David Stevens - Beyond Horatios Philosophy: The Fantasy of Peter S. Beagle

BEYOND HORATIO'S PHILOSOPHY

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BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY DAVID STEVENS

Beyond Horatios Philosophy: The Fantasy of Peter S. Beagle

J. R. R. Tolkien: The Art of the Myth-Maker (with Carol D. Stevens)

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

The Milford Series

Popular Writers of Today

ISSN 0169-2463

Volume Seventy-Six

Copyright 2012 by David Stevens

Published by Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidebooks.com

DEDICATION

Dedicated to the memory of Professor Thomas L. Wymer, teacher and scholar, who taught so many of us what science fiction and fantasy criticism is all about.

Special thanks to Professor Kate Spencer, who first inspired me to write about Beagle for a Popular Culture Association panel in 1978 and whose kind review of the early stages of the manuscript helped improve this book.

And as always, for my colleague, collaborator, friend, and spouse, Professor Carol D. Stevens, who puts up with my serial monomania, and without whom this book would not have been possible.

INTRODUCTION

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet , I, v, 166-67.

I.

Peter S. Beagle burst upon the literary scene in 1960 with the publication of his first novel, A Fine and Private Place , written before he was twenty years old. After that auspicious beginning he slowed down a bit but still produced a significant and well-received body of work, including Come Lady Death, 1963, a novella; I See By My Outfit, 1979, a memoir of a cross-coutry motorscooter trip; The Last Unicorn , 1968, his comic masterpiece and best-known novel; Lila the Werewolf, 1971, another novella; The Folk of the Air , 1986, a return to the incursion of the fantastic into the modern world; The Innkeepers Song , 1993, a hard-edged pure fantasy containing both the best fight scene and the best sex scene in modern fantasy; The Unicorn Sonata , 1996, a young adult novel where the borders of the mundane and fantastic worlds merge mysteriously; Tamsin , 1999, another young adult novel again returning to his favorite device of the fantastic impacting the modern world, and revisiting the impact of ghosts on reality as he had in his first published work; and A Dance for Emilia, 2000, a novella also dealing with ghosts in the modern world, involving the possession of a cat by the spirit of a man unwilling or unable to leave this earth without saying goodbye to his friends. His early works, including A Fine and Private Place ; The Last Unicorn ; and the two novellas Lila the Werewolf and Come Lady Death, were republished in The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle , 1978; and his shorter fiction has been collected in Giant Bones , 1997, in which he revisits the world of The Innkeepers Song , also published as The Magician of Karakosk and Other Stories in 1999; The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances , 1997, 2003, a retrospective collection of stories and essays dating back to 1957; The Line Between , 2006, containing ten new stories including four fables, a childrens story, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, an old tars tale, a sequel to one novel and a prequel to another, and the germ of a prospective witch novel; and We Never Talk About My Brother , containing one previously uncollected story from 1981 but concentrating on new fiction from 2007-2009, including three pieces published in 2008 in a limited edition called Strange Roads . Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle , a retrospective collection of short fiction, came out in February, 2010. His novella extending the story of The Innkeepers Song , called Return, was released in September, 2010. A new collection of short stories, Sleight of Hand , including a new Schmendrick story, was published in March, 2011.

Beagle has announced a magical realist retelling of the Persephone myth, to be called Summerlong (formerly titled For All We Know) , supposedly to be published in 2012 . He has announced a complete revision and expansion of The Folk of the Air , to be called Avicenna , and a radically expanded and altered four-volume rewrite of The Unicorn Sonata . His childrens fantasy novel, Im Afraid Youve Got Dragons , may also be published in 2011 or 2012. He is working on a young adult novel extending his story El Regalo, to be called My Stupid Brother Marvyn, the Witch . More important to his many fans, however, Beagle has also announced a sequel to The Last Unicorn , and published The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version in 2006. A new collection entitled The First Last Unicorn and Other Beginnings has been announced for April, 2012. Included will be a novella-length adventure of the last unicorn, in which she bands together with a duo of ambivalent demons to seek out her lost brethren, apparently either from or adapted from The Lost Version . Additional chapters from A Fine & Private Place , from the unpublished novel Mirror Kingdoms , and even snippets from Beagles childhood and teenaged years will included. Correspondence, running commentary, and interviews should give insight into Beagles creative process. Additionally, he has sold but not yet published Green-Eyed Boy: Three Schmendrick Stories , which is scheduled for publication in 2011 or 2012. Several other collections are also in the works, including Three Faces of The Lady, 2011 or 2012 (collection centered on Come Lady Death); Three Unicorns, 2011 or 2012 (story collection with additional essay); Four Years, Five Seasons, 2011 or 2012 (story collection released as an audiobook in 2010); and Sweet Lightning, 2011 or 2012 (1950s baseball fantasy novel). It remains to be seen how many of these promised works will see the light of day, given that his seventieth birthday is behind him, but Beagle continues to turn out short stories at a prolific rate.

The first thing that impacts a reader is the variety Beagle brings to the writing of fantasy. While the writers almost overwhelming sense of humor pervades all of his work (most noticeable in The Last Unicorn and least noticeable in The Innkeepers Song ), the worlds of most of the other novels, novellas, and even short stories are separate and distinct, with the specific exceptions of the stories of Giant Bones , which was purposefully set in the world of The Innkeepers Song , and the other stories set in the universe of The Innkeepers Song , and his continuing return to Joe Farrell as the readers guide to the fantastic intruding into our cozy world. This may be explained at least in part by Beagles explicit declaration in his Foreword to Giant Bones that, From the first, A Fine and Private Place , I wanted my novels to be as different from one another as I could make them, within the limitations of my skill and imagination. In his headnote to Two Hearts, a brief sequel to The Last Unicorn which appears in The Line Between , he puts it differently: I always had a real horror of repeating myself. That he has succeeded so well is a testament both to his skill as a writer and to his imagination, or perhaps to his acquiescence to horror in his life.

II.

Peter Soyer Beagle was born in New York City on April 20, 1939, to Simon Beagle, a history teacher, and Rebecca Soyer Beagle, also a teacher, and he was raised in the Bronx within sight of the Woodlawn Cemetery, which inspired his first novel. He proudly carries his mothers birth name as his middle name, a constant reminder that his grandfather, Abraham Soyer, was a writer. Abraham was born in Russia and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1912. He wrote articles for the Jewish press in Hebrew and Yiddish, and one of his collections of fables, The Adventures of Yemima and Other Stories , first published in Hebrew in Tel Aviv, has been translated into English by his daughter Rebecca and his daughter-in-law Rebecca L. Soyer and published in 1979. His son Raphael Soyer, a well-known artist, contributed the illustrations, and Peter contributed a brief foreword. Raphaels two brothers, Moses and Isaac Soyer, were also artists. Another of Abrahams books, Forgotten Worlds , was similarly translated by Rebecca Beagle and Rebecca Soyer and published in 1991. Abraham lived with the Beagles in the Bronx until his death in 1940 when Peter was ten months old, and was reportedly the only one who could quiet Peter when he cried as a baby.