The ghost of Shakespeare's on the street

[sovay]

Rich Horton has posted the table of contents for Fantasy: The Best of the Year. I am able to construct about this coherent a reaction:

I am in the same anthology as Peter S. Beagle!

You have to understand that I discovered The Last Unicorn so early on that by the time I was eight years old and took the book home from the Cambridge Public Library, it was a re-read. Schmendrick the Magician was a central figure in my childhood pantheon. (If I had known about A Fine and Private Place in elementary school, undoubtably Jonathan Rebeck would have been too. I had to wait until mid-college for that one.) I have debated with friends over the green-eyed magician in The Innkeeper's Song. "Constellations, Conjunctions" owes a visible debt to The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances. I could go on like this. The point is, it's safe to say that Peter Beagle is a major component of my reading life and a whacking great influence on my writing, and I shall probably grin like a maniac over simply sharing a table of contents for far too many months.* Whee.

Unrelatedly, Jolie Holland rocks my world. Between the plucked bass and the snare drum, and her snaky, smoky play with rhythm and tune, her "Mad Tom of Bedlam" would be unrecognizable to the seventeenth century, but with no effort at all I could hear it performed at Carnegie Hall in 1938. "Old Fashion Morphine" is a low-key spiritual for the damned, the dead, and the indifferent; it wants daguerrotypes and tenements and slow swamp water (and would make a damned eerie double bill with Thea Gilmore's "Razor Valentine"). "Wandering Angus" is Yeats as featured on the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and "Demon Lover Improv" is an undiscovered Alan Lomax field recording, right down to the background coughs and chair-creaks and little experimental finger-picks before the music itself. I haven't yet heard a single piece of hers that sounds quite like the present day. I don't think I'll be disappointed if I do. Thanks to muchabstracted for pointing me in her direction.

. . . Peter S. Beagle.

*Not like there aren't many other cool people in this table of contents, such as Neil Gaiman, Gene Wolfe, Elizabeth Bear, Theodora Goss, and Holly Phillips—but I haven't been reading them since before I can remember. That said, once the initial shock wears off, I will probably look over the rest of the table of contents and start nerving out again.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Coolth!

Nine

[sovay]

To borrow a sound effect from strange_selkie: wibble.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

"Demon Lover Improv" is interestingly spindly and skeletal, like a dry weed by the roadside, a seedpod scattering folk.

"Old Fashion Morphine" is a good dry jest on "Old Time Religion": a whole 'nother pantheon.

I can see "Mad Tom of Bedlam" being done by long-time travellers, Jacobeans now running a smoky little dive called Satan's Kitchen. They've been round the block a few times.

Nine

[sovay]

My father came in while "Mad Tom of Bedlam" was playing and wanted to know where I'd gotten the previously unreleased Rickie Lee Jones . . .

[eudaimonia.livejournal.com]

I love Jolie Holland - that's an amazing album. If you like her, you might want to try the "Be Good Tanyas" (http://www.begoodtanyas.com/), who I adore as well. Jolie played on one of their albums.

Congratulations on the fine company you keep. Beagle's "Folk of the Air" has long been a favorite of mine.

And oh, hello. :-)

[sovay]

Cool. I do not think I know the Be Good Tanyas. I shall look them up directly.

Thank you! Up until now, I kept this company only on my bookshelves!

Hey. : )

[deadcities-icon.livejournal.com]

Big huge congrats, Sonya! This looks like a fascinating Best Of collection.

[sovay]

I am definitely looking forward to reading it. Thank you!

[spectre-general.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaiman's in there too, which is no slouch. Still nothing quite like meeting up with a hero somewhere 'professional'.

[sovay]

See, I encountered Neil Gaiman in college; he wasn't formative in the same way. But, yeah. If I think about it, that's also a blink-and-stare.

Still nothing quite like meeting up with a hero somewhere 'professional'.

So whenever I meet him at a con and fall fannishly all over myself, maybe he'll at least recognize me from before . . .

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Did I ever tell you that when I met Peter Beagle, I burst into tears? I did manage to thank him, though.

He's the whole reason I am a writer.

Go, team you.

[sovay]

He's the whole reason I am a writer.

What's the story?

Thank you. I think I'll just be stunned for a few months here . . .

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

We saw him peak at Comicon a few years ago, and afterwards my husband sort of made me go up and introduce myself, because I wasn't going to. And I shook his hand, and I must have looked like I was about to fall over dead, and I kind of said "I love the way you can have me crying at the beginning of a paragraph and laughing at the end, and it made me want to do that, and my first book is being published in the fall," and I burst into tears and fled. *g*

So, yanno. You're doing better than I did.

[sovay]

Only because I'm not actually in the presence of Peter Beagle. There would be massive, massive fangirling if I were.

[larryhammer]

Not to mention Greg Feeley.

---L.

[sovay]

. . . I am a philistine; I am not sure I have read any of his stories.

[larryhammer]

He publishes rarely enough I can't say I'm surprised. I really liked his "Arabian Wine," and "Gilead" from The First Heroes was brill. But I keep thinking I ought to point matociquala at his "Aweary of the Sun" from Weird Tales from Shakespeare -- it's a John Fletcher story, and his coming to terms with following Will's footsteps in becoming the principal writer for the company of the Globe.

---L.

[aoniedesade.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I will be sure to pick up a copy.

The movie version of The Last Unicorn came out the year I was born, and has always been one of favourite my movies, and my copy of the book is just about falling apart.

[sovay]

Thank you! As you can tell, I'm sort of insanely thrilled . . .

I saw the movie of The Last Unicorn for the first time that I can remember in college; I have greyselke to thank for that. But I must have seen at least a few scenes of it before then, because for years, despite direct textual contradiction—a tall thin man with an air of resolute bewilderment. He wore an old black cloak, and his eyes were green—I kept thinking that Schmendrick wore blue. Finding out that he was voiced by Alan Arkin, however, was just awesome.

[aoniedesade.livejournal.com]

I've only been published once, but I remember the insane thrill and shock. I was giddy for days.

[sovay]

I've only been published once

What and where?

[aoniedesade.livejournal.com]

Clean Sheets Erotica magazine in 2001. They paid me $10. I was overjoyed. The links are horribly out of date and probably dead. My teenage poetry makes me cringe.

It can be found here. (http://www.cleansheets.com/poetry/desade_01.03.01.shtml)

[sovay]

I remember reading that one. : )

Extraordinarily belated congratulations!

[aoniedesade.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. Thank you. I haven't written any poetry in ages. Someone once called me a "pre-Raphaelite Anne Sexton."

[sovay]

a "pre-Raphaelite Anne Sexton."

Damn. That's a compliment. : )

You should write more poetry.

[aoniedesade.livejournal.com]

My poetry journal is nimeu. I haven't updated in a long while.

A very lovely boy paid me that compliment. He lives in Atlanta. Oddly enough, we are both participants in Shelly Jackson's Skin project.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Oh, very nice - and Gene Wolfe, too. A very high-class establishment!

[sovay]

I'm very impressed!

[sovay]

"Twenty pounds for the king!"

. . . sorry. It's been that sort of day.

Thanks. : )