The Gods, They Are Not Like Us

This week, I finished reading Madeline Miller’s novel, Circe (2018). As you can probably tell from the title, this is the story from Greek mythology of the renowned witch whose island is visited by Odysseus and his men when they are on the way back to Ithaca; she transforms the men into pigs but later turns them back into men for love of Odysseus. The episode of Circe’s island is but one incident among many in Odysseus’s journey, but in this novel, the story is told from Circe’s point of view and encompasses hundreds of years of her life, beginning in the court of her father, the sun god Helios.

Circe’s mother is a naiad, and all of her children with Helios turn out to be witches. In the novel, they are distrusted more than any other immortal save Prometheus for their powers, which threaten the gods because they stem from the earth, and in particular from pharmaka, magical plants. Never a favorite at her father’s court, Circe is eventually banished, for various transgressions, to the island of Aiaia, where she is marooned as a permanent exile. What’s meant as a punishment turns out to be the making of Circe as a witch; she begins to learn the ways of the island and develop her skills using native plants, while also befriending the animals who are for a time her only companions. She is later summoned to tend her sister Pasiphae as she gives birth to the Minotaur (a feat worthy of an entire team of witches). While at Knossos, Circe meets both her niece Ariadne and the famous Daedalus, the craftsman who, at the command of King Minos, builds the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur.

From all of this, you can see that Circe’s story overlaps with that of the characters central to the legend of the labyrinth. Ms. Miller takes a character peripheral to that story and lets us see Ariadne, Theseus, Minos, Pasiphae, Daedalus, and the rest from the point of view of someone who is immortal but almost human in her outlook. In my book, I explored the characters for their symbolic and psychological significance, but Ms. Miller turns them into flesh-and-blood characters—even the ones who are actually immortals. Pasiphae, for one, is thoroughly unlikeable but gives an admirably clear-eyed and unvarnished assessment of what life is like for a minor goddess in the court of a powerful father, something not even Circe is fully capable of acknowledging.

Ms. Miller manages the difficult task of “fleshing out” gods and goddesses, major and minor, and the legendary heroes and humans they interact with, giving them distinctive personalities and motivations. The inexplicable whims of the gods become understandable when she reveals them to be a mostly selfish lot of bored and egotistical goons with nothing but time on their hands. They’re either fatuous or vicious, or both. No wonder they thrive on flattery, pleasure, gossip, novelty, and the exercise of power—they’re a bit like the Ewings of Dallas or the Carringtons from Dynasty (for all you Boomers who don’t mind references to ’80s TV shows)—minus any of their redeeming qualities. They’re glorious and awe-inspiring, wonderful to look at; all hat and no cattle, if you will (though they have cattle, too, as it turns out—it’s character they lack). If you’ve ever felt sorry for the humans in the Greek stories fated to live under the thumb of the immortals who use them as pawns until the day they die and have to spend eternity in that gray and dismal spot, the Underworld: think again. This novel turns the entire matrix on its head and makes you consider whether being human is really so bad after all.

“Dreaming the myth forward” is a concept often spoken of at Pacifica, which is of course where I studied mythology. This novel is an excellent example of that, as the author creates a story that in many ways is quite faithful to the source material while putting a fresh interpretation on it. Circe, as a witch, is usually lumped in with all the other villainous gods, demigods, and monsters Odysseus must hazard on his way back home from the war. But in Ms. Miller’s conception, they meet almost as equals, having a believable if tragic relationship. When you see the situation from Circe’s point of view, turning men into pigs is an act of self-defense, perfectly understandable when you realize it is they who are abusing her. Odysseus is very much the flawed hero here, a strong man with some depth of character who is nevertheless brutal when dealing with others and out of his depth when he does return to Ithaca.

Circe is one of best retellings of classical mythology I have read. In some ways the novel might be characterized as a feminist retelling, with its emphasis on Circe’s Prospero-like claiming of her own power and agency, but the author gives a balanced view of the foibles of both gods and goddesses. Circe is in many ways a sympathetic character but remains a goddess until the end, and the twists and turns of her own fate make for a narrative every bit as compelling as that of Odysseus, if not more so.

A Bunch of Magicians Gathered in a Manor House, and . . .

It took a while, but I finally finished Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six, and let me tell you, people are throwing around the term “Dark Academia” pretty loosely in applying it to this book. From what I’ve seen, the genre has some very indeterminate edges to begin with, but usually some combination of a Gothic setting, exclusivity, occult knowledge, and sinister happenings need to occur in proximity to one another to qualify. In The Atlas Six, the exclusivity is there, but by the book’s own logic, magical knowledge is really just a form of super-advanced scientific acumen that some savants (“medeians” as they are called in the novel) have the ability to wield according to their specialties. They are basically physicists, naturalists, telepaths, and even psychopaths, if you will; they are simply way ahead of the general population in their knowledge of how the universe functions and their ability to manipulate it.

In most of the other Dark Academia novels or TV series I’ve come across, the question of what magic is isn’t nearly so cut-and-dried as it is here. Magicians may be quite skilled at casting spells and capable of doing spectacular things in the wider world of D.A. without really being able to pin down what magic is . . . there is some mystery to it, something that defies explanation. Magic is often set in opposition to the normal, everyday world, and the people who practice it do so on the fringes of society or in some secret corner of it, as if there has to be something a bit wrong with them to give magic the ability to leak through. 

To say that The Atlas Six doesn’t fit this pattern isn’t a criticism of the novel, but I think it reads more like a quirky sort of science fiction crossed with a bit of Agatha Christie than Dark Academia. Magic is a commodity in this novel, something to be used, bought, and sold, so that skilled practitioners essentially rule the world in a very hard-headed, unsentimental way. While some of the characters are fighting their own demons, the main characteristic nearly all of them share is being highly competitive.

I had difficulty relating to the characters throughout the first few chapters, as none of them were particularly engaging or sympathetic. But once the novel takes off, it really takes off; I have to give the author credit for taking a group of prickly, somewhat self-absorbed magical geniuses that I didn’t especially like and placing them in circumstances that suddenly became compelling once I realized what they were actually up against. The novel has a few English “murder mystery” tropes in it, with its small group of oddballs tripping over one another in a manor house setting and matching wits to survive what only appears to be a genteel competition. The weapons at their disposal—the ability to alter time and space, disappear into one another’s psyches, and alter the perceptions and thoughts of their fellow initiates—make for a very lively academic year.

Miss Blake followed this novel up with its continuance, The Atlas Paradox, which I haven’t yet read; a third novel, The Atlas Complex, is expected next year. In the way of a cliffhanger, The Atlas Six ends in the middle of an action-packed sequence in a somewhat different manner than the reader has been led to believe is possible, but OK, yay for that! This popular series takes the magical academia trend in its own idiosyncratic direction with a group of somewhat disaffected characters who practice magic not for personal reasons but for professional ones, with all the competitive edginess found in any highly selective academic program with a limited number of seats. Imagine an English graduate department with a prestigious fellowship program and only a few open slots and picture the chaos when the applicants can see around corners, read one another’s minds, perform battle magic, and contemplate murder to achieve their goals. 

Come to think of it, is this really that different from the actual real world? Doesn’t seem that different from some of the academic settings I’ve known. I often feel that someone is trying to read my mind or figure out what I’m thinking before I even know it myself, and I’m an independent scholar. Imagine the mayhem in the halls of academia, then, if someone were to throw magic into the mix. Oh, wait, they already have, haven’t they—it’s called technology.

How to Be a Magician

“Magic was wild feelings, the kind that escaped out of you and into the world and changed things. There was a lot of skill to it, and a lot of learning, and a lot of work, but that was where the power began: the power to enchant the world.” —Lev Grossman, The Magician’s Land

After watching the Syfy series The Magicians, I started reading the novels from which they were adapted and just finished the last of the three, The Magician’s Land. In previous posts I discussed The Magicians as an example of the Dark Academia genre, but it’s also a little bit science fiction and a little bit urban fantasy. The TV series diverged in many ways from the books but is true to it in spirit. 

It was ambitious of Syfy to undertake an adaptation of this multiverse-spanning work, but they pulled it off, actually adding complexity to an already complex narrative. The author supplies transitions that help you, the reader, keep track of where you are in space/time with regard to the plot, but the TV series sometimes meanders without ceremony from one space/time labyrinth into another. I kind of liked that about it, the way it could jump abruptly from one world to the next by way of very shifty portals and occasionally leave you wondering where exactly you were. It was very existential, though it sometimes had me wondering if I’d missed something I was supposed to know about the transition. Well, haven’t we all been landed at one time or another in the middle of a world that looked like the one we’re used to but very palpably wasn’t the same thing at all? Of course we have. This series gets you to feeling that that’s just the type of thing a reasonably intelligent magician has to get used to.

In the novels, Mr. Grossman gives a more explanatory diagram of how various segments of the multiverse are enmeshed, particularly in the episode of the prank in which Plum discovers interconnected worlds behind the walls at Brakebills. In the TV series, it’s often unclear, especially later on, if the characters are in Brakebills (where they appear to be) or somewhere else, some anteroom slightly removed from current reality. In my mind, Brakebills serves as baseline reality, which is actually a joke, since Brakebills is itself separated—by a thin membrane only, but still, separated—from the actual modern world of the northeastern United States in New York State. The Hudson River is visible from the campus, but no one on or near the river would be able to see Brakebills; invisible wards shield it from the eyes of non-magicians.

Some of the characters in the TV series are exactly as Mr. Grossman wrote them, brought to life by a talented cast who seemingly stepped straight out of the pages. Some of the characters have been changed somewhat, or bear different names or roles than they do in the books. One character, Penny, bears only a modest resemblance to Penny in the novel, being much more compelling and dynamic in the series (and actually one of my favorites); I mourned his fate in the series and never really got over his separation from Kady. Penny eventually becomes (in both the books and the series) a Librarian-Magician, and although librarians are not as benign in The Magicians as many people think them to be in real life (having a rather complex relationship with magic that sometimes places them in opposition to magicians), Penny manages both roles, though more satisfactorily in the TV series, I thought, where he was quite a bit more manly.

In previous posts I talked about the idea of magic as psychological agency, and The Magicians is possibly the purest example of this idea that I’ve yet seen. This idea first came to me after I watched a filmed production of The Tempest some years ago, and to my delight, that’s the way Quentin Coldwater, The Magicians’ central character, also sees it: he thinks of the world he wants to create using magic as a kind of Prospero’s island, where he can arrange things to be safe and peaceful. If you ask the question, “What exactly is magic?” I would say, as I think The Magicians does, that it’s a lot like creativity, and not only the kind that spins fantasy worlds and creates symphonies and paintings. It’s also the kind you use in homespun ways when putting together a home or cooking a meal. It’s you putting your stamp on the world, taking what it has to offer and making something out of it that wasn’t there before.

Most, if not all, of the characters in The Magicians are broken in some way or another, and learning magic constitutes a way for them to heal themselves while they are trying to heal the world. They often make things worse, at least for a time, since magic is a messy business limited not only by the magician’s skill but by the material he/she has to work with and the fact that magic has a mind of its own. If you want to get Jungian about it (you may not, but here goes anyway), it’s like the conscious mind, the ego, working with the unconscious, the invisible place of power from whence spring all manner of things, both good and bad. Ever wondered why that spell you cast created a prison world instead of the paradise you wanted? Well, what about that leviathan swimming around down there in your unconscious that shaped your intent in ways you weren’t aware of?

Of course, even going off course with magic can be beneficial in the long run, as Quentin and the others discover. The cliche about the journey meaning more than the destination turns out to be true when you’re jumping worlds as well. You keep trying things out and learning until something sticks, and you suddenly realize you’re home. In the world of The Magicians, it’s only those with an aptitude who ever even learn that magic exists, but I’m not sure Mr. Grossman and I are in disagreement over this. A lot of ordinary people in our world never truly learn what they’re capable of, either.

Wordplay Attempts to Get It Together

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve reviewed several books and TV series related to the themes of Dark Academia and “kids doing magic.” Now you may be wondering what significance all of this has and why so many TV shows, books, and movies using these ideas keep cropping up. What are we really responding to when we’re attracted to plots and characters centered on wizardry and magic, and what is academia doing mixed up in this? There’s a lot to ponder here. Interest in magic is nothing new, but the sheer number of entertainment offerings involving magical schools and/or occult activities at schools points to something in the collective psyche that keeps circling, as if caught in a whirlpool, around the archetypes of Magician and Scholar.

When I was young, amateur detectives and sleuthing were popular themes in many books and TV series. The Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys of the day used their intellects and detecting skills to solve mysteries. There was little or no magic involved: everything was based on making observations, gathering evidence, and drawing conclusions—all very scientific and logical. Spooky happenings abounded, but they always had an explanation that diligent searching could uncover. It’s tempting to say that maybe this reflected a simpler time, or a more optimistic time, when it seemed that the march of 20th century scientific progress was carrying us all forward, and technology would finally solve many intractable problems. Respect for scientific methods and powers of deduction are at the heart of these stories.

Could it be that the world has gotten so complex (and troubling in its complexity) that simply restoring order by finding “the villain” or solving “the mystery” doesn’t satisfy in the way that it used to? There are so many villains, and in some cases, they’re also our heroes. Contradictions run through many of our cherished institutions and beliefs that can’t be denied any more; we often find we’re standing on shaky ground that we used to think was solid. We assume we’re doing the right thing, as a society and as individuals, only to be questioned by others who have different ideas. Our country is big and diverse, full of contending parties, and although that’s supposed to be our strength, all the opposing voices make it difficult to see our way forward. Not only that, but the world is transforming rapidly around us, climate change bringing about fresh disasters at every turn, and even nuclear war being spoken of as a possibility.

I think the interest in magical schools may point to a deep-seated response to the complex and overwhelming world we’re facing. What is magic but the ability to overcome the laws of physics, the strictures that bind us, and make things happen, things that we want to happen. Magic is a way of breaking through complications and exerting one’s will on the world, instead of being at the world’s mercy. It’s an intense form of psychological agency, reflecting a need to have influence and control over events when we actually fear we may have neither.

Meanwhile, the theme of “Dark Academia” points to a concern, perhaps more accurately an anxiety, about secret knowledge, knowledge that most people don’t have. There is a pervasive feeling, especially in a work like Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, that venerable institutions intimately bound up with power structures harbor secrets that make the rest of us vulnerable. These are only penetrated at great risk. What you don’t know can hurt you, but what you do know can also hurt you. There’s a preoccupation with long-buried secrets trying to come to light only to be pushed down again, things too disturbing to really look at in the sober light of day. Trauma is tied to hidden connections running beneath things, like a dark underground river. This theme is also present in Naomi Novik’s Scholomance books, in which enclaves for the powerful are built, quite literally, on top of trauma.

Themes of secret knowledge and agency may not be present in every work related to magical schools, and there could be other reasons for the genre’s popularity. In particular, I think of a program like Legacies, in which all of the students at the Salvatore School are actually freaks of one kind or another. They are in the one place where they have a chance of being understood and accepted. In some ways, this might reflect the unwillingness of some formerly marginalized groups in our society to remain marginalized. It’s a demand for recognition and acceptance of one’s authentic self, with plenty of heavy-duty spell-casting underlining the need for personal agency. In a gentler way, the same thing happens in The Bureau of Magical Things, in which magical races of fairies and elves go from co-existing with humans but hiding who they really are to letting others see them, gradually forming relationships based on trust.

If there’s one way to sum up the psychological underpinning of the current popularity of magical schools and occult happenings it would be that they are a response to rapid and extreme change affecting our physical, social, and political environment. Most of these works have dark overtones that reflect with some seriousness real-life issues related to change, instability, and uncertainty. There is defiance, certainly, and some hope, but there are no guarantees of a better world in progress.

Stollen's Clock Repair, Toy & Magic Shop

Once upon a time, there was a woman who lived alone on a long, leafy street with old-fashioned houses. She was a fairly young woman, with no husband or children to think of, and she liked to spend her spare time (she was a teacher) reading, taking walks, drinking long cups of tea, and (on Saturdays) occasionally rummaging in antique shops. 

Rummaging was how she found it, the jewelry box. She wanted someplace besides a candy box to store her earrings and necklaces. She wasn't actually thinking of it that Saturday as she poked around in Stollen's Clock Repair, Toy & Magic shop, but when her eye fell on the lacquered box, a midnight blue affair spangled with faint stars and crescent moons, it came to her mind how perfect it would be for her jewelry and how snugly it would fit on top of her dresser. Mr. Stollen thought the box had originally been used for papers but, unusually for him, was vague on its provenance. He mumbled something about objects of beauty with troubled pasts and frowned as he wrapped it in tissue and put it in a bag for her. She did not think much of this as Mr. Stollen was old and--though kindly--could, on occasion, be crotchety.

The box did indeed fit snugly on her dresser, and her jewelry fit neatly into the partitions she created for them. She casually mentioned her find to several of the other teachers at her college in the break room one morning. They agreed that Stollen's was the place to go when you didn't know what you wanted because you were bound to find it. It was a small town, and everyone knew Stollen's.

By and by, the young woman, whose name was Clare, began to notice something odd happening among her colleagues. It began with whispers and hurried looks and was never more than a faint rumor at first. She eventually discovered that the rumors had to do with her jewelry box, which some said had belonged to a wealthy governor of a far-off place, some to a captain of industry, and some to a potentate. It was said to have a hidden compartment housing a secret document, a document that had been left by mistake in the box, which by some roundabout and uncertain way had ended up at last in a dusty corner of Stollen's shop.

Clare did not believe the rumors at first, knowing how little of import happened in her small town and how exciting the slightest hint of the exotic always was (when the circus came, it was the major topic of conversation for weeks). But gradually, rumors turned into a coolness in the air, and there were frightened looks and hushed voices. She was never sure who started the stories, or if anyone really knew anything for sure about the box. When she asked Mr. Stollen one day, after running into him on the street, he merely shook his head.

Whether Clare believed the rumors or not, it was evident that other people did. One autumn evening, when Clare was returning home from school, she encountered a well-dressed gentleman at the end of her street. He was idling there with an air of purpose, and when she turned in front of him, he bowed slightly. "My name is Mars," he said, handing her a card on which the name P. T. Mars appeared in elegant black lettering, followed by the word "Antiquities." "I understand you purchased a box from old Stollen some time ago. I wonder if you'd be interested in selling it to me. I'm a collector, and I believe it may have some value."

"Really?" said Clare. "Mr. Stollen said nothing about value to me, and he always knows these things. I didn't pay very much for it. It's only lacquered wood."

"Ah, but you see, the look of a thing can be deceiving. Who would think that a tarnished old lamp could hide a genie, for instance? Yet one hears of these things."

Clare did not like the look of this smooth gentleman, with his black hair and pale skin, and said nothing about the rumors she'd heard. A feeling came to her that whatever happened, he should not have her box. "Well, I'm rather fond of the box, as it is," she said carefully. "And I've never done business with someone I met in the street. It may be that I will want to give the box away one day, as a gift."

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you," said Mars. "That box contains something very important, not worth much to you, but worth a great deal to those willing to pay for it. Why not save yourself a great deal of trouble and sell it to me? You will make a lot of money from it."

"I'm sorry," said Clare politely, looking at Mars directly. "But I don't feel as if I want to sell it. And it's getting late, so I must be getting on."

"Not today, perhaps," said Mars, with a dismissive wave. "But keep my card. You can reach me at that number anytime." And he laughed and turned away. As he did, Clare caught sight of his fine leather shoes. His feet were small and goat-like, and he moved on them lightly. When he was a short distance away, he turned and smiled again. "And don't think of destroying that box," he said. "To do so would be quite dangerous, as it is well-protected against any type of tampering. You cannot destroy it without destroying yourself, believe me." Then he was gone.

When Clare got home, she stared at the card with distaste for a long while before burning it in the grate. She looked at the jewelry box, sitting quietly and unassumingly on the left side of her dresser, glowing softly in the lamplight. She would have liked to believe that the entire episode was a case of mistaken identity, but as she gazed at the box, she feared it was not.

Of course, that was not the end of the affair of the box, as it seemed everyone had now heard the story of its hidden treasure, whether from Mars or by some other means. Clare no longer felt carefree as she walked down her street, from home to school and back again. The neighbors behaved oddly, and the formerly friendly shopkeepers on Main Street all seemed troubled and disinclined to be social. Clare wondered what could possibly be in the box to turn everyone's heads so completely. She didn't want to know but thought it best to draw conclusions so she could decide what to do. Perhaps it contained a map to a treasure, a list of names, or the plans for an invention that would make its owner rich beyond imagining. There were many possibilities, but no one of them seemed more likely than the rest. In the end, she decided, it wasn't so much the contents, but the greed that mattered.

Clare began to dread the ordeal of her daily walk to school, which she had formerly enjoyed. The loud talk and furtive glances of her neighbors troubled her; she sometimes heard strange laughter coming from behind the curtains of the houses. It was now November, and the air was getting chilly. Clare looked forward every day to turning the key in her latch, putting the kettle on to boil, and settling into the window seat of the turret (she lived in a Victorian cottage) to read the evening away. She worked her way slowly through all of Henry James, Dickens, and then Trollope as the months went by, watching from her solitary seat as the seasons wheeled around. 

The months turned into years. Even her old friends seemed to have gotten wind of the story of the box, and few of them came around any more. She sometimes heard rustling outside her window at night, and once she even heard footsteps on her porch, a hand on the latch. When she opened the curtain, she saw a dark shape retreating. 

She couldn't help but notice the altered appearance of her neighbors; the doctor in the Queen Anne down the street, always pale from late shifts at the hospital, now looked almost vampire-ish as he turned his grin toward her. The minister two doors down, with his red hair and sharp eyes, had grown vulpine and watchful, and bearded Mr. Brown, who lived across the street and published the local newspaper ("The Intelligencer"), had somehow grown to resemble Lon Chaney Jr. in his hairier stages. Mrs. Carmine, who had moved in next door a year ago, had the crooked teeth and pointed nose of a hag and swept her porch furiously as she watched Clare with speculative eyes. When Clare was awakened one night by noises on the roof, she instantly pictured Mrs. Carmine poking about the chimney, though how she could have gotten up there, with all her two hundred pounds, was a mystery Clare preferred not to consider. She decided instead that it must be bats.

Ownership of the box had made Clare a prisoner in her home and had taken most of the sweetness out of life. "One thing I know," she said to herself, "is that I can't let anyone else get this box. Whatever's in it is bad, to make people act the way they do. I suppose I must just guard it. I wish this were a fairy tale so that I might have a godmother to tell me what to do, but since it isn't, I'll have to do the best I can."

Do you think someone was listening? That night, Clare dreamed of her grandmother, who had been dead for many years. She was a small Southern woman with a lively expression, and in the dream she gave off a decided radiance. She looked very pleased as she smiled at Clare, who felt, at the sight of that smile, a lifting of the dread that followed her in waking life. "You see," she said to her grandmother. "This box has changed everything."

"Yep," her grandmother replied. "What are you gonna do about it?"

"I don't know," said Clare. "I've been watching this box for almost five years now, and it's getting old."

"What do you want to do?" her grandmother persisted.

"Smash it to pieces."

"Good idea," the grandmother said.

"Someone told me that I'd end up hurting myself if I tried to get rid of the box," Clare said. "There was a man, Mr.--"

"Oh, him," said her grandmother. Then she laughed. "That don't make no never mind. If that box would've hurt you, it would have done it by now. What do you think happened to them neighbors of yours, studying all the time on that box and how to get their hands on it? It's ruined their looks, sure enough, and I'll tell you what--them changes are permanent. There's no going back. But not you, honey. You watched over that box, and never asked nothing for yourself out of it. That's kept you going."

"You mean, he lied to me about the box, and I could have destroyed it all this time?"

"Well, lied, honey--of course he lied, but in a way of twisting the truth. You had to show that box it was not the boss of you before it would let you go, and now you have. Getting rid of an old tricksy sumpen like that is no small matter till you show it what's what. If you want to smash it, smash it. And honey," she said, pressing her granddaughter's hand, "get yourself out of this mess here," and she gestured broadly and inclusively. "It'll sap the life right out of you, sitting in a nasty place like this. And you still with a husband to get."

Clare woke up. It was only midnight, and she hadn't been asleep long. She got up and went to the dresser. Without a second thought, she removed all of her earrings and necklaces and put them in an empty Whitman Sampler box. She took the jewelry box and a hammer into the living room, where she smashed the box into tiny pieces inside a large bucket. Once she was finished, she took the bucket outside. Next to the fence was a canister of acid the landlord had left after treating a swimming pool. She dumped the splinters in and watched them disintegrate with a satisfying fizz. Then she went inside and washed her hands. 

"There may have been another way to do that," she said to herself. "But anyway, it's done. It's a shame to lose a pretty box, but no sense taking any chances on pulling out one paper and leaving something else behind. Anyway, I could probably lacquer a box myself." While in the kitchen, she thought she heard a long wail in the side yard followed by a howl from somewhere down the street. Then all was still, and she listened as the silent neighborhood seemed to rearrange itself around the fact of the now dead-as-a-doornail box.

She felt her arms and legs, and touched her head and heart. "Well, it looks like I'm still here," she said. Then she went to bed.

She woke up early the next morning, a sunny May Saturday, and began to pack her clothes, her books, and her personal things. She was not teaching this summer and had not yet renewed her contract for next year, so there was nothing more to be said about that. She took down her pictures and wrapped them up. She packed up her kitchen and her bathroom; she tied a ribbon around the Whitman Sampler box. All this took a few hours. By that time, the rental agency was open, so she went over and hired a small trailer. Backing it up to the front porch, she piled in her boxes, pictures, roll-top desk, and her small kitchen table. She left the futon (which had never been comfortable) and the odds and ends that had come furnished with the place. 

In the mailbox on the corner, she dropped a note to the landlord with half a month's rent (he had neglected for months to repair a leaking roof, so she subtracted two weeks for that), her key, and her month's notice. As she got into her car, she saw that her neighbor, Mr. Brown, had emerged from his house and was trimming the hedge desultorily with his clippers. He looked, she thought, quite depressed. The heavy hair on his face, neck, and arms and his hollow expression were all visible in the rear view mirror as she drove away. At the end of the street, she turned onto the main road without looking back. At the edge of town, she rolled a window down and called, "Don't let the screen door hit you, folks!" Then she was on her way.

(The inspiration for this story was a drive down a street of old houses not far from where I live. I pictured it on a windy night and knew I wanted to write a story about it. I imagined the residents as werewolves and vampires, and it took off from there. I made up the jewelry box.)

Prospero Drowns His Books

I was watching a Stratford Shakespeare Festival production of The Tempest, with Christopher Plummer, the other night and was having a little trouble hearing all the dialogue. Rather than turn the sound up, I decided to let it be and follow the events instead of the words. It was rather enjoyable just to be carried along by the story instead of hanging on every syllable. I don't know if that isn't the best approach in any case; academic habits of analysis can sometimes get in the way of simple enjoyment.

It occurred to me that I was trying to watch the play with "beginner's mind," and I started wondering what it would have been like to see it as a child. There are so many fairy tale elements in the plot that I think I would have loved The Tempest, without understanding all the nuances, if I had seen it as a little girl. What else should a play with a magician, an enchanted island full of invisible voices, castaways, airy spirits, talking monsters, a violent storm, true love, comedy, and the righting of wrongs be except charming?

There is a way in which searching for meanings and parsing phrases can actually get in the way of understanding, and to me this play is proof of that. I think Shakespeare wanted above all to enchant, to be Prospero, to exert his powers of creation to make a new world, or possibly just remake the old one. We're meant to fall under the island's spell, to dwell for a while with incantations, sorcery, and inexplicable happenings, to feel ourselves out of our usual element. The initial storm, which deposits the seafarers from the kingdoms of Milan and Naples onto Prospero's island, is a portal to a different world, and it pulls in playgoers, too.

The plot is simple and appeals strongly to the love of a happy ending and sense of justice restored. Prospero, the wronged ruler, stranded for a dozen years on the island with his daughter, has used the time to perfect his knowledge of magic. He seizes the chance to bring his enemies within his reach by calling up a storm that brings their ship to his island. They are punished as much by the strange, uncanny air of the place (which almost brings them to madness) as by the fear of being castaways, although the violent storm and near drownings give way to a less dire, if initially befuddling, fate.

What child hasn't fantasized about the magical ability to control his surroundings and shape things to his liking? Prospero can actually do it, in an unusually potent display of what psychologists might call "agency" that more than makes up for his prior helplessness in the face of wrong. Prospero's ultimate purpose, despite the fear and confusion he creates, is benign: it's the restoration of his own rights and reconciliation with his adversaries. His daughter Miranda falls in love with the son of the King of Naples, setting the seal on the theme of restoration and healing. The King, who had feared his son drowned, finds that he is still alive when Prospero, like a stage magician pulling back a curtain, suddenly reveals the two lovers playing chess together. Everything that had seemed wrong, after a satisfying amount of confusion and trouble, comes right again.

As a child, it wouldn't have bothered me perhaps, but it does occur to me now that a few hours of torment isn't really the equivalent of twelve years of confinement. The events following the shipwreck take place in less than an afternoon, though of course, it's a magical three hours, which could very well seem longer. My better nature tells me we're meant to think that the experience was so bewildering that to have continued it much beyond that would have been cruel . . . Ariel seems to think so, at any rate.

Prospero also makes it plain that he is finished with magic once his ends have been accomplished: "This rough magic, I here abjure." Ariel is freed from Prospero's service, Prospero drowns his books, and there is a sad sense of something numinous passing. Should Prospero really have to give up the knowledge that saved him and become like other men once more? And yet again, maybe it's for the best. It would be unwise and dangerous to continually be calling up the powers of air, light, and storm to correct every little problem that might arise in the future. There are supposed to be laws for that.

It's a wonderful play, wise and affecting, and I wish I had seen it when I was young. It would have been lovely to have seen it just for itself without study or preconceived notions. Somehow Shakespeare has become high-brow and lofty, and one is often taught to believe that a lot of scholarship is required to make sense of it. This play simply overturns those notions.

Mayhem, Murder, and Magicians

Yesterday I finished Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a novel about dueling English magicians in the Napoleonic era. It took me more than two weeks to read it, which tells you something about the length of it (782 pages). It's wonderful when an engrossing story is also a lengthy one so that you can stick with it for a while . . . if your budget doesn't allow for vacations, isn't a good book a great alternative? Wasn't it Emily Dickinson who said, "There is no Frigate like a Book, to take us Lands away"? (Yes, it was--I just looked it up.)

If you saw the movie The Prestige (which was also a book), you have a little of the flavor of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, though Clarke's book is comical, and The Prestige, in my memory of the film, is rather grim. Strange & Norrell is recommended by my local library for readers who enjoyed The Night Circus, which is how I came across it. Some reviewers have said it combines high fantasy with the drawing room humor of Jane Austen. Certainly the social contretemps endured by Clarke's characters seem more in keeping with the brightness of Austen's world than with the deadly earnestness of The Prestige, despite all the magic and references to Faerie.

Personally, though, I can't imagine any of Austen's people holding much truck with the spell-strewn, whimsical characters of Clarke's book, though I see what reviewers mean about the society humor. The book is funny as well as fantastical, and the humor is a nice balance to the dark twists the story takes. I don't think the book would be as effective without the sniping social climbers, jealous rivals, mystified government ministers, and long-suffering servants who inhabit its pages and counteract some of the eeriness. There are many good fantasy writers, but the ability to seamlessly combine wildly imaginative plotting, alternate worlds, wit, history, and satire is rare, I think.

I would compare the tone of the book to Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, with its sense of menace and otherworldly mayhem, crossed with the quirkiness and dark humor of Sadie Jones's The Uninvited Guests, with some Neil Gaiman-style chaos, a la American Gods, thrown in. This description is not to detract at all from the author's originality and sheer imaginative brilliance, but it does give you an idea of the territory the novel occupies.

The genius of the story lies in the characterization of the magicians as just another species of "gentlemen scientists," men of standing who happen to have chosen the art of magic for their profession instead of law, the military, or the Church. They approach the most arcane and fantastical of tasks--walking through mirrors, bringing someone back from the dead, moving a city across the ocean to affect the course of a war--with the matter-of-factness of scholars; they study, hoard books, publish, curry favor, seek publicity, become arrogant, and jockey for position. Historical figures, including George III, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Byron, mingle easily with the book's characters, exhibiting none of the artificiality of "cameo" appearances. They are just a few more well-drawn personages in a large, sprawling, and lively cast.

In one of my favorite scenes, Strange, the bolder and more adventurous of the contending magicians, has feuded with Lord Byron, whom he encounters while traveling in Switzerland. The two men share the same publisher, who receives letters from both of them, each complaining about the other, on the same day. The publisher, Mr. Murray, decides that although it's too bad his clients don't jibe, it really isn't surprising, "since both men were famous for quarrelling: Strange with Norrell, and Byron with practically everybody." In a footnote, Clarke has Byron use Strange as the inspiration for the magician in his poem Manfred.

I don't know if Ms. Clarke intends ever to revisit these characters; the story's conclusion seems to leave the possibility open, since the end, though satisfying, doesn't tie all the loose threads up neatly. While this may have been simply a nod to complexity and a refusal to go with a predictable ending, it makes for an easy segue into a sequel if it ever comes to that. I wouldn't count on it, but I wouldn't rule it out either. The trickster spirit of the novel, of taking characters and readers places they didn't expect to go, is evident even in the closing sentences. I turned pages anxiously to see how it would turn out but was obstinately sad when it was all over.

Nights of Wonder and Magic

The clear skies on these sharp winter nights are spectacular. A couple of nights ago, I was out walking before sunset, and the sun, instead of being mired in haze, was distinctly visible as an orange ball, fiery and tremendous. Last night, I noticed a very bright and beautiful planet high in the sky after sundown, which must have been Venus, and on the way home from the coffeehouse, I was lucky to witness the rising of the Full Snow Moon, or Long Night Moon, or Oak Moon, whichever you prefer to call it.

I hadn't heard the December moon referred to as the "Oak Moon" until the other night. I was reading about this and about the Druids marking this moon by performing some of their special magic; the oak tree, of course, was sacred to them. Nights in early winter, according to this lore, are fraught with magic and mysterious events. Stack that on top of December's association with Saturnalia, and you really have the makings of a wild winter carnival.

Hecate, let the games begin. Your cell phone disappears. Your walls are suddenly alive with snapping noises in the predawn hours. Heavy footsteps overhead awaken you at 3:15 a.m. A mysterious current tinkles your wind chime in an enclosed room. People begin speaking loudly, as if they're confident they're making sense, while you're wondering what in the world they could possibly be smoking.

It seems to fit. I've known Decembers as peaceful as "Silent Night" and as surreal as anything by Hieronymus Bosch. It's partly the short days and long nights that set the spirits loose. Apollo, the god of reason and science, who's associated with the sun, is less prominent at this time of year, opening the door for other deities to have a go. I read an evocative description one time about what life was like before the days of gas and electrical lighting, when night was really night, dark and impenetrable, and the imagination gave birth to not only goblins but also fairies and sprites. The long nights of winter, with their bitter cold, howling wolves, and long shadows, still alive as an ancestral memory (unless we're from the tropics), were especially conducive to a free reign of fancy. Some of the dangers were real, and some were imagined, but which was which?

Of course we have the holidays, with all their glitter and cheer, songs, lights, and merriment, to chase away the shadows, or at least to remind us that in the midst of the darkest hours, life still thrives. At the Northern Hemisphere's darkest hour, the sun is actually making its turn (or we are, more precisely), and from that point on, the days grow gradually longer again.

In times past, people celebrated the holidays and survived winter by sitting around the hearth together. Many people still do, and I think they've got the right idea. One problem with modern life is a tendency for people to go their own way a little too much. We vaunt our independence, but at heart we're social creatures, and if we remember holidays from the past with a misty eye, it's because we remember the warmth and good feeling that come from being with family and friends. Companionship and good cheer completely transform cold December nights from a time of darkness to a time of celebration. It's what Scrooge found out the hard way, but, fortunately, not too late.

December is a time of battle between forces of light and darkness. Easy to give way to the doldrums, or to sadness, or to let the goblins in. But tweak your attitude a little, extend your hand to a loved one, light a candle, wrap a gift, or turn the shadows of a winter night toward a narrative that celebrates darkness and light (and gives both their due), and the spirit of the whole enterprise changes. I like Chris Van Allsburg's story The Polar Express for just that reason, because it honors both light and dark and sees the magic in their interplay.

For years I tried to write my own version of a solstice story that involved a forest, a snowy night, animals gathering, and festivities overturning the usual order of things -- sort of a Midwinter Night's Dream -- but I could never get it quite right. I had the atmosphere and the setting, but it seemed more of a tone poem than an actual plot. As I think about it now, I usually experience the magic of the season in just that way, as moments here and there, a fireplace, a favorite ornament, a perfect, unexpected gift, a midnight Mass, the taste of eggnog, the sound of a children's choir in the mall, or the face of a loved one, either near at hand or long absent and suddenly returning. It's only when you put them all together that you realize there's a story in them after all.

I'm trying to celebrate this season by looking for those kinds of moments as well as the little light that's always burning, even during (and perhaps especially during) the long nights of December. I hope you can find your own way to do the same, but remember . . . go easy on the eggnog.

Bookstore Logic

Just today I noticed a bookmark that I've apparently been carrying around for more than two years. I remember the day I visited the bookstore in Louisville and the book I bought, a guide to Los Angeles. I've used the book many times but don't recall seeing the bookmark, which includes a quote from Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist: "To carry a book in your pocket or in your bag, particularly in times of sadness, is to be in possession of another world, a world that can bring you happiness."

I've always been a reader. When I was a little girl, I didn't read books so much as immerse myself in them. It was an effortless, unselfconscious way to enter other worlds that immediately became my own, as if I were just another character, looking over the shoulders of the other characters or sitting quietly in a corner. The books I read up until the age of 12 or 13 live for me in a way that few books have since then. At some point I became a more critical reader, which sounds like a good thing but in reality meant that stories lost some of their immediacy for me. It became harder to get lost in them as I became more aware of things like style, literary value, etc. The Nancy Drew books I loved at age 8 then became "formulaic," and I was no longer enchanted by the "silliness" of Dr. Seuss.

I had crossed an invisible border, leaving a magic world and stepping into a more pedestrian reality in which books still called to me, but more softly. My imagination still craved the luminous realm of fairy tales, of King Arthur and Robin Hood and the Little Golden Books, but I could no longer get there. I don't know if this happens to other people or not. Once in a while, a book would still sweep me into its world, a book like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Hobbit or some of the novels of Mary Stewart. On the whole, though, as reading became a more intellectual exercise, my capacity to feel its magic became less.

I actually remember telling a friend years ago that I was tired of reading about life and wanted to experience it directly instead of just in books. Be careful, oh, be careful, what you wish for! The god of libraries (Sesat? Thoth?) might have had a hand in what followed, possibly intending a corrective measure to curb my attempts to flee the library (which turns out to be bad form for a librarian). Let's just say I learned my lesson and am perfectly content now to spend the entire winter curled up with a good book, sipping hot chocolate and eating plates of cookies.

One thing that has somehow never waned is the irresistible lure of a bookstore. I remember sadly the days when all we had were chain stores at the mall, which carried bestsellers and paperback classics but not a lot else. Since then I've developed a pretty high bar for what a bookstore should be, and there are actually some stores that meet it. One criterion is that it should be possible to just walk in and feel yourself attracted to titles at every hand, without having to scour the shelves. (I know some people enjoy rummaging around to uncover gems, but I don't want bookfinding to be like work -- it should be like play).

This is a true story: I was in Northern California six years ago, touring the wine country of Sonoma County and environs. I found myself passing through a small town, no more than an eyeblink, which somehow appealed to me, even though I was on my way to somewhere else. I drove for another 45 minutes or so through an idyllic landscape but kept thinking about the little town I had seen. For some reason, I turned around and drove back, stopping to get chai at a little cafe, and then moving down the street to visit the town's little bookstore.

There was a table in the middle of the store loaded with books on a variety of topics, in no particular order. I picked up a book with an interesting title and opened it at random. The first word my eye fell on was the word "maze." Not surprising that I would notice this, since I'd been interested in mazes for a while. I picked up another book, on a different topic than the first one; again I opened it at random, and again, the first word I saw was "maze." A third book; again, at random, again, the word "maze."

I wasn't even thinking about myth studies at that point, but I knew enough about Jung to recognize synchronicity. I had always bemoaned the fact that that type of thing never happened to me, and now, shazam!, here it was. Of course, three is a magic number in fairy tales, and looking back, I see this incident as the opening by which I fell into the rabbit hole of a whole series of adventures, good and bad. At the time, I wasn't sure how to interpret this bookstore experience, but I kept wondering about it, until six months later, I was in graduate school, the last place I thought I'd be. I wrote about mazes and labyrinths several times, but resisted choosing it for my dissertation, not really accepting that the topic had already chosen me.

I now know a word I didn't know before, which is numinous, the quality of divinity or magic that shines through certain events, places, and things, revealing a pulsating significance where something very ordinary appeared only a moment ago. A good bookstore deals in the numinous, as does a good library. That's why it's important to be within reach of one or the other, and preferably both, if you are, say, thinking about relocating. I spent an afternoon and two frustrating evenings in Los Angeles looking for the one (there are several good used bookstores, but you also need one that deals in new books). I approached the last bookstore on my list feeling nervous, since I hadn't yet seen anything at all like what I had in mind. Would I end up having to move to Northern California (or Portland? or Seattle?) just to be near a good bookstore?

Fortunately, this bookshop turned out to be just the right size. Browsing yielded a good number of interesting titles. In one corner was a little boy surrounded by a pile of books, whose mother was threatening to leave without him (when last seen, he was still reading). There were thoughtful staff picks. I chose a book to buy, then changed my mind, picking up the one next to it, and thought to myself, this store could be the difference between my moving here or not moving here.

I didn't get to start the book until last night. I was finishing another book I had become engrossed in, a book about, of all things, a bookstore and a writer. (I had found it at Powell's, the Paradiso of bookstores, in Portland.) I picked up the new book last night, intending to read a little before going to bed. I liked the way it started, with a musing on the power of scent to hold memories; its setting in Provence; the romance combined with a touch of Gothic; the lyricism of the writing. Then, at the bottom of page 11, at the beginning of chapter 3, I came across the words: "Dom and I met in a maze." You're kidding me.

It was Bilbo who said, "the Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead, the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can . . ."