I don't recognize those old buildings that used to mean so much to me
Bertie Owen's keyboard is really breaking and I didn't fall asleep until well after eight this morning. I did not get much done today that was not work, but I did have post-holiday corned beef and soda bread with my parents in the evening. I did not have cabbage. I like cabbage in coleslaw and several other dishes—and I will eat it by itself if it's stir-fried—but when it's steamed or boiled I feel there is no safe ground between the raw food movement and sublimated into a fart.
1. In context of discussing the longstanding (and totally deserved) community argument with Michael Weingrad's "Why There Is No Jewish Narnia," my mother remarked that of course portal fantasy has Christian origins; Christianity has its other world into which you can be assumed or translated at any second right there in its conception of Heaven. On the one hand, C.S. Lewis himself presumed this link in his wraparound of Narnia into Aslan's Country. (Elizabeth Goudge made a similar connection in The Valley of Song (1951), though hers works much better for me on account of avoiding allegory and including Fairy.) On the other, I can't remember seeing anyone really write about it. Please point me toward articles to the contrary, if they exist? Otherwise I can tell my mother she just said something tremendously useful about twentieth-century fantasy.
2. Please enjoy a non-binary penned punk song about Claude Cahun: Worriers, "The Only Claude That Matters."![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rydra_wong, I thought you should know.
3. Everyone in general, I'm just really charmed by Madeline McGrane's "Vampire Horse."
4. Courtesy ofmoon_custafer: Brad Dourif in Fatal Beauty (1987). I will resist all efforts to explain to me that he is not playing the title role.
5. And then I made the mistake of clicking on an article about millennial millionnaire-billionaires:
I steer the conversation to the subject of how utterly detached from the real world elites seem to have become. "Elitism, the way I would define it, is obtainable," he replies. "All that stands between you and being elite is your own investment in yourself."
I tell Rosenthal that I've met many people in America who work as hard as him and his friends—harder, in fact—but struggle to make ends meet. He acknowledges that he's benefited from considerable advantage, but insists we now live in an era in which "the internet is the great equaliser".
"What are you doing to create the utility for yourself? Are you introducing people so they can collaborate?" he says. Struggling Americans, he adds, might want to "host a dinner. Invite 10 strangers. See what happens."
Rosenthal presses on with his thesis, telling me there are just not enough people in the world who will "excessively commit their lives to something. Journalism, cheese, automobiles, whatever. Rocket ships—perfect example. Everyone wants to work at SpaceX, no one wants to go to engineering school."
I believe the emotion I experienced at that moment is technically known as "eat the rich."
I am trying to convince myself to go to bed early; I have two doctor's appointments tomorrow and one of them is at eyebleed o'clock. This would be a more compelling argument if I didn't also want to read things.
1. In context of discussing the longstanding (and totally deserved) community argument with Michael Weingrad's "Why There Is No Jewish Narnia," my mother remarked that of course portal fantasy has Christian origins; Christianity has its other world into which you can be assumed or translated at any second right there in its conception of Heaven. On the one hand, C.S. Lewis himself presumed this link in his wraparound of Narnia into Aslan's Country. (Elizabeth Goudge made a similar connection in The Valley of Song (1951), though hers works much better for me on account of avoiding allegory and including Fairy.) On the other, I can't remember seeing anyone really write about it. Please point me toward articles to the contrary, if they exist? Otherwise I can tell my mother she just said something tremendously useful about twentieth-century fantasy.
2. Please enjoy a non-binary penned punk song about Claude Cahun: Worriers, "The Only Claude That Matters."
rydra_wong, I thought you should know.3. Everyone in general, I'm just really charmed by Madeline McGrane's "Vampire Horse."
4. Courtesy of
moon_custafer: Brad Dourif in Fatal Beauty (1987). I will resist all efforts to explain to me that he is not playing the title role.5. And then I made the mistake of clicking on an article about millennial millionnaire-billionaires:
I steer the conversation to the subject of how utterly detached from the real world elites seem to have become. "Elitism, the way I would define it, is obtainable," he replies. "All that stands between you and being elite is your own investment in yourself."
I tell Rosenthal that I've met many people in America who work as hard as him and his friends—harder, in fact—but struggle to make ends meet. He acknowledges that he's benefited from considerable advantage, but insists we now live in an era in which "the internet is the great equaliser".
"What are you doing to create the utility for yourself? Are you introducing people so they can collaborate?" he says. Struggling Americans, he adds, might want to "host a dinner. Invite 10 strangers. See what happens."
Rosenthal presses on with his thesis, telling me there are just not enough people in the world who will "excessively commit their lives to something. Journalism, cheese, automobiles, whatever. Rocket ships—perfect example. Everyone wants to work at SpaceX, no one wants to go to engineering school."
I believe the emotion I experienced at that moment is technically known as "eat the rich."
I am trying to convince myself to go to bed early; I have two doctor's appointments tomorrow and one of them is at eyebleed o'clock. This would be a more compelling argument if I didn't also want to read things.
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I’d argue that there are fantasy traditions in numerous cultures – but I think what gets translated into English, depending on who decides to translate and publish it, often gets categorized as “magical realism” (Okri’s The Famished Road, frex).
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There is certainly a tradition of Jewish fantasy- but its roots are different. Why would a Jewish writer draw on the Arthurian mythos when the Cabala is to hand?
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He does reference Phantastes! Look out:
"It is not only that Jews are ambivalent about a return to an imaginary feudal past. It is even more accurate to say that most Jews have been deeply and passionately invested in modernity, and that history, rather than otherworldliness, has been the very ground of the radical and transformative projects of the modern Jewish experience. This goes some way towards explaining the Jewish enthusiasm for science fiction over fantasy (from Asimov to Silverberg to Weinbaum there is no dearth of Jewish science fiction writers). George MacDonald's Phantastes, thought by some to be the first fantasy novel ever written, begins with a long epigraph from Novalis in which he celebrates the redemptive counter-logic of the fairytale: "A fairytale [Märchen] is like a vision without rational connections, a harmonious whole . . . opposed throughout to the world of rational truth." Contrast Herzl's dictum that "If you will it, it is no Märchen." The impulse in the latter is that of science fiction—the proposal of what might be—and indeed Herzl's one novel Old-New Land was a utopian fiction about the future State of Israel."
Now if Herzl had just written fantasy . . .
(Weingrad is right that there are a lot of Jewish science fiction writers. He's wrong that a plethora of Jewish science fiction writers strengthens the argument of a dearth of Jewish fantasy writers; he is making among other mistakes the fallacious assumption that fantasy and science fiction are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. That line about "history, rather than otherworldliness" sounds like someone who's about to hash out the Haskalah all over again. I can't imagine he's right that Phantastes was the first fantasy novel; in 1858 it was well behind, say, E.T.A. Hoffmann. I don't think he's right that Zionism was a purely future-oriented project; look at the name. And God forbid that different writers should find different valences in the same word.)
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I don't know Investiture of the Gods, but the title sounds like I'd like it.
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As far as I know, there's one complete translation by Gu Zhizhong, (ISBNs 780005134X + 7800051358, more readily available in a bilingual edition), plus another translation of just the first 46 chapters by Katherine Chew.
I haven't actually read it yet, just various summaries.
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Okay, so I understand it's huge and not readily available and the chance of me getting to any of it in the near future are small, but it sounds nonetheless relevant to my interests as a person who just re-read Laurence Yep's Dragon of the Lost Sea quartet for the umpteenth time. Thank you!
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It's relevant to my current interests as well, being the source text for many tropes of wuxia and other genres of Chinese fantasy. (Water Margin and Journey to the West being other major sources.)
I need to acquire and read Yep's quartet. I've others of his, but not that.
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And as everybody knows, if you're not aware of it, there is no such thing at all.
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Thank you for this sampling!
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It's very much a feature—I've read the story. The other Maupassant stories I've encountered are mostly realist, however. Is this just an English-translation bias? And if so, what other fantastic work of his would you recommend?
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On the other hand one set of books doesn't constitute a tradition.
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Does an entire genre work better for you?
If your argument is that French fantasy tradition isn't a 1:1 to Anglophone fantasy tradition (and it isn't), then you need to be much clearer, because right now you sound like you don't think there is such a thing as a French fantasy tradition which is -- and I say this as a French person -- really offensive.
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The British Fantasy tradition is rooted in English/Irish/Scottish romanticism which I think it's fair to say is somewhat different from French romanticism (or German romanticism). Not better just different. There is, of course, overlap- with writers like Rousseau, Byron, Scott and Goethe having an influence across cultural and language barriers.
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