enkidu

Time turns and I run to the past. 

As the new year creeps over tonight’s hill, my reading scheme comes due. However this scheme smells of years rather than the singular. And really, it is the road I have been traveling the majority of my reading life. The mad scheme of a reading plan is to walk the paths of myth and fantasy from Gilgamesh to Tolkien (and eventually beyond).

My list is a growing thing; it is mostly infested with the works I already own. However I continue to seek and decipher and who knows the number of heads this beast will have. But seeking the tomes of fairy is a fair portion of the adventure. 

While my steps will follow a trail of chronology, there will be diversions. Arthurian romances will involve a focus; at times I will sit in a mythic tradition, bypassing its place in the world’s timeline. I have a few collections of culture-focused anthologies which my present plan involves reading interspersed between the works with a more obvious historical anchor. Or, it will be a mess.

What to include is still a shifting parameter. Ghost stories? Satire? Poe? Wilde? Pulp? Where does Science Fiction part ways? My list is wide, but could go wider still. Should my focus be only on myth and the intended myths of today or should it cover all the tendrils that are found in contemporary Fantasy? I, problematically, have yet to decide.

I am happiest with the flesh of my list in the span between George MacDonald and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Truth be told, it could make a fun reading group but I despair the time it would require. There are a few writers here I have long desired to read.

Why am I marking Tolkien as an endpoint? Because in Tolkien the present genre of Fantasy was codified (for some good and probably a lot of bad). To be more specific I cite The Lord of the Rings (1954-56) as the nexus.

Hopefully some of this reading will boil over into writing: nothing inspires my imagination like ancient myth. I have a few hopes and schemes regarding responses to the fey, but this normally gets lost in the weight of the pages. Feel free to ask how the process is unfolding, call me insane, request recommendations.