While a text asking you to believe in fairies and spirits might seem flaky, seeing as this gives us no solid program to reclaim the city, such faith does awaken the desire to see the postmodern, uneven city restored from its ruins
Tag: Native Americans
World Fantasy Convention 2015, Part III: Challenging the Canon
Last week I wrote about my interview with Charles de Lint at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs. Today, I wrap up my discussion of the conference with some comments on the fantasy canon and the awards ceremony, which have of late been the subject of some controversy. My MA thesis is on fantasy …
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MythCon 46: The Arthurian Mythos Part II: Race, Raciness, and the Fifty Shades of Charles Williams
For this post I apologize immediately for the title and would like to state that most (the greater half anyway) of this post will be concerned with how Tolkien treats race in his fiction--not how Charles Williams is racy. The lurid revelations about Charles Williams, 'The Oddest Inkling,' that have now come forth were just impossible a) to ignore and b) …
Forests of the Heart by Charles de Lint
Does magic exist in the contemporary world? Charles de Lint's mythic fiction brings supernatural beings into the context of the everyday and Forests of the Heart explores the contact between ordinary people and what he calls Mystery. Bettina and Adelita are sisters, both partly Mexican, partly Indios, and raised by their grandmother to see la époco del …
Folklore and Graffiti: A (Potential) Study of Spatial Tactics and Urban Fantasy (Part II)
When we left off last week, I was trying to prove that graffiti interrupts the rational order of the city, as a spatial tactic, and therefore can be compared to urban fantasy, inasmuch as it too subverts conventional "consensus reality." I quoted Bramley Dapple in Charles de Lint's short story “Uncle Dobbin's Parrot Fair,” who says, …
The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
We had magic before the crows came. Joseph Boyden begins The Orenda with an allusion to the lost world of Huronia that is suggestive of a certain insight proposed in John Crowley's Aegypt sequence: the world was not always what it has since become. Huronia, the land of the Wendat nation, has since vanished, along …
What Icelandic Elves can tell us about Christmas and the Environment
Merry Christmas! From Santa and his "Huldufolk" (I mean "elves").A merry Christmas to all! For Part 2 of my series on J.R.R. Tolkien, I take you to the frozen rocks of the North: to Iceland, the land that inspired so much of Tolkien's Middle Earth. I stumbled upon a fascinating article in today's Montreal Gazette. …
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Matthew Rettino 