Bright as iron, swift as arrow, strong as oak. I am the land

[sovay]

Yesterday I woke up to the news that Robert Holdstock had died. He was not one of my formative writers, but one I resonated with: I discovered him in college, the summer I was unofficially teaching Latin at Belmont Hill and walked home past the same tiny used book store every day; they had the U.S. paperbacks of Mythago Wood (1984) and Lavondyss (1988) and their covers of masks and granite outcroppings must have caught my eye, because I kept picking them up, reading stray lines of prologue and weighing their weirdness, unsure whether they would be as wild and rough-barked as I was hoping or merely another iteration of crystally Celtic twilight. They were not the latter. My memory tells me that the school year had started by the time I finally brought Mythago Wood home and that I read Lavondyss by falling snow, but perhaps I associate the books so strongly with their presiding seasons that the story has changed inside my head. He wrote one of the three truest autumns I know. I am not pleased there will be no more in his timeless, blood-bronzed, shape-changing forests.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I saw this news yesterday too, but didn't know the author. Just now you prompted me to go read up about Mythago Wood.

I know that Greer's work is another of your truest autumns. Who does the third?

[eredien]

Ah. Mythago Wood is one of my formative books.

[wirewalking.livejournal.com]

I don't know his work, but you've just prompted me to go find it.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I read Mythago Wood a little too early to appreciate it well--at the time I recognized that it was very, very different from e.g. Paxson's The White Raven, but not how. Somewhere I have that 1984 paperback; it's past time for a reread.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

What's poignant for me is that I've yet to read him. Fool that I am, I was waiting. And now I'll never get to have that conversation with him in the borderland between our woods.

He walks in his ever-autumn. Winter will not come.

Nine

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's sad. He wasn't a formative writer for me, either, but I enjoyed Mythago Wood.

[4nt1g0n3.livejournal.com]

Wah! I still have the hard copy first edition of Mythago Wood that you gave me so many years ago. Its such a head trip - but wonderfully so. Speaking of which, I DO highly recommend House of Leaves, if you haven't gotten to it yet. Its a definite mind-fuck, and I'm barely half way through it!

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

I loved the Mythago Wood cycle, although it was not formative for me. Ralph Vaughn Williams even shows up asa character in Lavondyss.