Volume 12 Number 3 Article 3 4-15-1986 Tales Newly Told Alexei Kondratiev Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Kondratiev, Alexei (1986) "Tales Newly Told," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 12 : No. 3 , Article 3. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol12/iss3/3 This Column is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Additional Keywords Hugheart, Barry. Bridge of Birds; MacAvoy, R.A. The Book of Kells.; Christine Lowentrout This column is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol12/iss3/3 MYTHLORE 45: Spring 1986 Page 9 Tales Newly Told A Column by Alexei Kondratiev Mythlore is pleased to begin this new fiction These two contrasting moods — madcap farce and review column by Alexi Kondratiev. There has been such poignant realization of human frailty — are plethora of fantasy and mythologically based fiction in imperfectly balanced in the writing, and the passage recent years, that readers are deluged. The hope is from one to the other can be quite Jarring. Yet in one that this column can provide some assistance in wading episode — the scene in which Doctor Death, the mad through the volumes that steadily appear, relating this Taoist alchemist, is. trying to resurrect his dead wife new material to both the influence of the Inklings and — the two moods are brilliantly integrated with each the common background sources and influences. In light other. Since it is evident that there will be more of the Society's annual Mythopoeic Fantasty Award, the adventures of Number Ten Ox and Li Kao, one hopes that column will attempt to cover likely nominees. Mr. Hughart w ill continue to work on this unique synthesis. Kondratiev is one of the best read members of the Certainly the lyrical maJesty of the finale — a grand Society in this area and has served on the Fantasy overview of the Chinese mythological landscape — is a Award Committee for several years. high-fantasy achievement Hughart can claim entirely for his own, and is light-years beyond any mock-Chinese G.G. Editor convention. If he gives us more of this kind of writing, he may well turn out to be one of the outstanding fantasists of our time. From its subtitle — "A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was" — one would naturally assume that Turning from a China that never was to an Ireland Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds (Del Rey, 1985) was that might have been, we have in R.A. MacAvoy's The meant to be in the tradition of the famous Kai Lung Book of Kells (Bantam, 1985) a vision of tenth-century stories of Ernest Bramah: stories that use a perfectly Celtic civilization that is in many ways a perfect imaginary "Chinese" setting as a prop for light satires answer to Morgan Llwelyn’s Lion of Ireland. Ailesh, a on our own social mores, with convoluted, euphemistic young girl attacked by Vikings a thousand years ago in language to point up the hypocrisy and superficiality our past, is catapulted into modern Dublin, and then of conventional "polite" interchange. At first glance, returns to her own period in the company of a somewhat the comparison seems to hold true: the overall tone of Hughart's novel is humorous, to say the least, and uncoordinated Canadian artist named John Thornburn and there are stretches of superbly outrageous dialogue. his aggressive girlfriend Derval, a teacher of the Irish language. The two modern characters are in for a There are also some gratuitous., anachronistic "Kai Lungisms" — but not very many of those, and it is here series of culture shocks: the flamboyant, uninhibited that we begin to see Hughart's originality. Unlike world of the Celts is the exact reverse of the cramped, Bramah (though i t should be sa id in p a ssin g th a t Bramah puritan, provincial society of present-day Ireland. It did make many more r e fe r e n c e s to genuine C hinese is also a very violent world, and they have to develop folklore than he is usually credited for), Hughart's strong stomachs. Derval, strong-willed and main source of thematic inspiration is the literary self-possessed, suffers a blow to her pride when Mac tradition of China. The main plot, in which the genial Cullen, the high bard of Leinster, tells her that her p easant lad Number Ten Ox and th e w izard Li Kao (who Irish is terrible and that her harp-playing sounds like has "a slight flaw in his character") undertake a quest a cat scratching at the strings. Infuriated and for the magical ginseng root that will cure the fascinated by Mac Cullen, Derval eventually comes to poisoned children of Ku-fu, recalls the framework of recognize that his intellectual temperament is the many classical Chinese stories. Since the root has been perfect counterpart to her own. John, the instinctive, divided into several pieces, the finding of each piece impulsive artist (he gets to handle the Book of Kells constitutes — again in true Oriental fashion — a in its original splendour and even — in a brief return little separate episode, and gives rise to many to the twentieth century — gets to compare it with its subplots. The wonders the two heros encounter — more weathered version in the Trinity College library), ginseng fairies, ghostly lovers, invisible demons, comes to appreciate Ailesh's sincerity and spontaneity. guarding ruins, the Bridge of Birds itself — will be John is one of MacAvoy's most successful creations: he familiar to aficionadoes of Chinese fairy tales. If is the Fool, recalling both the Great Fool of Celtic this is a China that "never was" in strict historical tradition and Charles Williams' Tarot Fool — an terms (although there is no serious attempt at instrument of redemption, not through his conscious volition, but by his very nature. historical verisimilitude, the story is placed in the early Tang dynasty, and there is even a mention of the sixth-century Byzantine expedition to find the source Although I found the writing in the opening of silk!), it has certainly existed in the Chinese sections somewhat flatter and more conventional than imagination. one would ex p ect from MacAvoy a f t e r r e a d in g , s a y , th e Damiano Trilogy, as soon as the action has shifted to Hughart's style, however, is entirely his own, the tenth century one comes under the storyteller's owing nothing to Chinese-in-translation, and not very spell. A second reading especially reveals how subtly much to Bramah. The farcical nature and frenetic pace and carefully she draws her characters. The novel's of many of the adventures give the whole novel an air greatest asset, however, is its ring of historical of bantering lightness (the heroes are constantly on authenticity, a quality rarely achieved by fiction the brink of death, but don't seem very put out); this dealing with this period (certainly not Lion of i s where th e k in sh ip w ith Bramah i s most ap p aren t. But I r e la n d ! ) . Not o n ly has MacAvoy o b v io u sly done a l o t o f Hughart can also adopt a very different tone of research, she has digested it thoroughly, and manages understated, elegiac poignancy (as, for instance, when to convey the feel of the period without an Number Ten Ox meets the ghost of a dead sweetheart). continued on page 23 M YTHLORE 45: Spring 1986 Page 23 Redeemed City," written by Williams in 1941, continued from page 8 foreshadows All Hallows' Eve in some interesting ways. Smith, Patches of Godlight: The Pattern of Thought of He uses the term the City, and opposes that to the C.S. Lewis (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981), Infamy. The former is free redemptive exchange, Ch. 2 and 4. Christianity, and love, and is identified with England, [33] "Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages," while the latter is forced substitution, selfishness, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. and hatred, and is identified with the Nazis. "There Walter Hooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, is, in the end," writes Williams, "no compromise 1966), p.60. between the two; there is only choice." [12] This is the essential truth of All Hallows' Eve. The Infamy is [34] "Myth: A Flight to Reality," The Christian truly parodic, and bears certain resemblences to the Imagination: Essays on Literature and the Arts, ed. City, but this Just makes it more dangerous — and the Leland Ryken (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1981), pp.