It's a magical world

To say nothing of my chosen career path, and avocations.

One might mock—one does mock—the mastery of what is, after all, mere mock history. But the fantasy readers’ learned habit of thinking historically is an acquisition as profound in its way as the old novelistic training in thinking about life as a series of moral lessons. Becoming an adult means learning a huge body of lore as much as it means learning to know right from wrong. We mostly learn that lore in the form of conventions: how you hold the knife, where you put it, that John was the witty Beatle, Paul the winning one, that the North once fought the South. Learning in symbolic form that the past can be mastered is as important as learning in dramatic form that your choices resonate; being brought up to speed is as important as being brought up to grade. Fantasy fiction tells you that history is available, that the past counts. As the boring old professor [Tolkien] knew, the backstory is the biggest one of all. That’s why he was scribbling old words on the blackboard, if only for his eyes alone.

--Adam Gopnik, "The Dragon's Egg"

I--yeah. It's no accident that I consider my interest in history to be strongly motivated by an interest in narrative.

Happy Birthday, sparowhawk! At this point I have known her for about half of my life, which is scary when I think about it, but also speaks to the volumes of fun we continue to have. Many happy returns!

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In other news, I have a quotation of the day to post before I go fill out my Starbucks application: 

Later: I just finished this book, so I will append a brief review of it. In brief, it is excellent. I've been eyeing it ever since it came out while I was in college--indeed, I nearly bought the paperback at my college bookstore at several points--and I have to say that it's excellent overall. The hero is Oliver, a (bilingual!) American boy living with his parents in Paris: on Epiphany, he keeps his gold paper crown on too long and is mistaken by the window wraiths of Versailles for their new king, and adventures (and a battle for the soul of the multiverse) ensue. Gopnik lived with his family in Paris for a while, and his affection for the city shows through beautifully, though without condescension, and he manages to make gentle fun of both Parisians and Americans throughout the book, mostly through trenchant observations. The book is very elegantly constructed--its themes show through beautifully, but never become overbearing--and the characters are wittily sketched. It's also a contemporary update, in some respects, of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (indeed, Alice herself appears at one point!), and I appreciated that the book, though fantasy, very firmly embraces email, computers, iPods, quantum physics, and other trappings of modernity while trumpeting balloon swords and millennium-old stained glass windows. Like Oliver himself, it is something of a hybrid, and it thinks.