Myth Opportunities

[jack_babalon]

At the age of thirteen I was, as embarassed as I am to admit this now, not much of a reader. My literary diet at that age consisted of comic books, comic books, D&D manuals, more comic books and the occasional homework assignment that I plowed through with a joyless effort. This worried my folks some. Mom and Dad were always voracious readers. One of my earliest memories is trying to scale the towering (at least to my four, five year old perspective) walls of bookshelves that lined our living room in Brooklyn. There were books on the nuances of Colonial warfare, the tarot, great naval battles of World War One, science fiction analogies, Lovecraft novels, vikings, knights, Greek myths, poetry, Napeleonic warfare, cold war spy thrillers and as I would gradually climb from one shelf to the next I would pause to examine the fraction of pictures that appeared on the spines underneath the text of the titles. My interest in books in other words rarely went beyond a mild curiosity towards the cover art.

One day, some many years later, while my Dad had taken me to a fabulous comic-book shop in New York City called Forbidden Planet, he insisted that I pick out at least one book, one real book to read before I was allowed to fulfill my four-color mutant vigilante fix. Forbidden Planet had one of the most impressive collections of fantasy/science fiction novels you could imagine. Walls upon walls wrapping from one side of the store to the next filled every conceivable author you could imagine. This however didn't mean jack all to me. Still Dad insisted that I pick out a book, any book, just long as I would read it. I sulked along the aisles, drifting from title to title without any interest until, by chance really, I came across Robert Asprin's Another Fine Myth. I read the back blurb - magic, dragons, demons and intrigue. It could be interesting I figured. So with a why-not of a shrug I grabbed the paperback and handed it over to my dad in the hopes that now, finally, we could get to the meat of the matter - the new comic books.

But then something miraculous happened later that night. After I exhausted the further adventures of Snake Eyes, Wolverine, Hawkeye, Bat-man and Daredevil I reluctantly began to read the novel before bedtime and discovered to my surprise that it was... *gasp*... interesting! See it wasn't that this was just another fantasy adventure ala one of my RPG modules... it was something completely different to me - the 'demon' was the hero, the sorcerers apprentice was a thief who was only grudgingly willing to learn magic (the way I was grudgingly reading) to further his own interests, the dialouge crackled off the page, the chapters were distinquished by the most ludricrous quotes imaginable, there was this big epic show down building up with an all powerful sorcerer building up, there was an inept pet dragon that puked up a soup of vile instead of flames, 'D-Hoppers' to travel between universes but most of all there were characters that were somehow likable and when not likable, compelling.

From there I began to devour the succeding books in the series - following the adventures of Skeeve and Ahaz(sp) as they battled armies, the fantasy mafia and other threats as menacing as they were funny. Then I began to read the Wildcards series followed by 'Hell' books which were both anthologies one with real life superheroes, the other was this rollicking soap opera in the depths of hell starring a cast of some histories most distinquished stars. This led to Douglas Adams which for some reason eventually led to me picking up Kerouac, which led to the Beats, which led to an interest in Buddhism, which opened the path to a parallel interest in literature as well as the occult. Some twenty three years later (I know but that's the math) and I'm now in the process of writing my second draft of my own novel... all of which begins with the thread of that one stray fantasy novel I picked by as much whim as I did the cover art.

Robert Asprin passed away yesterday. I don't really have a profound goodbye to offer the man but I would at least like to take the opportunity to thank him posthomously for showing me that the written word could be more than a just another chore (the mental equivalent of a gym class so to speak), but could also in fact be something magical, exciting and most important to me - funny! So thank you sir, for sparking my love affair with the word and doing so in a way that managed to keep a smile on my face the whole time.

I can only hope one day to provide a similar young man the same opportunity you gave me.

Comments

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I don't really have a profound goodbye to offer the man
Humble, but inaccurate. :)
I've never read any of Mr. Aspirin's stuff, but now I want to.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Really? As Vincent Vega says in Pulp Fiction - "You'd dig it the most".

On an unrelated note, I've just finished Marquez's A hundred years of solitude and I can now offer this advice to struggling writers - "When you finish writing your novel, don't read a book immediately after that won the Nobel Prize!".

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

oh no! i hadn't heard that!
i have always loved the myth-adventures, and have rather piecemeal been re-collecting them. i also wandered in 'phule's army', which is as if robert asprin had written 'kelley's heroes'.
oh. sad.
i'm gonna miss the pervects, the trolls and trollops, the dragons, the bizarre, dragon poker.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Yeah I found out when I was scrolling through my friends page.

I never read Phule's Army, sounds interesting.

Well the beautiful thing about fictional characters is that with enough love and imagination - they often endure beyond their author's to live rich, meaningful lives (some better than others) - so maybe there will be more adventures of Ahaz and Skeeve and all the Pervects and Imps and Khlads(sp?) they may meet.

[ravenface.livejournal.com]

I am sorry to hear this. You wrote very movingly about it.

I had a long love affair with these books and with Piers Anthony's books around the same time.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

A lot of my friends did as well, but I never got into the Piers Anthony stuff myself... I am sadly in need of catching up on my sci-fi/fantasy reading.

[ne.livejournal.com]

This was nice.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Thank you.