![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sail on, ship of scholars
May. 9th, 2007 10:36 pmI've been reading potential nominees for the Mythopoeic Society's Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies (those books not specifically about the Inklings).
Some of them are very good:
G. Ronald Murphy, Gemstone of Paradise
I haven't gotten very far into this one yet, but it's just fascinating. Have you ever wondered exactly what the Holy Grail actually is, and how it got that way? Murphy is here to tell you the story, in plain compelling language. Even his opening anecdote of not being able to find a parking place in Bamberg is good reading. I can't wait for the rest. (But if he's going to jump far enough into the modern to mention Wagner's Parzifal, why not Charles Williams?)
Milly Williamson, The Lure of the Vampire
Somewhat fussy and academic in style, but I like a good penetrating work of reader-response criticism. The insights are often excellent. This book is at its very best discussing the strange pressure on actors in cult TV shows, not to be their characters, but to act as their characters' "earthly representatives" (a term Williamson credits to Gwenllian Jones). Keenly dissects James Marsters' attempt to distance both himself and his character, Spike, from the latter's assault on Buffy. (See p. 74-75) I've never seen the peculiar actor-character relationship in fans' minds discussed in this detail before. Even more amazing is a section discussing fans who only like "good" vampires; they hate reading about "bad" vampires. Like Stoker's Dracula. Wow. A good book despite having the most hideous excuse for an index I've ever seen.
And some of them are not so good:
Lucie Armitt, Fantasy Fiction: An Introduction
Not an introduction, whatever it is. More the author's odd personal interpretations than anything else. I judge books like this by reading the bits on Tolkien and watching the authors fall flat on their faces, as they almost inevitably do. The claim that Middle-earth is clearly bounded by the edge of its map (p. 61) is ludicrous: less true of Middle-earth than of any other fantasy realm known to man. Don't miss Armitt confusing the dates of Shire Reckoning with those of A.D. (p. 18). And of course there's the obligatory discussion of Sam and Frodo's homosexuality, because of course there's no possible reason for human tenderness other than a desire to jump the other person's bones. Sheesh.
Jack Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick
I keep reading the title as "Why Fairy Tales Suck." No, it's this book that sucks. A long, incoherent, repetitive rant by someone who's fallen into the hole of evolutionary psychological reductionism and can't get out. Claims that L. Frank Baum, of all people, "set the stage" for Tolkien, Lewis, White, and Michael Ende (which of these names does not belong with the others?) (p. 88). Reaches its nadir with this flat statement on p. 137: "Let us not delude ourselves: every fairy tale and every work of fantasy written and published in our times is a metaphorical reflection about real conditions in our own societies, even when it pretends to be about a distant past or realm that has never existed." In other words, an author can't make anything up; it is not possible to write anything other than contemporary social realism. This guy is nuts.
Some of them are very good:
G. Ronald Murphy, Gemstone of Paradise
I haven't gotten very far into this one yet, but it's just fascinating. Have you ever wondered exactly what the Holy Grail actually is, and how it got that way? Murphy is here to tell you the story, in plain compelling language. Even his opening anecdote of not being able to find a parking place in Bamberg is good reading. I can't wait for the rest. (But if he's going to jump far enough into the modern to mention Wagner's Parzifal, why not Charles Williams?)
Milly Williamson, The Lure of the Vampire
Somewhat fussy and academic in style, but I like a good penetrating work of reader-response criticism. The insights are often excellent. This book is at its very best discussing the strange pressure on actors in cult TV shows, not to be their characters, but to act as their characters' "earthly representatives" (a term Williamson credits to Gwenllian Jones). Keenly dissects James Marsters' attempt to distance both himself and his character, Spike, from the latter's assault on Buffy. (See p. 74-75) I've never seen the peculiar actor-character relationship in fans' minds discussed in this detail before. Even more amazing is a section discussing fans who only like "good" vampires; they hate reading about "bad" vampires. Like Stoker's Dracula. Wow. A good book despite having the most hideous excuse for an index I've ever seen.
And some of them are not so good:
Lucie Armitt, Fantasy Fiction: An Introduction
Not an introduction, whatever it is. More the author's odd personal interpretations than anything else. I judge books like this by reading the bits on Tolkien and watching the authors fall flat on their faces, as they almost inevitably do. The claim that Middle-earth is clearly bounded by the edge of its map (p. 61) is ludicrous: less true of Middle-earth than of any other fantasy realm known to man. Don't miss Armitt confusing the dates of Shire Reckoning with those of A.D. (p. 18). And of course there's the obligatory discussion of Sam and Frodo's homosexuality, because of course there's no possible reason for human tenderness other than a desire to jump the other person's bones. Sheesh.
Jack Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick
I keep reading the title as "Why Fairy Tales Suck." No, it's this book that sucks. A long, incoherent, repetitive rant by someone who's fallen into the hole of evolutionary psychological reductionism and can't get out. Claims that L. Frank Baum, of all people, "set the stage" for Tolkien, Lewis, White, and Michael Ende (which of these names does not belong with the others?) (p. 88). Reaches its nadir with this flat statement on p. 137: "Let us not delude ourselves: every fairy tale and every work of fantasy written and published in our times is a metaphorical reflection about real conditions in our own societies, even when it pretends to be about a distant past or realm that has never existed." In other words, an author can't make anything up; it is not possible to write anything other than contemporary social realism. This guy is nuts.
