I've been trying to do more reading the last two years and I think I discovered something important. I have always been drawn to fantasy but I don't think it's fantasy that I really want. Rather, I think what really draws my attention is Myth, eternal truths about humanity, creation, and God communicated through story.
Recently I got through C.S. Lewis's 'Space Trilogy' and found the journey most excellent indeed. Even if his version of space travel feels more like fantasy than science fiction and the chief evil of That Hideous Strength doesn't translate as well into the current day I found the stories delightful to read and very thought provoking. It is C.S. Lewis after all, his writings are rife with gems to be uncovered if you take to time to dig even just a little. C.S. Lewis writes fantasy and science fiction, true, but all his stories are infused with mythic truth. The Gospel, for instance, can clearly be seen in The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe and the number of analogies to it in Voyage to Venus made me breathless at points! Lewis goes beyond just The Gospel though, he goes into the human condition, the nature of spiritual beings, the nature of creation, and commentary on his current time.
What really brought out the mythic qualities to me was contrasting C.S. Lewis' writings with popular contemporary fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. Before I dove into Lewis I read Sanderson's Mistborn, a well written fantasy story with interesting characters, a compelling story, and an intriguing setting complete with an engaging cosmology, and the story unfolds like a good adventure novel should. The writing was professional, he employed a honed structure, the materials was original but he, like all good authors, borrowed ideas from the classics. I enjoyed the story, and it made me ask 'what if' at many points, but it was clearly a different type of story than what Lewis was telling. Popular fantasy writes good stories to entertain, or try to get some point across. Myth is also entertaining but it is infused with truth. Popular fantasy conjures up a fabricated light to illuminate the story, mythic stories reflect or allow true light to shine through into our minds and illuminate our inner most parts. C.S. Lewis was a serious and professional scholar, a world class medievalist and master of story who literally taught literature for a living. Today's popular authors by contract may have heard of him or even sat in on one of his classes, but the there is an incomparable gap between them.
As one of my former professors, Dr. Eric Ortlund, noted, everyone needs mythic stories, stories that give us context for how to live and what the world is about, so much so that if we are not given myths we create our own and this, I think, is the cause of much harm. The ancient philosophers taught through stories, Jesus taught the people through stories almost exclusively, and much of the Bible is communicated through stories. Something about story is both deep and wide, deep in the sense that it reaches into our inner most parts and wide in the sense of it being a universal language that everyone can understand.
I think I want to become a good story teller. Not just good at telling stories, but to really understand what makes a good story, how it should be told, and to become acquainted with the best stories out there. When I was doing my thesis under Dr. David Gurtezki he said that our natural interests should give us a clue about what we will do in life (or in the case of that conversation, one's thesis). Well, I've always been a sucker for good storytelling when it comes to video games. I enjoy fantasy and science fiction, the two most popular modes that myth is told in. I have an inextinguishable interest in role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons where it is, essentially, group story telling.
From political parties spending outrageous sums to control 'the narrative', to the incredible success of the 'Critical Role' crowd funding campaign it seems to me that there is need to understand story telling. It seems to me that we are beset by myths that would seek to control us. Individualism, modern day crusades, modernity and post-modernity, left and right, and a dozen different perspectives on history. But here I am getting way ahead of myself.
First I will read some more good books. Maybe one day I can engage with some stories of my own.
