Adventure classics – Mr. Eddison’s never ending story

The Worm Ouroboros

by Eric Rücker Eddison

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I could hardly believe my eyes when, searching for overlooked pre-Tolkienesque fantasies, I found Listverse’s “Top 10 Underrated Fantasy Stories Before 1937,” and its mention of E.R. Eddison’s  1922 magnum opus, The Worm Ouroboros. “My favorite novel,” gushed the Listverse writer. And I thought, wow, who knew anybody but me loved Eddison’s work?

Ouroboros is the tale of the warring kingdoms of Witchland and Demonland, set ostensibly on the planet Mercury, whose history endlessly repeats itself. The title refers, not to any of the characters, but to the dragon (“worm” in Old English) of Norse mythology that swallows its own tail, with no beginning or ending. And it’s told in a 16^th century idiom reminiscent of Shakespeare in an opium dream.

Although J.R.R. Tolkien had some praise for Ouroboros, which got a 1950’s reprint following the success of at his Lord of the Rings, at this point you may understand why Eddison’s works haven’t exactly become cultural icons.

Still, I think his books may yet get their due in 21^st century fantasy realms. His “Demons” and “Witches,” along with his other nations of Pixies, Imps, Goblins and Ghouls don’t sound as bizarre to readers steeped in paranormal fantasy today as they must have in the early decades of the previous century; his byzantine, sexually-charged plot twists familiar ground to Game of Thrones enthusiasts.

And computer-generated animation seems made to delve into Eddison’s sometimes descriptions of setting, such as this one for the audience chamber in the palace of Lord Juss, ruler of Demonland, whose support pillars are each topped with a precious stone “carved by the hand of some sculptor of long ago into the living form of a monster: here was a harpy with screaming mouth, so wondrously cut in ochre-tinted jade it was a marvel to hear no scream from her: here in wine-yellow topaz a flying fire-drake:…there a star sapphire the colour of moonlight, cut for a cyclops, so that the rays of the star trembled from his single eye….”

Eddison lavished similar detail on everything from the dresses of the highly decorative princesses and damsels accompanying his heroes to Himalayan-rivaling mountain ranges. His characters are equally baroque: heroes inimitably brave, strong and good; villains equally brave, strong and evil. The action is tremendous, beginning with an epic single combat, a wrestling match between the evil king of Witchland and Lord Juss’s brother, the Demonland champion, for domination of their world.

But Witches are witches. No, actually, they’re not. Their kings are powerfully evil sorcerers more like Tolkien’s Saruman than Halloween (or even Shakespearean) crones stirring cauldrons. So they’re not about to let the Demons’ win in the wrestling match keep them from plotting more villainy. In Eddison’s viewpoint, there are no shadows, no in-betweens. And neither side ever, ever gives up.

As the introduction to the 1952 edition states, perhaps with a hint of wistfulness, “There are no complications, no reservations and no excuses here. Pagan these warriors may be (actually, Eddison is notably short on religious overtones) and semi-barbarous, but they are not oppressed by weasel-faced doubts or whining uncertainties…and life itself is joyful and wonderful.”

But there, I haven’t even gotten to the melancholy traitor Gro (the only character with any approach to complexity, little good though it does him). Or to the Scarlet Pimpernellish Demon Lord Brandoch Daha or the May-December romance between lovely Prezmyra and Witchland’s cunning old warrior Corund. I’ll continue this discussion next Friday, although readers who want to read (or reread) will be able to see the entire story here.

Adventure classics -- Return to Middle Earth

The Hobbit

by J.R.R. Tolkien

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Never underestimate the importance of bedtime stories. Fantasy writer Rick Riordan said he started his bestselling “Lost Hero” series because his son demanded more stories. Even more famously, an obscure professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University scribbled a line on the blank page of an examination paper he was grading. The line, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” grew into a tale he told his children.

And after the head of a publishing firm got a positive report on the completed story from his own ten-year-old son, Rayner Unwin, the tale became The Hobbit, published in 1937. The professor, of course, was J.R.R. Tolkien.

Although in Tolkien’s remembrance, that first sentence of The Hobbit seemed random, it drew on a fascination with languages dating back to his own childhood and on a personal mythology he had begun to write as an escape from the horror of service during the First World War and recurrences of the dreaded trench fever that flourished in the unsanitary conditions.

As he recalled in a letter, he was already writing the stories that would be the basis of the underlying history of Middle Earth “. . .in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire.”

They did not, however, include any beings remotely like hobbits. And when Tolkien offered his publisher the stories that would form the Silmarillion, the verdict came back, “not commercially publishable.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

The work that would seal Tolkien’s fame, The Lord of the Rings, did include plenty of hobbits. The by-then adult Rayner Unwin guided it through its later stages despite the reluctance of his father’s firm to incur an expected loss on its publication.

As the Tolkien Society’s website, www.tolkiensociety.org/, reports in its understated way, “It soon became apparent that both author and publishers had greatly underestimated the work’s public appeal.”

A reminder of that continuing appeal came recently from British blogger Mark Lord (www.marklord.info/) spreading news of a new Hobbit movie directed by Peter Jackson. I also found a regular chronology of the film’s making by tracking the dates of www.youtube.com/ uploads (just search “hobbit film”).

Peter Jackson, also known as the man who brought the complete Lord of the Rings to the screen, will release the first of the two-part production December 14 in his hometown of Wellington, New Zealand. Hope it’s in my town by Christmas!

(Next Friday, Adventure classics continues a November of fantasy with Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn. Bonus for Texas readers -- Beagle will be at the Texas Renaissance Festival near Plantersville this coming weekend, November 5-6, and at Wizard World in the Austin Convention Center November 12-13. He’s also very accessible on Facebook.)