Mythcon 44: Day 3
By the third day, Mythcon takes its toll.
It’s not that I don’t want more of everything this gathering of scholars and enthusiasts of Tolkien and mythmaking has to offer; but my body is on the verge of collapse from lack of sleep. Getting up for the morning panels and staying up late for Bardic Circle was bound to catch up with me.
Somehow I managed to stay wide awake for today’s morning panels: two playful, very particular examinations of Tolkien from angles you’d never dream of, and a penetrating scholarly take on the mythic underpinnings of the fantasy novels of E.R. Eddison. The morning was capped by fantasy author Franny Billingsley‘s engaging and enormously informative “The Writer’s Craft: Creating the Fictional Dream,” a nuts-and-bolts primer on punching up one’s fiction writing. (Just one of several well-crafted turns of phrase she offered, this one off the cuff, regarding the hyperrefrigerated auditorium we inhabited: “They pass the air under Greenland before recirculating it in here.”)
After lunch, I had the distinct pleasure of listening to another fantasy author, Saladin Ahmed, read from his work. I’d been looking forward to his reading since I’d seen the schedule for the convention, since his Muslim/Arabic-themed fantasy world and perspective add a hue other than medieval European to the mix; lamentably, hot competition with another simultaneous presentation meant Ahmed’s reading drew poor attendance. Those of us who were there got the better deal, I suspect.
And then my body shut down. Roger Echo-Hawk‘s thesis that Tolkien drew not only from northern European mythology but also from the mythos of the Pawnee was intriguing, though I remain skeptical, since so many similar themes and tropes arise independently in the mythologies of farflung cultures that couldn’t have crosspollinated; some mythic images seem to pop up simply because we’re human. But I can’t really critique him properly, since most of what he said came to me only through the semiconscious haze of my nodding off.
That’s a clear sign if ever there was one. So I’m signing off for now, to catch a nap and be fresh for tonight’s festivities: the banquet, awards, evening entertainment (including a masquerade!), and of course, Bardic Circle.
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