news

[calimac]

I don't have anything to say about the Hugos. I know virtually nothing of any of the winners, and hardly much more about most of the nominees.

Three deaths over the weekend:

1. Seamus Heaney, a poet who came to my attention with his translation of Beowulf, a work that's gotten less play in his obituaries than I'd have expected.
2. David Frost, who ought to be honored not so much for his interviews with Nixon, which were actually a step on the crook's rehabilitation, than for the fact that, in the 1960s, he produced and hosted a tv show whose writing staff first brought together 5 of the 6 members of what would become Monty Python.
3. James Wallace, not a celebrity but an old friend of mine from early Mythopoeic Society days, for many years now a resident of the Seattle area, with his wife Ginger; he worked as a college librarian in Everett. He'd stoutly survived a major cancer operation some years ago, but eventually it turned redux on him. I see that he was only 59, which means he must have been 20 or 21 when I met him, which surprises me as I always thought him several years older, though he was a student at UC Santa Cruz at the time. His knowledge and mature bearing gave him that effect. I was but a sheltered suburban high-school student who wasn't used to people who smoked hand-rolled cigarette stubs and said things like "Hot shit!" when excited or impressed. Still, we became friends. James, Jim, or Jamie, as he was variously known, was a loremaster of the fantasy tradition, a guide to my own understanding of Tolkien's theory, a font of raunchy song squibs, and the first of a number of Westerners I've known to take up the serious study of Japanese. Years ago I posted on LJ a list of my favorite non-classical songs, and naming "King Henry" by Steeleye Span among them, I told of "the charming memory of standing with my friends Jamie and Ginger waiting for the Mythcon cafeteria to open for lunch. It was running late, and we were hungry, so we spontaneously started singing, 'Some meat! Some meat! ya King Henry, some meat you give to me ...' and continued right on through to the end of the song. The rest of the people in line looked at us oddly." I last saw him a year-plus ago on my visit to Seattle for the most recent Potlatch; he and Ginger drove down and picked me up for one of our favorite group activities, exploring unusual dishes from a Chinese restaurant menu. He seemed still to be doing OK ...

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Heaney's Beowulf has a place in Rowling studies too, being the work that beat Prisoner of Azakaban for the Whitbread Prize - on which occasion judge Anthony Holden was said to have remarked that giving the prize to a children's fantasy would show that the nation had refused to grow up. It struck me as ironic at the time that he was quite happy for the award to go to a story about dragons and monsters.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I could hear C.S. Lewis snorting from his grave from here.

I see that Anthony Holden wrote a biography of Tchaikovsky. Did he consider that Tchaikovsky was, among other things, a moderately prolific children's writer?

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

You've woken an earworm for me with that memory! :o)

'Let never a man a wooing wend
That lacketh thinges three'................

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I once had a cat named King Henry, for that song.

[ken-3k.livejournal.com]

Just to get all consumerist for a moment, because I have a suspicion that some of the old Steeleye Span fans here don't shop for music much.

The "canonical" Steeleye Span albums have all been rounded up in multi-CD boxed sets in decent sound quality, and for a little over $50 one can have all eleven albums of the canon, plus a few later clinkers, from USA Amazon. $12 for the first three albums, with Ashley Hutchings and before drummer Nigel Pegrum joined. Less than $20 for A Parcel of Steeleye, the five mid-career classics which include the song "King Henry" on the original album Below the Salt. And about $20 for Another Parcel of Steeleye which concludes the canon with three albums before their brief 1978 breakup, plus two albums from later years.

Maddy Prior's 2012 album with Hannah James is pretty good too.