Fantasy & History Addendum

Last year, aided by an abundance of quotes from other fantasy writers, I attempted to make an argument for fantasy as a genre fundamentally rooted in history. The basic thrust of my argument was that intelligent fantasy riffs on history, takes its materials and combines it in new ways, albeit often whilst borrowing mythology's toys.

It turns out, though, that Adam Roberts has beaten me to it with a far, far more incisive, intelligent, and compelling argument: that

[C]ontemporary Fantasy is, amongst other things, a mode of historical fiction:—that genre Fantasy is one of the ways the historical novel has evolved as a form, out of the fiction of Walter Scott and his nineteenth-century imitators

It's nice to have one's errant notions confirmed by a greater intellect. 

Discursive Basilisks (A Riff on Somebody Else's Idea)

Phil Christman has this rather good idea, which he exposits here, of "discursive basilisks."

Basically, there are some discourses that are so bad that the only healthy way to engage with them is not only not to engage with them but if possible not to directly look at them. Certainly to attend to them with any specificity is to boost their power. You can talk about them in a vague way, you can gesture at them, but you need to stay carefully on the side of the use-mention distinction, where you’re vaguely gesturing at them. There is something radioactive about the words themselves.

This is how he explains it initially. But for my money, there's an expansion a little later on, spinning from that last sentence, that's even better. The discursive basilisk is something that

will play and replay in your head forever and make your head a worse place to live.

Old Leaf 4: Oh, Wow, It's Summer Already?

So, given that the third in this irregular series has been hidden, I think I'm going to need to investigate options for separating this blog from Blogger — eg Wordpress. Which opens up the ability to finally acquire for myself a proper website, something which is long since overdue. 

The dark heart of history (or, House of the Dragon v. Fire & Blood)

If you’ve watched House of the Dragon and read the chapters of Fire & Blood it’s based on, you’ve been let into a knowledge of the past usually found only in people that read history widely. 

Old Leaf 3: Adulting isn't about "line goes up"

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Thinking Aloud: Self-Confidence 2

So, last time, I sketched an idea of self-confidence as functionally similar to other forms of confidence in being something that requires "putting in the hours." I didn't, however, sketch out what that means, and it's also the case that it's a little bit more complicated than that. What follows is my attempt to figure out what "putting in the hours" means.

Old Leaf 2: I Paint Its Passage

I cannot fix my object; it is always tottering and reeling by a natural giddiness; I take it as it is at the instant I consider it; I do not paint its being, I paint its passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people say, from seven to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute, I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention. It is a counterpart of various and changeable accidents, and of irresolute imaginations, and, as it falls out, sometimes contrary: whether it be that I am then another self, or that I take subjects by other circumstances and considerations: so it is that I may peradventure contradict myself, but, as Demades said, I never contradict the truth. Could my soul once take footing, I would not essay, but resolve: but it is always learning and making trial.

Michel de Montaigne, "On Repentance." 

Old Leaf 1: Notes from the New Year

Scene: it's the Korean War, and the patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, doesn't want to lose another kid. His son Teddy considers his options. And promptly gets distracted planning a trip to Europe.

[The naval training exercises of the Navy ROTC program] might interfere with the plans he was crafting for a bigger, better version of the previous summer's escapades with [his friend Joseph] Gargan. His father's employees had hammered out a nine-week itinerary, and applied for the necessary visas, after asking Ted what he wished to see. Kennedy and Gargan would start in Paris and range across the continent—to Normandy and Bordeaux, then Spain and Morocco, and back up through Provence and Burgundy to Amsterdam, Berlin, and Scandinavia before sailing home on the luxury liner Ile de France. His father would buy a car for them and have it waiting in Paris. Did he prefer another convertible? European-made, or an American brand?

What I Read in 2022

A few lines on everything I read last year.