Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea is a story about a boy, Ged, and his experiences as he becomes a wizard. At one point during his education, Ged accidentally releases a shadow-spirit from the underworld and spends the rest of the novel alternately hiding from, running from, and chasing after it. It’s not until the end of … [Read more…]
So, I’m home from Mythmoot III, where yesterday I presented my paper on Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Overall, I think it went pretty well. Twenty minutes always goes by fast. I spent a little too much time on the setup rather than my argument and examples, but I was at … [Read more…]
So in an hour or so, I’ll be off to Baltimore for Mythmoot III: Ever on…, the third installment of the (nearly) annual academic/fan gathering for the Mythgard Institute. As with last year, I will be presenting a paper. This year, my subject is Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, specifically about her descriptions of … [Read more…]
I’m always fascinated when seemingly different subjects of my academic focus intersect in unexpected ways, as happened to me recently with Ursula K. Le Guin and Benjamin De Casseres. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised: It may be that I am drawn to both subjects because I had already identified certain similarities subconsciously. However, the rising to consciousness of those … [Read more…]
In my last post I noted that Ruth Graham’s argument distinguishing young adult fiction from more weighty stories is a perennial lamentation made by stalwarts of Literature. In a previous iteration last December, Terry Teachout descried the critical attention being given to “pop culture” over “high art,” and in my response I showed that such … [Read more…]
Everything new is old, as evinced by Ruth Graham’s recent Slate article admonishing adults who read “young adult” (YA) fiction. Her basic argument is that books like The Fault in Our Stars “could plausibly be said to be replacing literary fiction in the lives of their adult readers,” and that such replacements are inferior to … [Read more…]
For the past couple of months I’ve been auditing Dr. Corey Olsen’s class on Chaucer’s non-Canterbury Tale works at Mythgard. I’ve fallen a bit behind due to deadlines related to another project, which unfortunately means I’ve missed the discussion about Troilus & Creseyde — the main reason I wanted to audit the class. (The nice … [Read more…]
A couple days ago, Terry Teachout wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal denouncing the praise given to Elmore Leonard as a “great American artist” and an increased critical attention on “pop” art to the detriment of “high” art. “It used to be that we didn’t take popular culture seriously,” Teachout writes, “but now … [Read more…]
A couple weeks ago, film and TV critic Inkoo Kang published a thought-provoking article over at Vulture blaming Fox Mulder for a perceived rise of anti-government, anti-science sentiments in the new millennium. The key, Kang says, is the coolness behind Mulder’s “anti-government paranoia … and skepticism of science.” Furthermore, Kang sees Scully’s knowledge of science as … [Read more…]
A week from today, on Sunday, Sept. 22 — on Hobbit Day, the shared birthday of the two most famousest of Bagginses — I will be participating in the first-ever Mythgard Institute student-produced webathon. The event will run from elevenses to elevenses (EST) and will feature a variety of original live and prerecorded content created by … [Read more…]