Epic
Just finished the first book of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, as a Thing. It was good in the end, but I could have skipped most of the middle and nearly all the beginning. I started wondering why I dislike fantasy and whether I should feel guilty or inadequate in any way.
I used to love fantasy. Maybe it’s that the Lord Of The Rings was the first fantasy I’d ever read and nothing else ever measured up. Maybe it’s that I’ve turned my back on the fantasy world now I’ve discovered there is plenty to keep you busy in the real one. Maybe LOTR is the original work of fantasy and all the others are pale imitators. Maybe I was 13 when I read LOTR and 31 when I read Thomas Covenant.
I got to wondering whether LOTR really was the first “fantasy” novel, but I think it was more than that. Its deep resonance with mythology and linguistic history and the british outlook mean that other works, however imaginative, creative, epic or grand, simply look transparent.
The other question is why are fantasy books so damn LONG? and why does everything have to be a trilogy? I think (a) the fantasy reader likes to feel immersed and doesn’t like to emerge and (b) works of fantasy have to have an air of being a “lost tome” or some other romantic skewing of the fact it’s a £4.99 paperback in a bookshop and it’s your lunch hour from your dull job. I wonder also whether LOTR was the catalyst for that? Are there short fantasy books? Well Pratchett might count, though they’re a different flavour of fantasy and contain more human drama and pathos than most… Are there short fantasy books before lord of the rings? Does rupert the bear count? Aren’t they called fairy stories?
Hmm… I’ve half a mind to write a bilogy of really thin books wherein a guy with an averagely exciting life goes on a short, dull quest for a mundane object just to shake up the form a bit.
Deep Tourism
I coined this this morning on hearing the tale of my colleague John who went to Stuttgart with work. He tried to go to a concert one evening but spent the whole evening doing laps of stuttgart in the dark trying to find a hotel. As a result, he didn’t see much of stuttgart, but he saw a lot of the small part he did see!
It tied in with thoughts I was having yesterday. I’ve become one of those most hated inhabitants of britain: a Sunday Driver. On the plus side, I tend to hurtle around at 60 or 70, rather than the more traditional 37mph… but I realised that despite this being my ninth year in York, I know very little about the surrounding geography and villages. Since having the spitfire though, I look for excuses to go for a drive on sundays, and I’ve been going for unplanned drives, turning down likely (or unlikely) looking lanes and ending up at village pubs for sunday lunch. I realised yesterday that I’m a kind of tourist in the sense that I’m doing little tours, though I live locally. So I figure if I keep this up I’ll have an intimate knowledge of all the little villages surrounding York. A sort of narrow, but deep local knowledge. And I should always know where I can get a roast dinner.
A depressing experience
I watched Lost In Translation last night with a bunch of friends. The friends were great, the film was great, and this morning I am utterly depressed. The film bothered me in the same way as daphnis and chloe bothers me or debussy played expressively on a piano, or watching a talented female undergraduate playing flute or violin. It tugs at all sorts of parts of your insides and you end up with a vexing mess of emotions that you thought you’d got a lid on.
This came at a time when I’m only just holding everything together. It’s the fourth week of the year and already it feels like the whole year is planned and there is no breathing space. I have faith that there are breathing spaces but I won’t really realise about them until I reach one and find time to take stock. The point is, when you’re going full tilt, dealing with stuff, then something like this comes out of leftfield, it really knocks you for six.
Bah, just thought I’d share before getting back to debugging…
Stoned Spiders
Have you seen the pictures of spiders webs, done with various licit and illicit substances being administered? Have a look. Have a think. Now realise that the vast majority of the western world drinks coffee on the days they sentence defendants, allocate funds, educate children, go to war…
There seem to be a few versions of this experiment at large. I hear Peter N Witt, Charles F Reed and David B Peakall, “A Spider’s Web”, Springer verlag 1968 is another source for these images
http://www.cannabis.net/weblife.html
And Steve Connor is responsible for “Article and Research” at this page
http://www.missblackwidow.com/drugs.html
The other sites I’ve seen seem to just crib the images from these two.
Went for sunday lunch in the wee car yesterday. Great fun with the top down, chasing the bright-blue parts of the sky on a changeable day! Sheryl tried out the new hat I got for passengers. Apart from looking rather amoosing, it does the job with its furry ear-covers! The pub we’d intended to visit was under a grey part of sky, so we ended up exploring some of the less picturesque bits of North Yorks west of shipton.
The car got rather wet and a little muddy (shame on me) but seemed to enjoy its substantial run round the backroads of yorkshire. Not sure exactly where we ended up, The Dunaway Arms, it might have been, possibly in Linton-on-ouse. I know we got nearly but not quite as far as tollerton. The homeward trip took in huby, sutton-on-the-forest, wigginton, haxby, and Asda for fuel…