Fantasy: Hand Over Bush!

Wikipedia
"sweet imagination"

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush if fantasy's your forté.

If fantasy's not your forté, then drink before you think!

My Fantasy . . .

My Fantasy Novella
Amazon

I blogged several days ago on Ursula K. Le Guin's criticism of Kazuo Ishiguro for a remark he made about fantasy that she found derogatory, but I won't get into that again now, so if you're interested in the details, go here.

My post today is about a consequence of that post. Another blogger linked to it, and I suddenly had nearly 100 visits to that post - by today, over 110!

Meanwhile, within the past 24 hours (as of my writing these words), two or three copies of The Bottomless Bottle of Beer have sold!

Mere coincidence? I hope not.

Ursula K. Le Guin Took Umbrage over Kazuo Ishiguro's Fantasy Belittlement

Ursula K. Le Guin

I'm always late to the party, but this time the fault lies with Mike Chivers, for only the other day did he mention this year-old 'disagreeablement' over the fantasy genre . . . Anyway, about a year ago, on the Book View Café, Ursula K. Le Guin took umbrage at Kazuo Ishiguro's remark to interviewer Alexandra Alter (NYT, February 20, 2015) about his novel The Buried Giant:

Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?

Le Guin disliked what she took to be Ishiguro's denigration of the genre fantasy:

Well, yes, they probably will [say this is fantasy]. Why not? It appears that the author takes the word for an insult. To me that is so insulting, it reflects such thoughtless prejudice, that I had to write this piece in response. Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality. ‘Surface elements,’ by which I take it he means ogres, dragons, Arthurian knights, mysterious boatmen, etc., which occur in certain works of great literary merit such as Beowulf, the Morte d'Arthur, and The Lord of the Rings, are also much imitated in contemporary commercial hackwork. Their presence or absence is not what constitutes a fantasy. Literary fantasy is the result of a vivid, powerful, coherent imagination drawing plausible impossibilities together into a vivid, powerful and coherent story, such as those mentioned, or The Odyssey, or Alice in Wonderland.

Le Guin is sensitive to this issue, for she has written masterly works within the fantasy genre, but she's overreacting, in my view, to what she thinks Ishiguro meant, namely, that to be identified as a fantasy writer is an insult. Let's keep in mind though, that Ishiguro did consciously write a fantasy novel, so he himself can't be prejudiced against the genre itself. I think he was instead concerned that some readers would dismiss the work 'just' a fantasy - and would consciously intend this description as an insult, as if fantasy were limited to the sort of "contemporary commercial hackwork" that merely imitates the genre.

On the issue of "surface elements," however, I agree with Le Guin's criticism of Ishiguro's view.

A Bronson Bodine Moment . . .

Antarctica
Wikipedia

Carter Kaplan offers another episode, "Cold Echoes" (Emanations 2 + 2 = 5, pp. 324-362), in the continuing saga of Bronson Bodine. In the following lines on page 330, Bronson re-encounters - in Antarctica, of all places - the flamboyant pirate Captain Amber, whom he has recently fought side-by-side with against a common foe . . . but Amber is in a nasty mood:

"It is very good to see you again, Captain Amber," said Bronson Bodine. Beside him, Nabnak nodded sympathetically.

"Ar!" growled Amber. His eyes shook in their sockets. On the table beside him was a large meat cleaver he had been using to cut bandages. He snatched it up and hurled it at Bronson.

Bronson caught it easily with a curving motion that was as subtle as it was disarming. He hefted the cleaver significantly, eyed Amber closely, and then casually set the weapon on a table.

I thought the "subtle" way in which Bronson is described as catching the cleaver is well done. The word "disarming" is also nicely handled, for it cleaves into two different meanings.

A 'Precious' Plot Spoiler from David Mitchell's Bone Clocks

Not Hugo Lamb
L. A. Times

Some days earlier than the scene we're going to look at in a moment, a certain Fitzsimmons asks a circle of friends what love is. Hugo Lamb, a main character and brilliant sociopath, admits that he has no idea because he's never been in love. But he then meets his match in the decidedly brilliant but non-sociopathic Holly Sykes and falls for her completely, sinker, line and hook:

I'd [now] tell Fitzsimmons et al that love is fusion in the sun's core. Love is a blurring of pronouns. Love is subject and object. The difference between its presence and its absence is the difference between life and death. Experimentally, silently, I mouth, I love you, to Holly, who breathes like the sea. This time I whisper it, at about the violin's volume: 'I love you.' No one hears, no one sees, but the tree falls in the forest just the same.

Except that another choice is looming, a Faustian choice posed by someone in a Land Cruiser, a radical transformation beyond good and evil . . . though it's actually a choice to be evil, and in an interior monologue, Lamb talks himself out of being in love with Holly:

I remember holding Holly in my arms, earlier.
But it's the feeling of love that we love, not the person.
It's that giddy exhilaration I just experienced, just now.
The feeling of being chosen and desired and cared about.
It's pretty pathetic when you examine it clearheadedly.
So. This is a real, live Faustian pact I'm being offered.
I almost smile. Faust tends not to have happy endings.
But a happy ending like whose? Like Brigadier Philby's?
He passed away peacefully, surrounded by family.
If that's a happy ending, they're fucking welcome to it.
When push comes to shove, what's Faust without his pact?
Nothing. No one. We'd never have heard of him. Quinn.
Dominic Fitzsimmons. Yet another clever postgrad.
Another gray commuter, swaying on the District Line.
The Land Cruiser's rear door clunks open an inch.

He gets in, and thus does Hugo Lamb give in to temptation, to a Faustian bargain favoring deathlessness over love.

Except that he never truly falls out of love with Holly and expresses it years later in a vital way that she never knows . . . but enough plot spoilers for today.

Review: Mark Russell's First Novel, Young-hee and the Pullocho

Amazon Books

Some readers may recall that I was invited by Mark Russell about a month ago to partake of drinks and delicacies at the book launch of his first novel, Young-hee and the Pullocho. He invited me because we'd had a passing acquaintance some years back in journalism - the X-pat Files or somesuch for the Korea Herald - and we knew of our mutual predilection for reading good literature.

I had accepted the invitation despite some apprehension, for I knew I'd be expected to post a review - and what if the story were flawed . . . or not flawed, but nevertheless not my sort of literature?

I need not have worried. The tale is excellent . . . and even my sort of literature.

I won't give away any plot spoilers in this review. Sufficient unto the day is this: The protagonist, Young-hee, has lost some irreplaceable something or other in the magical world of East Asian fairy tales and must set off on a quest for a legendary root similar to, but stronger than ginseng, a root known as "pullocho," to trade for the irreplaceable thing she has lost.

Will she succeed in a land not only magical but also as dangerous as many a fairy tale can be? I should add that we learn much about the fairy-tail creatures in this novel by the brief retellings of old East Asian fairy tales interspersed throughout the book, usually at the end of a chapter. I wish only that Mr. Russell had included a glossary of words and expressions unfamiliar to readers who aren't East Asian, and perhaps he will do so in a later edition.

Hint, hint . . .

Even without a glossary, the story is fully intelligible and will fascinate adults as well as children. It ought to prove as successful as another book I've recently read that also mines fairy tales - albeit Western ones - for a story.

Five stars, and best hopes for Mr. Russell's success!

Mark James Russell: Young-hee and the Pullocho

Young-hee and the Pullocho

Amazon Books

I received an email invitation yesterday to a book-launching. The invite was from Mark James Russell, an acquaintance of my Expat Living days, if I recall correctly, back when I wrote columns for The Korea Herald:

So, at long, long last, my first novel, Young-hee and the Pullocho is out. Yay. I'm celebrating my first foray into fiction with a party, and you're invited - to Mudaeruk, a very cool bar in the Hongdae/Sangsu neighborhood.

We'll have some free food and beer (and you can always order wine and other things, too). I just ask that you please buy a copy of the book - it's just 10,000 won, cheap - and try to leave a short comment on Amazon, Kyobo Books or some other online bookstore.

Of course, feel free to bring along husbands/wives, friends, or anyone who might be interested . . .

That last line left the impression that this might be an open invitation, but upon checking with Mark, I discovered my error - the invite was to me - so I've corrected my earlier post, deleting the details of date and time:

Tuttle

launches

YOUNG-HEE

and the

PULLOCHO

by
Mark James Russell

at

Mudaeruk

Tuttle labels the book a YA (Young Adult), but Amazon says for grades 4 - 6. Amazon allows a peek inside, so you can read some to get a taste for the genre and appropriate age.

And don't forget my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer . . .

Neil Gaiman on Kazuo Ishiguro's Buried Giant

Illustration by Peter Sis
NYT

To my surprise - because I think of him as writer, not as literary critic - Neil Gaiman has reviewed Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel, The Buried Giant, and he did so in the New York Times (February 25, 2015). For now, I'm more interested in what Gaiman says about writing than about Ishiguro's story, so I'll focus on Gaiman's thoughts on writing:

Fantasy is a tool of the storyteller. It is a way of talking about things that are not, and cannot be, literally true. It is a way of making our metaphors concrete, and it shades into myth in one direction, allegory in another. Once, many years ago, a French translator decided that my novel "Stardust" was an allegory, based on and around John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim’s Progress" (it wasn't), and somewhat loosely translated the book with footnotes to that effect. This has left me a little shy of talking about allegory, and very shy of ever mentioning "The Pilgrim's Progress."

Perhaps I can use some of Gaiman's insights on fantasy's relation to myth and allegory the next time I'm invited to an international conference on storytelling. I also like his remark about fantasy being "a way of making our metaphors concrete," a point particularly worth some exploration and explication. As an aside concerning Bunyan's famous allegory, Pilgrim's Progress, allow me to note that I recently helped my wife translate a Korean fantasy story by the nationalist Korean writer Sin Chae-ho (1880-1936), titled Dream Sky (1916), and I described Sin's story - set in 1907 (three years before Japan colonized Korea) - as follows:

Sin Chae-ho's nationalist novella Dream Sky, written in 1916, reads like a cross between The Apocalypse of St. John and Pilgrim's Progress. The first several lines depict the protagonist Hannom seeing a divine figure revealed in the heavens who announces the necessity of struggling for national survival. Battles in the sky follow and reflect battles on earth. Hannom, however, is called on not merely to observe and record, but also to join in a celestial battle against Japanese invaders. Yet, he encounters various tests and temptations along the way that distract him from his goal of reaching the battle, and that teach him of his own weaknesses and shortcomings. (Sin Chae-ho, Dream Sky, 1916, pages 3-4)

I think I had more cause to connect Sin's story to Bunyan's (also to St. John's), though perhaps I was making an error of judgement similar to that of the French translator. But back to Gaiman on writing:

Kazuo Ishiguro is a remarkable novelist, both for the quality of his work - because his novels share a careful, precise approach to language and to character - and because he does not ever write the same novel, or even the same type of novel, twice. In "The Buried Giant," his seventh and latest, he begins with clear, unhurried, unfussy language to describe the England of some 1,500 years ago, in a novel as well crafted as it is odd.

The words "careful, precise approach to language" and "clear, unhurried, unfussy language" sound like praise to my ears. Gaiman goes on to talk about the book itself, but in a way that reveals still more about his own views on writing:

"The Buried Giant" is a melancholy book, and the mist that breathes through it is a melancholic mist. The narrative tone is dreamlike and measured. There are adventures, sword fights, betrayals, armies, cunning stratagems and monsters killed, but these things are told distantly, without the book's pulse ever beating faster. They are described unflinchingly, precisely, sometimes poetically. Enemies are slain, but the deaths are never triumphant. A culmination of a planned trap for a troop of soldiers, worthy of a whodunit, is described in retrospect, once we already know what must have happened. Stories drift toward us in the narrative like figures in the mist, and then are gone. The excitements that the book would deliver were this a more formulaic or crowd-pleasing novel are, here, when they appear, not exciting, perhaps because they would be young people's adventures, and this is, at its heart, a book about two [old] people who are now past all adventure . . . . Fantasy and historical fiction and myth here run together with the Matter of Britain, in a novel that's easy to admire, to respect and to enjoy, but difficult to love. Still, "The Buried Giant" does what important books do: It remains in the mind long after it has been read, refusing to leave, forcing one to turn it over and over. On a second reading, and on a third, its characters and events and motives are easier to understand, but even so, it guards its secrets and its world close.

Ishiguro is not afraid to tackle huge, personal themes, nor to use myths, history and the fantastic as the tools to do it. "The Buried Giant" is an exceptional novel, and I suspect my inability to fall in love with it, much as I wanted to, came from my conviction that there was an allegory waiting like an ogre in the mist, telling us that no matter how well we love, no matter how deeply, we will always be fallible and human . . .

That expression "Matter of Britain" reveals that Gaiman is familiar with scholarly discourse on medieval Arthurian romance writing, which further tells me that I ought not be surprised that he would be chosen to review this book by Ishiguro. Gaiman admires Ishiguro's story, but worries that this fantasy novel might hide an allegory, which makes the story unlovable, at least for Gaiman. I seem to recall that Gaiman loved the Narnia stories as a child, but realized - as he grew older - that the stories were Christian allegory, which bothered him for the pretense at being one thing but actually being another, a kind of deception, to his mind. Or am I thinking of a character in a Gaiman story? Speaking of Gaiman's writing, he has a new book out, the story collection Trigger Warning.

I should note that my own story, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, borrows a Shoggath's Old Peculiar from Gaiman - and is not an allegory!

Angela Carter on 'Narrative'?

Angela Carter
Wikipedia

The writer Angela Carter (1940-1992) thought fairy tales important in her identity and development as a writer of fiction, as Michael Schmidt informs us, basing his information on a remembrance by A. S. Byatt:

Carter talked about the centrality of fairy tales to her writing. Indeed, "she had realized that she was a writer because of fairy tales, because she was hooked on narrative as a child, not by realist novels about social behavior or how to be a good girl, but by these very primitive stories that go I think a lot deeper." (Michael Schmidt, The Novel: A Biography, 905)

The writer intervenes in the reader's memory as well, recasting stories, the fairy stories that shape our sense of narrative and of the potential roles of the heroes and villains that conventionally inhabit them. (Michael Schmidt, The Novel: A Biography, 905-906)

Note the importance of narrative. But what is narrative? What did Carter mean by the term? Does Byatt's full remembrance offer more? Let's look at Schmidt's source, Philip Hensher's interview of Byatt for The Paris Review, "A. S. Byatt, The Art of Fiction No. 168" (Fall 2001):

I remember my first meeting with Angela Carter, with whom I became great friends later. We all went to hear Stevie Smith reading her poetry - lots of writers around her, rather like a bullring - and she stood in the middle and read. On the way out this very disagreeable woman stomped up to me, and she said, My name's Angela Carter. I recognized you and I wanted to stop and tell you that the sort of thing you're doing is no good at all, no good at all. There's nothing in it - that's not where literature is going. That sort of thing. And off she stomped. Then about five years ago she said that she had realized that she was a writer because of fairy tales, because she was hooked on narrative as a child, not by realist novels about social behavior or how to be a good girl, but by these very primitive stories that go I think a lot deeper. It wasn't until she said it that I felt empowered, which is why I have to acknowledge that she said it. As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the four musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do. My poor grandchildren live in a world where children's books are about how awful it is to live in horrible blocks of flats in deprived areas of cities, which they ought to know, but you can understand entirely why everybody fell upon Harry Potter, which is more grown-up also.

Is "narrative" what we're talking about here, or fantasy? But enough inquiry for today . . .

All is not darkness . . .

(Image from Wikipedia)

A review by Steven D. Greydanus of The Secret of Kells in Christianity Today gives very high marks to this animated film about a twelve-year-old orphan named Brendan who lives in the ninth century in an Irish monastery where he is being educated by his uncle, Abbot Cellach, as a manuscript illuminator who wishes to complete the stunningly beautiful Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the four gospels -- and those high marks are awarded despite the film's perceived theological shortcomings, in Greydanus's view:

It must be admitted that The Secret of Kells somewhat short-changes Brendan's Christian world in relation to Ireland's lingering paganism. The Faerie world is matter-of-factly depicted as living, magical and powerful; Christianity is mundane and limited. In the Irish countryside Brendan encounters spirits both charming and terrifying (Aisling the fairy, the bloodthirsty dark god Crom Cruach) -- but he sees nothing to evoke the extravagant miracles of the saints that are equally a part of Irish lore. The film teases us with the alleged powers of the Book -- said to have the power to blind sinners who gaze upon it -- but when this is put to the ultimate test, it is the sinner, not the book, that has the upper hand.

Putting such Catholic scruples aside, Greydanus otherwise praises the film, noting that this "animated indie weds the design sensibilities of traditional Insular art with the stylized simplicity of such contemporary retro animation as 'Samurai Jack'," as can be readily seen for yourself by clicking on the "Trailer" at the film's website.

I suppose that I shouldn't say more since I haven't seen the film, but this looks like one for the whole family, so I'll be keeping an eye out for the DVD so that my wife and I can watch it at home with our two kids.

Perhaps it'll inspire En-Uk to produce more art . . .

Terrance Lindall: The Gold Illuminated Scroll

Paradise Lost Scroll

Terrance Lindall

(Image at The Gold Illuminated Scroll)

We have today another polyptych painting, not of the Last Judgment but of the first one, the judgment leveled upon Adam and Eve as described in John Milton's Paradise Lost and depicted in this painting by the illustrious illustrator Terrance Lindall -- a surrealist-fantasy artist and a "latter day Bosch," according to the art critic Dr. Leo Steinberg.

This polyptych painting is in the form of a scroll that reads right to left, but I'll let the information offered by the Yuko Nii Foundation explain:

Terrance Lindall in his year long celebration of John Milton's 400th birthday, which started on December 8, 2008, has just completed as of December 8, 2009, what is considered by the few who have seen it already to be the most unusual painting for Milton's Paradise Lost ever done. It is in the form of a scroll that reads from right to left like a Torah.

The scroll is now in the Milton collection at the Yuko Nii Foundation. It contains one of Lindall's "complete" versions of PL. It is 14 inches high [and about 68 inches long] with 24 K (23.75) gold illuminated miniature inset paintings plus many other cartouches of the Bodleian Library, the Visionary Foal, Milton dictating, Nemo's submarine, etc.

The scroll begins with the great omniscient eye of God in the upper right hand corner. In the iris of the eye reads "THE WORD." Below the eye is the Tree of Life, roots extending upwards with a bird of paradise perched atop. The Tree of Life becomes a vine that twines across the bottom of the scroll. The upper portion of the scroll contains the miniature paintings depicting scenes from Milton's epic. The bottom part is the text that is only to be read as captions, not complete Miltonic quotes.

The opening panel shows an angel wrestling with a snake over the Garden of Eden and piercing the serpent with his sword. The angel and serpent are in the form of a cloud and the sword piercing the serpent delivers gold lighting bolts . . . portending the tragedy that is to come.

At the bottom in the next panel Milton is dictating Paradise Lost to his daughter, giving birth to the serpent with a burst of flame from his forehead like Athena from the head of Zeus or Sin from the head of Satan. A bottle is pouring forth a stream water that symbolizes the purity of God's Spirit or God's "Historical Will." It flows throughout the panels beneath the Pillars of the Universe. The water also represents Milton's reputation which starts off small and by the 19th century becomes an ocean in which we see Captain Nemo's 19th Century submarine Nautilus. Nemo is somewhat like Satan, rebelling against what he perceives as the injustice of a greater power.

There is a mysterious winged creature riding the Visionary Foal at the bottom of the panels. The Visionary Foal is an aspect of the omniscient God. At the end of the scroll we see who the mystery rider is: it is none other than Satan himself who has been performing God's work. He has been redeemed because God has used him to seduce Adam and Eve so God could actualize his Divine Grace and Mercy by having His alter ego, His Son, sacrifice Himself and take the sins of Adam & Eve back upon himself. God's mercy is not perfect if it is not actualized, and Satan has helped actualize (perfect) it by rebellion and seduction thus initiating God's perfect mercy. But God's Mercy being infinite, God has also redeemed Satan who leans back upon the Heavenly Foal in the next to last panel. Satan is back to Satan's former self, no longer ruined. A rainbow, the promise of God, over Cavalry Hill confirms the redemption or promise of His Perfect Mercy.

The last panel is a library with a Benedictine monk named Wickenheiser holding a book. Wickenheiser is the Universal Librarian, maintaining the records of Man's great thoughts and works recorded in books, especially those of John Milton. The vaulted ceiling of the library becomes a stairway composed of books leading up to the second coming of Christ surrounded by Apostles and the learned men Davinci, Plato, Socrates, Newton and others. Knowledge, forbidden by God to Adam & Eve as a test of their obedience to Goodness, has been vindicated and redeemed for and through Man by God's Grace. Note that another bottle of water on Wickenheiser's library table pours the spirit of God's Will and Milton's reputation back into the scroll the opposite way from the bottle at Milton's feet. It represents the fact that by Wickenheiser's building of the great Milton collection Wickenheiser has sustained, preserved and reestablished Milton's reputation until the end of time.

In the upper left hand corner of the scroll, the great eye of God has closed! "I am the Alpha and Omega, I am the Beginning and the End," so sayeth the Lord, "I am the Almighty." Thus, as God opens the universe with His Great Eternal Eye and THE WORD, He also closes His Great Eternal Eye at the end of time, and nothing more is perceived about our universe!

I think that this says things rather better than I could. Full disclosure: I am a member of The Paradise Lost Committee -- as I believe that it's called. My job is to sit 'virtually' on the committee and do little other than offer occasional scholarly remarks, though other scholars on the committee do that rather better than I.

For a larger image of the final three 'panels' of this polyptych, go to the The Gold Illuminated Scroll site. For a video presentation, go to You Tube.

At the linked website, one can even order copies of this exclusive scroll. I make no money for announcing this, by the way, nor does Mr. Lindall make any money for selling copies of his scroll. Profits go to the Yuko Nii Foundation to support the arts.

"Two Hearts"

"Two Hearts"

(Image from Wikipedia)

Damn! Sometimes, only a simple expletive undeleted makes sense of the serendipity.

For years now, I've been calling to mind a story that I read back in 1975 in The Last Whole Earth Catalog, an odd, hippie-type book-length mishmash of ecology, philosophy, and hucksterism inspired, in part, by the 'thought' of Buckminster Fuller as refracted through the psychedelic sixties.

When I say "calling to mind," I mean without recalling, precisely, the author of that story.

The story was Divine Right's Trip, and I read it because my high school friend Pete Hale showed me the catalog, which was the strangest thing that I'd ever seen, but also strangely compelling. I even read Plato's allegory of "The Cave" in that weird, motley book.

Anway, I couldn't recall the author, but I do have trouble with names, always have had, so I'd long ago given up trying to dredge that from the dregs of my memory, but then what happens? I pick up a book that my mother gave my daughter Sa-Rah for Christmas -- Peter S. Beagle's Last Unicorn, the deluxe edition with "Two Hearts" and also an interview conducted by Connor Cochran -- and read it through over the course of a week or so while exercising on our stationary bicycle, and what do I discover in the 2007 interview, "A Conversation with Peter S. Beagle"? This reminiscence by Beagle about the gaggle of writers whom he met during a year at Stanford on a Stegner Fellowship in 1960:

An amazing gang. I admit that at times I felt completely overwhelmed. There was Larry McMurtry, the first friend I made there, known now for Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show and the screenplay to Brokeback Mountain. He was only a couple of years older than I was, and really talented. He wrote most of Leaving Cheyenne during our session. There was a 25 year-old Ken Kesey, at that point working on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. There was Judith Rascoe, who was the niece or great niece of a very influential critic named Burton Rascoe; Judith went on to write stories and some very good screenplays. There was a Scottish guy named Robin MacDonald, whose wife, Joanna Ostrow, was Bronx Jewish like me. Robin was the one with the fellowship, but Joanna turned out to be the real writer. She would sit in on the class and years later, after the class was long over, she published an excellent novel called In the Highlands Since Time Immemorial. There was Chris Koch, an Australian writer whose best-known work over here is probably The Year of Living Dangerously. He started that one while he was at Stanford. But my closest friend in the class was Gurney Norman, from Hazard, Kentucky. Gurney and I took to each other immediately. As we've often said, he was my first redneck and I was his first City Jew. We used to sit up nights comparing childhoods. We're still in touch today. In fact, I visited him in Kentucky a few years ago and wrote all about it in the forward to The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche, my first collection from Tachyon Publication.

"'Gurney Norman' . . . now there's an echo of some name in my memory," I thought but couldn't place him. Other names were immediately recognizable. Larry McMurtry? Yeah, I read Lonesome Dove when I was living in Tübingen. Ken Kesey? Yeah, I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when I was in high school and later even shook hands with him when I was in Berkeley. Chris Koch? Well, I've not read his work, but I saw the film version of The Year of Living Dangerously while I was living near Stanford. But Gurney Norman? Something struck me as familiar about this unplaceable name. So, I looked him up . . . and there he was, the man who had written Divine Right's Trip!

What do I think of that story? I don't know anymore. At the time, I liked it because its story of a hillbilly hippie from the Appalachians made sense to me, a hillbilly 'hippie' in the Ozarks. But I might be as disappointed with it now as I was upon my second viewing of Bootleggers, a movie that I had greatly enjoyed upon first seeing it in high school, probably because it was filmed partly in Calico Rock, Arkansas and showed those high White River bluffs that you can also see in some of the photos from my Ozark photoblog.

But to get back to Peter Beagle and his friend Gurney Norman among the Stegner fellows . . . that must have been a fascinating bunch of writers to have had as a cohort! I suppose that they didn't know that they'd all find success, of course, and maybe only the reminiscence makes it sound so great.

But it nevertheless says something touching about the potential for unexpected connections forged between two hearts across profound differences . . . and I know a bit about that.