Magic and disease
I've just finished book 5 of the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card. It's titled "Heartfire" and it's got a romance novel cover, but it was a good book.Ever since I read Tolkien when I was a teenager, I've loved books about worlds where magic is practiced. I especially like the Alvin Maker series because there are so many different kinds of magic: white people have "knacks" that let them do things like shape wood or stone; blacks use their power to create objects that contain their true names and just about anything else; and Indians use their power to maintain an identification with the natural world.
The problem I sometimes have with such books is that, as I've described above, they tend to essentialize the races: elves are one way, dwarves another; whites have this gift, Indians another, and so on. A teacher that I respected greatly called Tolkien a racist, and I can see his point, though I don't really agree. I do wonder, however, what Sherman Alexie would make of Orson Scott Card's "Reds": would he say the story of Tenkswatawa the Prophet and Tecumseh the warrior was romanticized? Just plain racist? He's on record as stating flatly that white people should not write about Indians.
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Rufus is lying on the floor, looking so much like Puss in Boots from Shrek 2 that I want to laugh and go all Zorro on him.
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Just found out that in the past 15 years, people have been publishing books about their experiences with polio. My father got polio when he was 9 months old, in 1926, and has had a bad leg all his life because of it. The woman he loves also had polio, though she had a different kind and I believe was in an iron lung for a while.
I was thinking of compiling a book of polio stories, but it seems that's already been done in some way or another, though I suppose the world could always use more. Two things fascinate me: the stories of how close we are to eradicating polio worldwide and the misunderstandings that prevented it in 2005; and the possibility of making a story out of my father's polio and the turmoil in his early life caused by his father. If I did edit a book, I'd call it The Last Generation, because that's what people like my father are and that's the generation of the babies in India and Nigeria being stricken now.
posted by Price of Silence @ 10:51 PM
1 Comments:
Good idea on the polio book.
The whole idea of writing much magic frightens me. You have to put all these rules around it to make it believable, and that sounds like a lot of work. I do like the idea of it being a corrupting influence though, and making it represent, say, the Bush administration.
Of course that would just bastardize the whole notion of magic, which isn't fair to the world of fantasy.
I'll get there, though, at some point.
Have you read Carol Berg? She's great and always has believable magic. I'm hearing her talk Friday if you're interested.
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