I found it interesting how many of our readings for this week deal with the power of words or stories. "Siege of Cranes" likely incorporates the most wordy tropes. As the typical fairy lore goes, the power of speech denotes magical animals and Marish needs be wary of words in the djinn's fairy world where words equal boons. The war-machine of body bits falls apart as Marish identifies the pieces and Magd also comes under his control through the exchange of a few words. I've also read plenty of tales which speculate about the mental character of horror story writers, but "Sob in the Silence" went ahead and made a murderer out of the guy. I couldn't help but think of Gordon Strangle Mars from Link's "Magic for Beginners." Also to mind came Agatha Christie's Ariadne Oliver character or "Murder, She Wrote," in which mystery novel writers are also able to solve mysteries. Through their writing, they all gain the ability to do as they write. The horror story writer gets the added bonus of receiving the same type of supernatural revenge he might write about. The story becomes even more powerful than the novelist as he is overcome by Maude's story. The "Seven Librarians" tale also obviously deals with "word-power" and also makes me think of "Magic for Beginners." Both use a library as a whole other world and both of the main characters struggle with their role in becoming part of the library. Interestingly, Fox's library seems more like the external world, whereas Dinsy must leave the library to experience nature and cities and the like.
I think, in the end, writers probably can't help but think of their own creative powers and feel the need to make a story out of it.
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2 comments:
Yeah.
The "power of words" goes back so far though. Even before the written word took hold and ran amok, Druids and other holy men were convinced of language's power... to the point where they were afraid to write it down. Even after the word solidified with ink, people still feared that if it fell into the wrong (main-stream) language, people could do some serious damage with it (and maybe they were partially right...).
What I'm saying is, it's no wonder people are still writing about this. We're still obsessed by language's power. There's even an entire facebook group dedicated to putting people down for their poor use of grammar.
I didn't really think that "Seven Librarians" or "Magic for Beginners" had so much to do with the power of words so much as the power of our own belief in the focus of the story. I think it was almost more coincidental that the thing that both stories believed in was a library where words were kept.
I agree with you on "Siege of Cranes" though.
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