I’m sorry, man, but what about a human-by-day, freak-animal-killing-machine-by-moonlight do you not understand? I mean, werewolves are bad-ass. We haven’t seen one since we were kids!
~ Dean Winchester, Supernatural
Yeehaw. I ain’t afraid of no werewolves. Heck, any supernatural spawn try to get into this house, they’ll break their necks on books. I like to call it my “clutter alarm.” Folks creep in during the night, I’ll have plenty of warning before they get to me and my baseball bat. I know clutter is supposed to be bad (I watch Oprah), but I like my mess. I’m comforted by clutter. When I work I love being surrounded by toppling book stacks and paper and pens, with cats scattered between, and a warm lamp turned on.
I bring this up only because I’m having visitors in little more than a week, and as I walked through the house today, it occurred to me that I should probably tidy.
Right. I’m sunk.
***
Here is a delightful interview with Don Bluth Studios about The Secret of NIMH.
I also found some wonderful articles from the Journal of Mythic Arts, such as this essay on mythic fiction by Julie Bartel, with a book list at the end that should really include novels from Nina Kiriki Hoffman, stories by Kelly Link, Naomi Mitchison, Patricia McKillip, and others.
Intentionally challenging the artificial distinctions of the publishing industry, mythic fiction encompasses the whole range of literary novels, crossing genre boundaries to include everything from high fantasy to historical fiction, horror, and mythic works published as “mainstream” fiction. In retrospect, de Lint and Windling’s attempt to more faithfully reflect the spirit of their writing, and to appeal to a broader audience, has given us a much�needed term with which to define a large, coherent, though somewhat amorphous, body of literature.
Or this fascinating essay by Virginia Borges, called A Million Little Mermaids:
The Little Mermaid is perhaps most dangerous, whether in the Disney version or Andersen’s original, because it so neatly describes what so many young girls want. As the little mermaid’s grandmother tells her when she asks how she can receive a soul: Only if a human being loved you so much that you meant more to him than his father or mother � and only if all his thoughts and feelings were devoted to you and he let the pastor put his right hand in yours with the promise of faithfulness now and for all eternity. Then his soul would flow into your body, and you too could share human happiness. He would give you a soul and still keep his own.
Interesting. Ms. Borges goes on to say, “Perhaps the greatest risk is that a million little girls, a million mermaids with butcher�paper tails, may think they have to give up their voices, literally or symbolically, to obtain that state.”
Ah, the dangers of searching for – and finding – one’s soul mate. A tale as old as time.