion group called Fur, Fangs & Fey, for writers of dark fantasy featuring fur (werewolves), fangs (vampires), or fey powers (dangerous fairies). And variants thereof.

On that site, I saw this great post by author Jennifer Lynn Barnes, evaluating the relative appeal, fictionwise, for those dark choices.

Ms. Barnes is the author of several books of urban supernatural fantasy for teen (and up) readers, such as Tattoo (2007), with this review from Publishers Weekly, via Amazon.com:

Barnes’s book about four friends who get special powers from their temporary tattoos has some fun moments, despite the far-out premise. [. . .] Delia [one of the four] also delivers the book’s best line when facing off against evil Alecca: “You think you’re bad?… I’m on the cheerleading squad; I know what real evil looks like.”

Here’s a bit from that Fur, Fangs, and Fey post by Barnes, “On Hotness”

I’ll freely admit that typical vamps have their drawbacks. Personally, were I given a choice, I’d prefer the heart in my guy’s chest to be beating, and normally, I go for more of a healthily tanned skin tone than the whole Creature of the Night thing. That said, there’s something about vampires that just seems tragic and strong and too, too dangerous in a really Forbidden Love kind of way.

When I think of werewolves, I automatically think of intense emotions – joy, rage, love, and the like, but I see vampires as more naturally stand-offish. They’re colder, more calculating. They’re often solitary. They distance themselves from people. But here’s the thing: I think it’s a million times hotter when a character’s human emotions come as a surprise or seem somehow discordant with their supernatural nature than when they don’t. When a vampire falls in love, it’s not just romantic. It’s a miracle. It’s eternal, and in a lot of universes, the odds seem so stacked against it that any tenderness I see from Mr. Fangy makes me go totally weak at the knees.

Interesting authorial thoughts . . . going to the question of why authors chose particular types of supernatural beings, given all the choices, to populate their fantasy stories.

In the world of genre fiction (prone to stereotypes), how do engaging characters come to life?

When it works, it’s that blend of (a) ancient archetype, plus (b) a fresh story and individual personality of a specific character . . . building a tale that merges classical and very personal forms of thrills and challenges and changes that throws fuel on the story’s fire.

Check out the Fur, Fangs, and Fey site if you’re interested in the hip, fun, and very popular field of dark fantasy today.

 

Problems with Harry Potter Series (Part 1 of 2)

I have great respect for much of what J.K. Rowling has done:

• succeeding as a first-time published author;
• weaving a complex plot;
• selling gazillions of books;
• getting kids (girls & boys) and adults excited to read;
• possessing the sheer courage of committing to 7 books.

But . . . I have problems with the series. My concerns aren’t that of a fan, who enjoys (legitimately!) every scrap of info, every paragraph (strong or weak), doesn’t want the series to end (ever), etc.

My concerns are how good the series is in overall quality. Especially when held up to other comparable series by great authors such as Ursula Le Guin (Earthsea), C.S. Lewis (Narnia), etc.

Frankly, in my opinion, the Harry Potter series started off strong. But the latter books suffered in the writing quality. Drawbacks:

1. The small group of main characters and settings.

Perhaps the series suffered from the weight of the author’s bold commitment to write a series of 7 books, following Harry through each year at Hogwarts. The pace, trying for 1 per year, was daunting. And Rowling decided to focus the 7 novels on the same main characters, following them from beginning to end. And she used the same settings, and the same overarching threat from Lord Voldemort and his minions, more or less. (Other great series writers – Le Guin and Lewis, for instance – did similar numbers of books but varied the settings and characters.)

By the second half of the series, less of Rowling’s immense creativity, storytelling ability, and humor comes forth. The latter books are bloated in length and dragged down by the demands of the complex plot.

Personally, as a reader, I found myself losing interest in the repeated scenes within Hogwarts; with the Dursleys, the similar conversations amongst Harry, Hermione, and Ron; the creeping around with the cloak of invisibility, etc.

Perhaps the series could have been better had it been done in fewer volumes, and had the second half of the series been done in shorter books instead of the mammoth doorstops that they became.

2. The complexity of the plot.

Like a grand tournament between chess masters, with move and countermove, stratagem and defense, ruse and revelation, game after game, the Harry Potter series is densely plotted, with all sorts of twists, turns, surprises, connections. The problem: it requires so much to spin it all out. By the last book, there are pages and pages and yet more pages of characters explaining to each other what really happened.

By the end of Book 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows . . . sure, it’s fascinating how J.K. Rowling ties everything up as an intellectual challenge. But it just wasn’t as well-told as the first books in the series. The plot with all its puzzles has become an albatross, along with, perhaps, all the distractions of fan speculation, and the movies, and all the hoopla about what was going to happen next to whom, instead of just letting Rowling focus on writing a good story.

3. Huge plot holes.

Book 7 has some of the worst clunkers, holes big enough to drive a Gringotts armored truck through them. The most extreme occurs midway, when Harry & Hermione & Ron have taken off on their own, hiding out and moving constantly around the English countryside, camping in an invisible tent. Unfortunately, they have cut all ties with everyone else, and don’t know what to do next or where to go.

They are mystified . . . until finally Rowling has to create a fishing party of acquaintances who show up (amazing coincidence) to go fishing in the middle of nowhere right next to the (invisible) tent; they proceed to talk loudly about what’s up, so that H, H, and R can overhear the needed clue about what to do next.

Okay, that’s just lame, plot-wise . . . and suggests to me that Rowling had written herself into a corner, and came up with this desperate deus ex machina device to move her story forward.

As an editor, I wouldn’t let a new author get away with it. But Rowling was beyond reproach, or perhaps just under a tight deadline, and she and her editors were confident (and correct) that this would not affect sales, fan appeal, etc.

Sure, many fictional stories benefit from some luck, but that was a bit far-fetched. England is a big country, and the chances of hearing the needed clue while sitting inside your tent are pretty slim. You can’t let a plot depend on some random people showing up in the middle of nowhere to tell the protagonists what they need to know.

If this were the only instance . . . but other similar too-lucky or convenient magical things happen time and again, bailing out the plot. The explanations don’t really hold water, even given all the magic involved.

As many authors have said, especially in fantasy, the magic needs rules and limits, believable enough to create the proper dramatic tension, so that the good characters face real challenges. It’s a problem when magic (with its ability to produce the revealing conversation, letter, clue, homing device, secret weapon, or whatever) bails them out, time and again.

Rowling just goes to the well too often, coming up with fantastic ways that things work out. After a while, like watching a stage magician, we tend not to get too emotionally involved, suspecting that if trouble brews, the author will just pull another rabbit out of the hat.

4. Harry’s likability.

As the series progresses, Harry becomes more and more a chess piece, moved around by others, by greater and greater powers, by the grand struggle between good and evil, and by his own loose emotions.

Most of all, he undermines his own likability by getting angry, over and over, at his closest friends, Ron & Hermione, and at his likable mentor, Dumbledore. In Book 4, Harry is just angry a lot of the time, acting irritated and often mean to his friends.

In Book 7, he is still angry and argumentative. And he lets it get the best of him. He wants “the truth,” which means he doesn’t always seem to care if things do or don’t work out well. And he doesn’t always care about the trouble he gets his friends into. In fact, he does a number of fairly stupid things that gets them into major trouble, even when they are supposedly working together as a team. And when those excursions don’t work out well, and bad things happen like Hermione is tortured and cut by a knife-wielding maniac, Harry never really acknowledges what an idiot he was to give way to his personal anger and interests, and he doesn’t apologize.

I found myself feeling sorry for Harry. Sure, I hoped things worked out. But I stopped really rooting for him to get what he wanted. Instead, I began to identify with Ron and Hermione, who are so patient, and supportive, and truly kind, and in Hermione’s case, far more sensible.

Crossword Puzzles, Cricket Matches, and a Fantasy Series that Was Stretched Too Long

So in the end, I read all the books, and enjoyed many parts: the page-turning dense plot, the early humor, the wonderful place of Hogwarts. In the end, though, while at first a fan, I drifted away from true enthusiasm as the series progressed. For me, the series didn’t really live up to its earlier promise of grand appeal.

By the final volume, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that book, and the overall series, wasn’t exactly something I’d recommend to others.

It was more like how I enjoy a bit of chess, or the occasional crossword puzzle . . . or watching baseball or other games like tennis without time limits, back and forth, back and forth, appreciating the skills and athleticism . . . but in the end, being bored by the repetitive game happening over and over on the same court.

In length, the Harry Potter series is like a cricket tournament. Intriguing, but it goes on far too long, to the point of being interesting mostly to its true fans.

As an editor, I think Rowling would have had a better series, had it been tightened into four, maybe five volumes. Seven books focused on the same characters and the same struggle was excessive. And the length of the latter books . . . ho, boy. The excessive length was probably connected to tight deadlines (“If I’d had more time, I would have written something shorter,” as a famous author said).

So, while commercially successful – a gigantic fan phenomenon, and all power to Rowling for that – the series slid downhill in quality over time, in my opinion.

All this may undermine how enthusiastically the series is recommended, and revered, by new readers a decade from now, let along in forty or fifty years . . . as is true of the novels of Le Guin (first Earthsea book in 1968), or C.S. Lewis (first Narnia book in 1950), or the books of Madeleine L’Engle or Lloyd Alexander, who also wrote high-quality fantasy series but more succinctly, with far more variety, more literary appeal, and (I suspect), a more lasting readership.

Time will tell. That’s just my guess, based on what I know about good writing and fantasy literature.

[Part 2 to come]

 

Twilight Doesn’t Impress All Readers

Some people think that the Twilight series isn’t great literature. (That would be an understatement.)

However, I’ll just quote Mickey Spillane:

“Those big-shot writers never could dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.”

That said, I thought this was a funny post about Twilight and author Stephenie Meyer on the blog Not Overburdened With Subject: “I want to beat Edward Cullen with a stick.”

Okay, the author of that blog (“27-year-old associate editor who works mainly with fiction”) pokes fun at Stephenie Meyer’s writing, quoting lines like:

He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare.

And adds a little irreverent textual analysis, like noting the number of “References to Edward’s Beauty: 165.” In a book of 498 pages, that’s about every three pages. A bit excessive.

Here’s another negative review of Twilight, by Michele Catalano, from the blog Heretical Ideas: A Journal of Unorthodox Opinion.

But to better understand the issue, I love reading the many (and all over the board) comments to Catalano’s post, that really tell the story, like “Caitlyn’s”:

I’m 17 and last year all my friends were reading twilight and I got it as a christmas present. I read it and loved it. I devoured each book one right after the other. And when I finished the fourth and final book I went right back to start reading the original Twilight novel and couldn’t believe how idiotic and mindless I had become over it. I don’t understand what the hell made me think it was a good book. Bella Swan is the Mary Sue of all Mary Sues. I think the reason I became so attached is because everyone else was so in love with it and I wanted to be in love with it too, not to mention the word vampire instantly attracts me ( I was born into a family of Buffy addicts). But after rereading Twilight again, I honestly wonder how this can be considered a classic love saga.

Or, this comment that hits the nail on the head, by “Molly”:

Yes, it is poorly written. (. . .)

But really? No one is forcing you to read the book. So you don’t like it no one else really cares what you think.

It’s a fun book for teenage girls to imagine and talk about the hot guys in the movie. No one actually believes that a vampire and werewolf are going to swipe them off their feet and fall in love with them. (. . .)

So shut up.

Let’s face it, the book is a success not because of its literary merit, but because of its flat-out zeal for storytelling, with all its repetition and plots full of holes easily ignored. As romance author Jane Porter wrote on Harlequin’s Paranormal Romance Blog:

A week ago I attended a book club in Woodinville, Washington and every woman there but one had read one or more of the Twilight series. I was so impressed! These weren’t teenage readers, either, but women between 40 and 60, all neighbors and friends, many with teenage kids who turned their moms onto the series. (. . . )

For me, the charm is in the wonderful characterization, and Stephenie’s skill in making me believe this could happen, or want it to happen. I loved her very small town setting of Forks, Washington and her family dynamics of a teenage daughter living with her loving, but a little crusty, father. It’s storytelling at its best, which transcends genres and just becomes great reading . . . reading that tugs on your heart and captures your imagination.

Pass the salted nuts, please.

 

“There and Back Again” – Sense of Place in Fantasy Literature

“There and Back Again” . . .

In fantasy literature, the story often involves a journey from place familiar to place unknown. Leaving your small cottage, you enter the dark forest. Beyond is terra incognito, where dangerous beasts lurk, strange people are encountered, perilous decisions must be made.

These are the roads to the underground maze of Neverwhere, or the serene treetops of Lothlórien, or the tea parties and croquet matches of Wonderland.

There and Back Again, the subtitle of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, at first seems the epitome of understatement. It suggests the homebody nature of the hobbit, Bilbo’s penchant for the ordinary. The great adventure of going “there,” it suggests, means mostly just being away from home for a while.

But on his return, as is often true in epic tales, the hero finds that home itself has changed. Bilbo’s own neighbors don’t recognize him; they are absorbed in the process of selling off his furniture, eager to take over the cozy hobbit-hole they think he has abandoned. Bilbo himself has changed; he is not quite the same hobbit he used to be.

In that marvelous subtitle, Tolkien has summed up the essence of fantasy. There and back again is the very heart of adventure. To travel through Middle-earth or into any fantasy world is not just a series of stops on a Caribbean cruise. It is a journey into a mythic place.

There’s no “there” there, said Gertrude Stein, infamously, about Oakland, California. In Stein’s circle of hip literati and artists, “thereness” was a prized quality. It described an elevated aspect of place – just as destiny is a special quality of plot, or inner nature is a special aspect of character.

Indeed, this sense of “there-ness” might have been the true meaning of British climber George Mallory’s famous answer to the question of why he attempted to climb Mount Everest. “Because it’s there,” he replied. Perhaps what he really meant was that the high Himalayas had the quintessential “there-ness” of sacred space. Gertrude Stein would have known what he meant.

Perhaps Tolkien did too. As did Joseph Campbell, who wrote: “Sacred place is the place where eternity shines through.”

[This is excerpted from A Guide to Fantasy Literature: Thoughts on Stories of Wonder & Enchantment, by Philip Martin, Crickhollow Books, copyright 2009. I've also added another excerpt about sense of place, from the "Fantastic Places" chapter, to the Excerpt page of this blog.]

 

The Harry Potter Series – Great Storytelling or Classics of Literature?

My favorite description of what makes a classic comes from magical realist Italo Calvino: “A classic is a work which has not yet finished telling its story.”

My question: will the Harry Potter books endure and become classics of literature?

First, let’s agree that “great storytelling” and “literary quality” are often found together, but not always. A well-told story is not necessarily great literature.

Yet it seems obvious that great works of literature – the classics – generally have both literary quality and good storytelling. And of the two, skill in storytelling comes first and lasts longest in the minds of readers.

The skills of superb storytellers like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, despite being disparaged for their suspicious popularity, are undisputed and often under-recognized for their complexity. Great storytelling is not something that anyone can do. To believe that misses the skills that writers at the tops of their fields – especially in genre areas like fantasy, science fiction, and mystery novels – have mastered, skills which lie beyond the reach of most graduates of creative writing programs.

The debate over storytelling versus literary quality in popular novels like the works of Rowling or King reminds me of the comment about why Dickens wrote popular novels. G.K. Chesterton wrote: “Dickens didn’t write what the people wanted, he wanted what the people wanted.”

The criticism of being a popular writer, not a literary great, was also leveled on Rudyard Kipling — who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, the first English-language author to win that prize established in 1901. In the presentation, Kipling was praised by the Swedish academy for his great “genius in the realm of narrative.”

So the classics speak to readers for a long time. It might be useful to consider the Harry Potter series in light of the Narnia books, which fifty years after their publication are still beguiling hordes of readers, young and old.

Will the Potter books do the same?

The only fair answer: time will tell.

I don’t happen to believe, by the way, in the term “instant classic.” It’s like “jumbo shrimp” – an oxymoron that just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

I’m inclined to give the series the benefit of the doubt . . . and wait to see. In the meantime, J.K. Rowling and her immensely successful Harry Potter series is doing just fine as a decade-long run of contemporary and popular books.

And movies! Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is about to leap, magic wands ablaze, potent spells spouting, onto the silver screen next week.

[Coming next week . . . further thoughts about Pottermania and the role of the series in fantasy literature.]

 

Malodorous Fantasy, and a Place to Learn to Write Well

Odyssey is an outstanding speculative-fiction writers workshop, a 6-week program (early June to mid-July) with pro editors: serious workshops for serious aspiring writers on their way up.

Here though, on their website, is a fun page, called The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, that mixes great opening lines with some hysterical clunkers from the infamous Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Here are a couple of the fantastically funny Bulwer-Lytton beginnings:

The dragon cast his wet, rheumy eyes, heavy-lidded with misery, over his kingdom – a malodorous, rot-ridden swamp, with moss cloaking brooding, gloomy cypresses, tree trunks like decayed teeth rising from stagnant ponds, creatures with mildewed fur and scales whom the meanest roadside zoo would have rejected – and hoped the antidepressants would kick in soon.

Not to be outdone in dreadfulness:

Gringran Roojner had only gone to see the Great Warlock of Loowith to get his horoscope and he couldn’t believe he’d been sent on a quest for the legendary Scromer of Nothleen to ask him for the answer to the Riddle of Shimmererer so that he could give it to the Guardians of Vooroniank, thereby gaining access to the Cave of Zothlianath where he would find the seldom seen Cowering of Groojanc, whose spittle was an absolute necessity in the making of the Warlock’s famous pound cake, the kind with raisins.

For comparative purposes, the Odyssey page intersperses a batch of good (and published) opening sentences by workshop graduates.

Check out the details of the Odyssey workshops, at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, one hour from Boston. Or read the text of this testimonial, by Lane Robins, comparing her creative writing training in college to the Odyssey summer session:

Odyssey: A Step on the Journey, by Lane Robins

I majored in Creative Writing in college. . . . But the college workshop experience wasn’t helpful for me as a genre writer. I wasn’t writing what I wanted to write, and so I wasn’t getting the feedback that I needed to get. This fact became rapidly apparent when I began sending stories out to genre magazines and collected rejections by the handful. (. . .)

Then I heard about Odyssey. Six weeks of intensive writing and critiquing, taught by the Dell Abyss editor, Jeanne Cavelos. (. . .) At Odyssey, I could ask an actual editor why the story “didn’t quite work,” something I’d heard more than enough of by then.

Until Odyssey, all my writing instruction had been focused on tiny, technical details, or story ‘rules’ that I had unconsciously absorbed after years of reading. Odyssey taught me about story structure, about asking myself questions, and about understanding the reader’s expectations as well as my own.

Odyssey taught me to look at writing from a more analytical standpoint, first while critiquing others, then in my own writing, and did so in an environment that was both challenging and nurturing.

Did it work? Robins started a new novel that fall, Maledicte, which was published by Del Rey in 2007. It was well reviewed by Publishers Weekly and Booklist, noting: “Robins is a fantasist with a future,” and “well-paced adventure and arresting characters,” respectively.

Kudos to Odyssey and director Jeanne Cavelos. Fantasy fiction is built on a tradition of great storytelling . . . and for many writers, that means unlearning the literary self-obsession too often learned in college writing programs.

 

Inklings and Coal Biters, Welcome!

The Inklings, of course, is the name for the now-famous group of writers and thinkers hosted by C.S. Lewis in his rooms at Magdalen College at Oxford – rooms that might be called shabby chic, with worn, comfortable armchairs and a big sofa. Attendees included Lewis’s good friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and others. They would brew a pot of strong tea, light their pipes, and have at it, first reading excerpts from a work-in-progress and then letting the assembled company “sit in judgement upon it.”

As quoted in Diana Pavlac Glyer’s fine book, The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, member and older brother of C.S. Lewis, Warren (“Warnie”) Lewis said: “We were no mutual admiration society: praise for good work was unstinted, but censure for bad work – or even not-so-good work – was often brutally frank.”

Glyer’s book documents how they influenced each other in so many ways, as a regular meeting of working writers. In detail, she describes (see p. 104 on) how Lewis helped Tolkien refine the tone of his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, steering the early drafts of first chapters away from a hobbity, chatty, playful work (first conceived as a sequel to Tolkien’s earlier work for young readers, The Hobbit) and into a more serious work with real “gravity.” It’s a fascinating look into the minds of those two great writers of modern fantasy.

The Company They Keep also brought to my attention the name (see Glyer’s book, p. 3) that Tolkien chose for an earlier version of the Inklings, Kolbítar. It came from an Old Norse/Icelandic word meaning Coal Biters, describing “old cronies” who sat closest to a fire; close enough, as it were, to bite the coal.

What a great image for a literary fellowship, friends huddled around a glowing hearth-fire!

Ever since I heard that term, I’ve also thought of it as a great image for the virtual form: the legions of blog followers, electronic “coal biters,” those of you who bend close to the computer monitor and follow the ethereal musings of bloggers small and mighty. (Today, the term could be “pixel polishers,” but that has so little poetic appeal.)

So welcome, coal-biters all! And be sure to pass on an invitation to others to join us here at Creeping Past Dragons at any time. There’s always a seat at the fire for any and all who might like to squeeze in for a bit of bandying about of all things philosophical and fantastical.

 

Neverlands and Our Eternal Childhoods

Neverland. It is the home of our eternal childhoods, with all those wonderful dreams and adventures.

In J.M. Barrie’s play and novel, Peter Pan, it is plural. There are many Neverlands, one for each of us.

With the death of Michael Jackson, a childish pop star on a strange quest for his lost youth, we all find ourselves reflecting on issues of childhood, fantasy worlds, and the reluctance of leaving a creative, carefree youth for the burdens of maturity.

While we must, perhaps, become grown-ups (drat!), we need not leave all things imaginative and fantastic behind. Our lasting love of great books for young readers, especially those of fantasy literature that celebrate the wonder of childhood, must reflect some bit of that in all of us.

Indeed, a good book is like the story of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew older. It never ages. We can pick up the novel Peter Pan, or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, or (insert the name of your favorite here!), and remember being like those children, and travel with them on their adventures one more time.

if you haven’t read it, the story of Peter Pan by J.M. (James Matthew) Barrie is quite lovely, full of the Victorian whimsy that I’ve suggested is a cornerstone of modern fantasy.

Here’s a bit about Neverland.

I don’t know whether you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.

It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.

Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood still in a row you could say of them that they have each other’s nose, and so forth. On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles [simple boat]. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.

Peter is a young boy, still with his baby teeth, and he stays that way. How old?

“I don’t know,” he replied uneasily, “but I am quite young. . . . Wendy, I ran away the day I was born.”
. . .
“It was because I heard father and mother,” he explained in a low voice, “talking about what I was to be when I became a man.” He was extraordinarily agitated now. “I don’t want ever to be a man,” he said with passion. “I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among the fairies.”

And he now lives with “the lost boys.”

“Who are they?”

“They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expenses. I’m captain.”

We’re all captains of our own Neverlands. If we have a good library of fantastic books, we can travel there anytime we like. Far better to do it in fiction, of course, than trying to change who we are physically, to try in vain to alter reality, as we can learn from the sad story of Michael Jackson.