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“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”


Thursday, May 17, 2007

On the Death of Lloyd Alexander

First Kurt Vonnegut, and now Lloyd Alexander?! Jesus, why don't you just kill Neil Gaiman too, so I can drink myself into a stupor and never wake up!

(On second thought, if there is any Fate reading this, FORGET I SAID THAT.)

Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles are what got me into Celtic myth in the first place--I wouldn't be who I am if it wasn't for his books.* Reading The Book of Three when I was eleven set me off looking for The Mabinogion, and my searching for Celtic literature hasn't stopped since. I have a website because of it. I'm going back to school because of it.

I first found Lloyd Alexander's books when I was in the sixth grade. I ordered The High King by accident from one of those Scholastics book fairs sheets they would periodically pass around. When I got the book--an old Dell edition--I saw that it was the last book in a series. So, looking at the gist of the book--swords, sorcery, the undead--I decided I'd go out and get the first book, and begin at the beginning. I saved up my allowence, and the next time we went to the mall, I bought The Book of Three.

He created the first real, fleshed-out characters I ever read--Eilonwy, who couldn't care less about acting like a princess; Fflewddur Fflam, who was never a very good bard but kept at it anyway, because being a king isn't much fun; the ambivalent sorceress Achren... And then there was Vesper Holly, the girl adventurer who grew up in my own home town of Philadelphia; Theo the printer's devil, who helped start a revolution...

I always hoped I'd meet him someday. He lived in the area, down in Drexel Hill. But it never happened. I wouldn't really know what to say if I had, really.

He wrote up till his death; I can only hope to be half that productive.

*Don't hold that against him.

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posted by Mary, 10:30 PM