When you're raised on the river, washed in the blood

[sovay]

This is a logical train of thought. It starts with Pamela F. Service's Tomorrow's Magic—the recent omnibus reprint of Winter of Magic's Return (1985) and Tomorrow's Magic (1987)—which I picked up from the bookstore this afternoon and have just begun to re-read. The last time I read the books was age eleven, at the latest; I had remembered the post-apocalyptic Arthuriana, but completely forgotten that it takes place in Wales. This reminds me again that between the Prydain Chronicles, The Dark Is Rising, The Crystal Cave, The Owl Service, the Mushroom Planet books, and Howl's Moving Castle, it's probably some kind of miracle I ever realized that Wales was not in fact synonymous with the otherworld. Time out for a fragmentary, tangential recollection of the dream I had last night, which contained Merlin and Nimue (and someone had stolen my face), which zigzags back to wondering whether magical talent / sensitivity in novels and stories usually is ethnically tied: not to pick on Peter S. Beagle, Julie Tanikawa's ability to summon the goddess Kannon in The Folk of the Air; whether that's orientalism or merely a reasonable expectation that a god will listen most attentively to its traditionally affiliated kin-group; e.g., there are not many goyishe golem stories. I am too tired to draw up a proper list in my head (either for or against) and decide to stare at my bookshelves tomorrow. Nonetheless, the sentence that still resolves at the end of this contemplation is: I totally resent my genetic inability to sing golems into being. It's a good thing I like my brain.

Comments

[sovay]

That sounds dreadful, though the rest of the movie sounds awesome.

I taped it off TCM. My plan is to watch as much of James Mason, Sophia Loren, and Christopher Plummer as possible, while skillfully avoiding the same of Stephen Boyd. I remain floored that in 1964 they couldn't find an actor with at least a modicum of charisma to carry off the part.

The retroactive heritage change struck me as a sort of Yekl (sp?) transformation. In that book the main character keeps saying he is various and sundry different ways that are demonstrably untrue. A recurring line about "my people do/are X" that changes as the character changes came up while I was thinking of it.

By Abraham Cahan? I have never read the book; it looks like something I need to.

I want to know what that book was about.

Write it and find out?

Yekl

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

The very same. Read it in college. It was good.

Write it and find out?

Oh, it's on the queue. Definitely on the queue.