Classics Illustrated because the actual first edition was from a time before cover art
Alexandru over at Barbarian Book Club
posted a challenge on his blog: Review three fantasy short stories from before Lord of the Rings'
publication date of 1954 and spotlight the similarities and
differences in them. (And share the challenge, which I'm doing with
you right now.)
My recent deep dive into pulp
literature has me reading tons of pre-Tolkien SFF, so rather than
dust off another Robert E. Howard story so soon after a bunch of
Conan and Solomon Kane, I figured I'd dive deeper. Regress
even harder, if you will.
So I
went to the Nineteenth Century.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,
Gent. was a short story and
essay collection published in serial format between 1819 and 1920, a
full century before Edgar Rice Burroughs was writing his early John
Carter and Tarzan stories. Written under the pseudonym “Geoffrey
Crayon” the book was the first international blockbuster for
Washington Irving (1783-1859).
Essayist,
historian, author, traveler and diplomat, Irving was a cultured man
who harbored a deep love for the Hudson River Valley of New York
State. The Sketch Book
features a varied collection of stories, fictionalized real-life
events, travelogue essays and so forth that are written in a smooth,
easygoing style that rolls off the pages with endless charm. However,
only a few of the stories within qualify as fantasy, and they are two
of his most famous pieces.
Written
under the literary conceit of being “discovered” by a (completely
fictional) historian named Diedrich Knickerbocker, Rip Van
Winkle and The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow have become
fixtures of the American literary folklore, but they're both complete
fantasies, made up, as far as I could determine, by Irving himself.
Rip Van Winkle
tells the story of the eponymous Dutch-American colonist living in a
sleepy village along the Catskill, err, Kaatskill Mountains. Rip is a
kind and gentle man, but lazy. Always willing to help other people
out with stuff, but never able to get his own affairs in order, his
condition isn't helped by his formidable harridan of a wife, who
scolds and scolds and scolds him endlessly.
His
only real companion is his dog Wolf, and his only real escape is to
run away into the mountains to hunt or fish. On one such hunting
trip, he gets high up into the mountains one autumn day, and as the
sun begins to set, he hears his name being called. A strange man in
outdated clothes is carrying a keg up the mountain, and beckons Rip
to help him. The two carry the keg to a clearing where several more
men in similarly outdated clothes are playing a serious game of
ninepins, their stern leader resembling famed explorer Henry, err,
Hendrick Hudson.
Silently drafting Rip to be their bartender, he eventually gets into
the booze himself, and quickly falls asleep.
Henry Hudson, Catskills Ninepins Champion: All Year, Every Year
He
wakes to find his musket rusted, his dog missing, and his joints
aching. Working his way back down the mountain, he finds the village
completely different. Buildings are changed, the portrait of King
George over the village inn is replaced with someone called George
Washington. After some confusion, Rip learns he's been asleep for
twenty years and he missed the entire Revolution.
Its
not all bad for him, though. He's reunited with his grown children,
learns his wife died years ago, and he's now reached that age where
sitting around the local inn as a town patriarch telling stories and
drinking won't get him in trouble.
The
story has mythological antecedents with tales of the King Under the
Mountain popular in the German Alps and with countless stories with
similar plotlines going back as far as ancient Greece of a mortal man
stumbling upon a magical revelry and then losing years of his life.
Much like Tolkien, Irving was dipping into history and myth and
bolting it on to his story. Also like Tolkien, he used poetry to add
texture and mood to his pieces.
Unlike
Tolkien, there isn't much of a conflict here. Rip Van Winkle is told
as a folk tale, an episode in the life of a small town. There is no
great conflict (aside from Rip's shrewish wife). Rip is merely living
his day-to-day life until chance draws him into the Weird and it
changes his life forever. The stakes are very small here. Most adaptations of the story, like Will Vinton's 1978 Claymation version, have to add some kind of conflict to wring out a runtime.
Come for the fairy tale, stay for the prog-rock acid trip
Like
Tolkien, the simple pastoral life is elevated, and Rip himself would
fit right in with the good folk of the Shire. Irving goes to great
lengths to describe the Hudson River Valley in loving detail that
settles over the reader like a warm blanket. Its folksly and very,
very comfortable.
Rip Van Winkle
is a charming, incidental story that has a lot of small details going
on under the surface of what is seemingly a lost folktale. Its short, and absolutely worth your time.
