Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation
I’ve been reading Peter Ackroyd’s writing for almost twenty years now, and I’m frankly beginning to fall behind. It’s hard to keep up with the man: he’s produced poetry, fiction, biographies, creative nonfiction, and, most recently, narrative history. One of his nonfiction books, Albion, was subtitled ‘the English Imagination,’ and was an essay or set of essays investigating exactly that; in fact, much of Ackroyd’s work can be seen as an investigation of, or a struggle with, the nature of English literary, historical, and imaginative traditions — especially as manifested in the history of London. And so his current project (or one of them) is an ambitious six-book history of England. Two have been published so far; as I say, I’m behind, and have only just completed the first, Foundation, examining the past of England from prehistory to the end of the Wars of the Roses.
I think it’s worth looking at here not only because it’s a good and fascinating book, but because the ways in which it stands out are perhaps especially relevant to fantasy fiction. Of course, medieval English history has had a significant influence on English fantasy writing. And certainly the style of the book is gripping and narrative. Specifically, you can see that this is a novelist writing popular history, and at times there’s an imaginative feel of the sweep of time, oddly like the history writing of a Harold Lamb — there’s an ability not only to find themes and ideas in the process of history, but to concretise or distill those themes into a specific moment. As a result, the depiction of history becomes an imaginative act, suggesting the habits of thought of past eras, in a way that I think may be especially relevant to fantasy writers and readers.
It is worth noting, though, that Ackroyd here is consciously an Englishman writing to an English audience about England. As a Canadian, I felt at times as though I was eavesdropping on a conversation, or at least a speech within a conversation. That’s not a bad thing — at no point was the book inaccessible — but it does emphasise the self-reflective nature of the enterprise. As I say, Ackroyd’s been fascinated by Englishness for much of his literary career; this book, and this series, is a logical outgrowth of that. In practical terms, it means that the book consciously chooses to look at English history within a strictly English context, with other parts of Britain or Europe mentioned only so far as they’re relevant to English history.
Different people have different explanations for why horror fiction exists, and why it’s worthwhile. It’s always seemed to me that, whatever else it does, good horror writing expresses some kind of fear or terror that is both deep and common. Insofar as the fear’s deep, the horror story touches a profound well of emotion, as good fiction usually does; insofar as it’s common the story links readers together and reminds us that we share the same dreads. So at its best, horror fiction is empathic and profound.
Journey Into Mystery first appeared in 1952, one of a number of anthology titles from publisher Martin Goodman’s line of comic books. Over the years, the title featured a lot of short horror, fantasy, and science fiction tales, many of them collaborations between editor/scripter Stan Lee and artists like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby. Until 1962. At that point Goodman’s comics were beginning to change direction, following a revival of interest in the super-hero genre. A team book, The Fantastic Four, had taken off. A solo book had followed, The Incredible Hulk. Heroes would now be his company’s main product, and the line would soon come to be known as Marvel Comics. The horror anthology books would be taken over by recurring super-hero characters, and Journey Into Mystery would be the first of the bunch. So with issue 83, in August 1962, in a story credited to Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, it introduced its new lead: the mighty Thor, Norse god of thunder.
Raymond Roussel was a French surrealist writer who died in 1933, aged 56; one of his most famous works, Impressions of Africa, was a self-published novel (later turned into a play) depicting a fantastical African land based on no actual place, which contained a forest called the Vorrh. Late last year, the English sculptor and poet Brian Catling published his second novel, a story based on Roussel’s work: The Vorrh, first of a projected trilogy, described on its back cover as an epic fantasy. It’s a powerful book, precise and unexpected in its use of language and its plot construction, a dizzying and straight-faced blend of history and the unreal.
Early on in Sean Howe’s book-length history Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, the reader’s imagination is spurred by a throwaway anecdote: in 1937, New York magazine publisher Martin Goodman and his wife planned to return from a trip to Europe aboard the Hindenburg — on what would turn out to be the final tragic flight of the German dirigible, which ended with a terrifying aerial explosion and fire that led to the deaths of 36 people. Goodman, as it happened, was too late to get tickets and took a plane instead. You can’t help but wonder, though. What if he’d died then, before he’d expanded his magazine line to include comics? Before he’d hired his nephew Stanley to work in the office and do fill-in bits of writing? What if Marvel Comics, the subject of Howe’s book, had been stillborn? What would have been different in the development of comics, of popular culture, of the North American imagination? Maybe everything. Maybe nothing.
The Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story was first given out in 2009. The category was a nice idea, especially given the increased prominence of comics in the media landscape, but I have to admit that up to this year, I’ve been underwhelmed by the choice of winners. Or, more precisely, winner, singular: Phil and Kaja Foglio’s webcomic Girl Genius took the award three times straight. I don’t dislike the comic, but from what I’ve read, I’d be hard-pressed to identify anything in it that makes it worth a major award ahead of any number of series — Hellboy or Mouse Guard or Wednesday Comics or RASL or All-Star Superman or you name it. After their third win, though, the Foglios announced they would decline to accept a nomination for the next year, in the interest of helping to establish the validity of the award. So the 2012 Hugo went to another title: 
I’ve been thinking a fair bit lately about how I read what I read, and how I enjoy it. Or, what’s in it that I enjoy. It seems to me that much of the pleasure in my reading comes about from bad habits. Which is to say, habits that I can’t help but think ought to be bad, but which nevertheless feel central to the act of reading. Maybe that feeling’s an illusion; maybe it’s the secret why bad habits become habits. At any rate, I thought I’d be self-indulgent this week and throw out what I’ve come up with, as I’d love to hear if any of it resonates with anyone else’s experience of reading.
There was a time in the 1980s when it looked like Marvel and DC Comics might slowly evolve into something like mainstream book publishers: publishers who gave creators fair deals respecting copyright, and who lived off of the publication of new titles rather than the exploitation of intellectual property from decades previous. That hasn’t really happened, so far as I can see. Both companies dabbled in various kinds of creator ownership, but both appear mostly to have retreated to the relative safety of work-for-hire deals in recent years. Vertigo, a DC imprint featuring better deals for creators, seems to have become more strict in their contracts, and the