Mother West Wind’s Children
posted by mjd 
in HM, Magic Realism, Reading | 2 Comments »
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- The Future Fire Issue 2009.18 –– “Maryann Saves the World”
- The Homeless Moon July 2009 — “The Cannon and the Prophetess”
- Beneath Ceaseless Skies August 2009 — “Between Two Treasons”
- Abyss & Apex August 2009 — “Starlings”
- Beneath Ceaseless Skies Feb. 2009 — “Of Thinking Being and Beast”
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What I'm Reading
Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter's Tales
Greer Gilman
The Stories of Eva Luna
Isabel Allende- GoodReads
Other Blogs Where I Ramble
- Homeless Moon A hive mind/conspiracy of five genre writers.
- Literary Beer My blog series on homebrewing at Small Beer Press.
Little, Big.
The first time I read it was in 1991, introduced to it by a Pre-Raphaelite dream of a boy who willo’-the-wisped through my life in the space of a month. Although we touched each other’s lives only briefly, Crowley’s book wove its way through our brief cosmic romance.
I recommended it to people (helps when you work in a bookstore), eventually coming to realize that it’s not something that suits everyone, and it was out of print for a long time. When I met my now closest friend in 1996, we were two of the only people that we knew of at the time who had read it, causing an instant bond between us. Then I found out that John Crowley lives, well, where he lives, and that her mom had typed the manuscript for Aegypt a few years before Little, Big came out. Then more years went by and I re-read it (um, three times in a row) about 3 winters ago, and I really wondered what I’d read the first time, because there were things I remembered that weren’t in the book, and things in the book–major parts of the plot–that I completely didn’t remember, which makes me highly suspicious of what actually is going on in my head and/or what this book actually is, and covetous of the 25th anniversary edition, if it ever comes out.
And, finally, to bring this back to earth again, I went to see John Crowley (and Elizabeth Hand) read at that reading you mentioned, and I heard you read, too, then looked you up, found out you had a blog, and that, in a roundabout way, is why I’m posting a comment now, isn’t it? Heh.
There are lots of books I love, but Little, Big has actually been less like a book and more like a touchstone, or an event, or the sky.
I feel all funny and weird now, like part of my brain has gone to live someplace else for awhile.
Wait—is this not the 25th anniversary edition that I’m reading now? It says the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition was published in 2006….and there’s this website I found:
http://www.littlebig25.com/
where it says you can pay absurd sums for a super special collectors edition.
Anyway. Yes. It is a positively monumental book. And I wish I had read it earlier. Maybe this way I’m getting a better chance to appreciate the nuance of his style, but on the other hand, like Smoky Barnable, I’m missing out on the opportunity to be a kid and believe in fairies.