News from Nowhere
I was just reading a review of Alan Garner’s classic WEIRDSTONE OF BRISINGAMEN, a novel I strongly recommend to anyone who has not had the pleasure of reading it.
I was not too taken aback to see that the reviewer, an adolescent I presume, thought the book similar to LORD OF THE RINGS. Apparently the child had not been exposed to enough fairy tales to see the Cadellin and Gandalf and Merlin the Magician are all from the same archetype.
Another archetype is Durathor the Dwarf, who dressed and acts like a doomed, grand warrior from a Norse saga, eager for Valhalla.
But the review ended with this note:
The only questionable aspect of the book is Durathor’s love of battle although it must be pointed out that he only fights the svart, who are clearly evil.
Do you understand, dear reader, what this means? It means that an average adolescent (or whoever wrote the review) raised in the modern cultural atmosphere cannot even understand something as normal as a Viking-style character, a hero, having a love of battle. It is ‘questionable.’
Pagan Heroism questionable. A mini-Viking Berserker questionable. Ponder that. I thought the war against the concept of manhood had still some ground to gain before its triumph.
Look, I have talked with enough of the moderns on the Internet to know that they must destroy Christ because they love Satan and hate goodness and chastity. But … but … (and now I must pause, overcome with emotion, to daub my unmanly eyes) … but must you also hate and destroy pagan virtues as well?
Are we to have neither the Paladin of Charlemagne NOR the Einherjar of Odin?
Will the brave, new world be nothing but lobotomized and slightly chubby eunuchs, like so many drugged and smiling drones, placid, pacified, numbered, numbed, addicted to porn, mere lumps of pleasure-seeking meat?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
