The Way Home … Into the Archives

 

The Way Home, by Peter S. Beagle, contains ‘Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn’. My copy arrived in the mail yesterday. The first novella, ‘Two Hearts’, I had already read quite recently in the short story Beagle omnibus Magic Kingdoms and found it to be something of a masterpiece. I’m in the middle of reading the second novella, ‘Soos’ (named after the main character of the tale), and so far, finding it (though it’s never fair to give a final judgement until you’ve finished a work) only so-so. It’s giving off The Folk of the Air vibes, which is not a good sign for me.

I see it is paired with a matching edition of The Last Unicorn, which has set me pondering why I have never bought any other copy of it since my first. It is undoubtedly a classic and certainly worthy of having a hardback presence in my library. But I’ve never found an edition that evoked my consideration. They are either too plain or too abstract. Even Darrell K. Sweet's cover is too 'realistic'.

There is something about that old Del Rey printing, with its stylized Gervasio Gallardo cover, that seems to perfectly fit the age when Beagle wrote it, with its poetic, pedantic, scatterbrained butterfly, its sitcom young couple of birds, its folk singing thieves and tramps. These admittedly fade away when the story enters true fairy tale territory, but the book – my edition – is a relic of that age. Perhaps I am afraid that any other printing will diminish the charm of the book for me.  And would I even bother to read it there?

While ordering The Way Home, I saw that I needed only to spend about a dollar and a half more for free shipping. While I knew I would never find a book that cheap, I went looking through Dover Thrift books, to see if I could find something I wanted. While I would be spending a little more money, I would be getting something solid back. I found The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology, edited by Faubion Bowers, a slim little book of 77 pages for $3. Even just dipping into it a bit, I found, like Kerin of Nointel, already at least ‘one thing which is wholly true.’ It is a translation of a haiku by an anonymous poet from the Basho era (17th Century Japan):

“I regret picking

And not picking

Violets.”     

Strangely enough, I belive that sentiment alone easily worth the three dollars.

Mirror, Mirror in My Hand: Off the Wish List

                      Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

“During the first forty years of his career Beagle wrote a small handful, scarcely a dozen, short stories. Classics like 'Come Lady Death,' 'Lila and the Werewolf,' 'Julie's Unicorn,' 'Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros,' and the tales that make up Giant Bones. And then, starting just five years ago, he turned his attention to short fiction in earnest, and produced a stunning array of new stories including the Hugo and Nebula Award winning follow up to The Last Unicorn, 'Two Hearts.'

“Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle collects the very best of these stories, over 200,000 words worth, ranging across 45 years of his career from early stories to freshly minted tales that will surprise and amaze readers.” – Amazon.

I bought this book for one reason and one reason alone: to read “Two Hearts”. Of Peter S. Beagle’s work, I remember pondering this earlier volume for a long time, then rejecting it because I felt I didn’t need the short stories, which I had read in other anthologies and didn’t particularly care for. Having read that story, perhaps I will give the others another try.

But – a return to the world of The Last Unicorn. This I felt I must have. I have a long history with that book, from reading it back in high school (or was it even earlier in middle school?) when it was already a fantasy classic, to going to see the Rankin/Bass movie which Beagle wrote the script for himself, to reading his subsequent novels to see if he ever recaptured the magic, which he never quite did to my satisfaction. I finally stopped trying and missed his last three novels (so far – he’s still alive, you know). But I had to see what he did with Schmendrick and Molly and Lir in this 2005 ‘novelette’.

And it is beautiful. A Griffin (which, as everyone knows, has two hearts, one for the eagle and one for the lion halves of its body) has been terrorizing the small town of a little nine-year-old girl named Sooz. Although the King (who is Lir) has sent many knights to slay it, none have returned from the fight. After her best friend is eaten by the Griffin, Sooz conceives the plan to go directly to the King himself. Along the way she meets Schmendrick and Molly, themselves on the way to visit Lir, and as they journey together Sooz gathers tantalizing hints about their old adventures and what they’ve been doing since. Arriving at the castle, they find Lir has grown old and sometimes vague, but still every bit a hero with a hero’s instincts for the fitness of things. He knows it must be him personally who confronts the Griffin, although they all fear it will mean his death. It is his memories of Lady Amalthea, the Last Unicorn, that steady his mind and his resolve.

This is an old man’s story, though told through the eyes of a nine-year-old. You can feel Beagle revisiting the tale from his youth, written with all the joy and strength of his early twenties, and adding another layer of wisdom and tenderness to that memory. It almost seems as if you can hear him giving himself permission to grow old and die, that death accepted as a fitting end is no defeat.

This is an excellent deluxe hardcover edition put out by Subterranean Press, with cover art by the great Michael Wm. Kaluta, edited by Jonathan Strahan, protected by a mylar cover, and actually signed: “For David – Pet[er] S. Beagle”.

Peter S. Beagle. He wrote ‘Tolkien’s Magic Ring’ for The Tolkien Reader (which I definitely read in middle school; it probably influenced me to try The Last Unicorn), co-wrote the screenplay for Bakshi’s 1978 The Lord of the Rings, and even wrote the episode ‘Sarek’ for Star Trek: The Next Generation, all significant work to my own timeline. He has also published a volume called The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey, an incomplete first draft of the novel with his commentary and memories and tributes by other fantasy novelists, which I’ll have to investigate, and has been struggling about the rights to his works and to produce a real book-length sequel to The Last Unicorn as opposed to the coda of ‘Two Hearts’ (although, in my opinion, this story is the perfect place to leave it). He is still fighting gallantly with the Griffin of Time.  

 

To Your Scattered Authors Go: The Shadow Library Re-Organized

 

The Atlas of the Land … Karen Wynn Fonstad

Lord Foul’s Bane; The Illearth War; The Power That Preserves, The Wounded Land, The One Tree, White Gold Wielder … Steven R Donaldson*

Daughter of Regals and other tales … Stephen R. Donaldson

Gildenfire … Stephen R. Donaldson

The Mirror of Her Dreams … Stephen R. Donaldson

A Man Rides Through … Stephen R. Donaldson                  

Fatal Revenant … Stephen R. Donaldson

Against All Things Ending … Stephen R. Donaldson    

The Runes of the Earth … Stephen R. Donaldson

[The Last Dark … Stephen R. Donaldson]

The Bishop’s Heir; The King’s Justice; The Quest for St. Camber; King Kelson’s Bride; Deryni Magic … Katherine Kurtz

The Harrowing of Gwynedd; King Javan’s Year; The Bastard Prince … Katherine Kurtz

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vols. I, II, and III; Mixed Magics; Eight Days of Luke; Archer’s Goon, Enchanted Glass; Earwig and the Witch; Hexwood … Diana Wynne Jones

The Dalemark Quartet … Diana Wynne Jones

A Wizard of Earthsea*; The Tombs of Atuan*; The Farthest Shore*; Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings … Ursula K. Leguin

The Translator … John Crowley

Novelty: Four Stories … John Crowley*

Four Freedoms … John Crowley

Beasts … John Crowley*

The Folk of the Air … Peter S. Beagle

I See by My Outfit … Peter S. Beagle

The Fires of Windameir … Neil Hancock*

Riddle of Stars … Patricia A. McKillip*

The Wicked Day … Mary Stewart

Time Cat … Lloyd Alexander

Encyclopedia Cthulhiana … Daniel Harms

Secrets of The Wee Free Men and Discworld … Carrie Pyykkonen & Linda Washington

These are all books by good writers whom I admire, or about their creations, of which I do not feel I need to keep copies. Some, whose work I enjoyed, just lost my interest. Take Donaldson, for instance. While I enjoyed the first Thomas Covenant trilogy a good deal, and the second less so, the third batch seemed dedicated to unweaving the triumphs of the first books simply for the reason of continuing the series; it devalued the previous work for me. I lost interest and never even bought the final volume, The Last Dark. Kurtz seemed to me to lose some of her zest and became just like an endless D&D campaign; there is a whole other Deryni trilogy, The Childe Morgan Trilogy, that I never bothered to seek out. Some books are simply spare copies I can do without.