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February 21, 2017

With IN CALABRIA, Peter S. Beagle continues to turn unicorns into such a potent metaphor

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized alias faith rivens, elizabeth story, fantasy, in calabria, magdalena korzeniewska, npr, peter s beagle, review, summerlong, tasha robinson, the bibliosanctum, the last unicorn

A trio of fresh reviews of Peter S Beagle’s breathtaking IN CALABRIA.

For NPR, Tasha Robinson praises Beagle’s punchy and frank novella.

Unicorns are a long-term preoccupation of Beagle’s, possibly because the way he conceives them is so emblematic of the kind of fantasy he writes. In his work, unicorns aren’t just animals with magic tacked on. They’re avatars of ineffable, unearthly wonder. When people in Beagle stories interact with unicorns, they always come away stupefied and enthralled at having touched something much older, richer, and vaster than anything humanity has to offer. But they generally come away more human, as well.

The trend continues with IN CALABRIA, a short novel about a stubborn middle-aged Italian farmer who finds a pregnant unicorn investigating his land. In private, Claudio Bianchi is a poet and a secret romantic. Around other people, like pushy mailman Romano Muscari and his no-nonsense sister Giovanna, Bianchi is gruff and dismissive. He enjoys his privacy, his independence and his isolation. And when the unicorn arrives, he enjoys her too, in a secret, private, almost religious way.

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THE LAST UNICORN is florid and flowery. Every other sentence contains an elaborate metaphor or a magnificently strange turn of phrase. But Beagle’s writing style has slowly trended away from Last Unicorn’s loopy whimsy over the past five decades. IN CALABRIA feels worlds away from his first unicorn story: It’s punchy and frank, with a simple, direct style that mirrors Bianchi’s straightforward inner life. The plot gently recalls James Thurber’s “The Unicorn In The Garden,” another minimalist story about a man who takes profound joy in a visitor on his property, then encounters resistance from the rest of the world. And the comparison feels clearer than it might be with a more elaborately realized book, because Beagle’s prose here is so lean, so focused on bare dialogue and action.

It’s been a hard decade or so for Beagle, who is currently suing his former manager for fraud and physical abuse, only a few years after finally resolving the longstanding legal battle over his contractual rights to the film version of THE LAST UNICORN. But he’s been undergoing a minor renaissance lately, with IN CALABRIA and his 2016 book SUMMERLONG marking his first novels since 1999’s TAMSIN. As absorbing and well-realized as his short fiction is, it’s still exciting to have him involved in longer work again, particularly when he’s returning to his favorite theme, and finding new ways to revitalize it.

Peter Beagle will always be associated with unicorns. It’s fortunate, then, that he’s turned them into such a potent metaphor, suitable for any era, and any kind of troubled hero in need of a little magic.

THE BIBLIOSANCTUM likes the gorgeous tale.

With the deft touch of a master storyteller, Peter S. Beagle weaves a strong thread of mythology into this gorgeous and emotional tale about love, sacrifice, and courage. Reading IN CALABRIA is like stepping through a veil and into a dream, crossing into that secret and magical place where everyday life comes face to face with the fantastical. It’s an unforgettable, stunning experience.

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The setting is also something that stands out. This story of course takes place in the eponymous southern Italian region in a bucolic community characterized by hills and farms. The world is presented as this almost surreal mix of the modern and the traditional, showing the juxtaposition between things like smartphones and ski resorts to Bianchi’s low-tech farm and his ancient, barely-running Studebaker. In my opinion, it’s the perfect backdrop for a story like this; if you can suspend reality for a moment and imagine the possibility of unicorns just magically popping up somewhere in the world, I can easily picture it happening in a place like this.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed this book. It’s a short, quick read, but despite its novella-length page count, IN CALABRIA will draw you in and make you feel like a part of its breathtaking world. Highly recommended for readers who love genuine characters, evocative settings, and storytelling with a touch of pure magic.

ALIAS FAITH RIVENS enjoys the brilliantly vivid story.

The greatest strength of his novel is in the lyrical prose that Beagle deftly wields to draw a reader into the Italian countryside. He crafts such brilliantly vivid images and uses language that provokes emotions and thoughts. It is equal to the one used in Summerlong, if not even more impressive.

This story also excels in its poignant themes. Through the obsession of society over rumours of the legendary, Beagle explores human fascination with the whimsical and their need to contain it, which is then contrasted by Bianchi’s desire to protect and preserve the magical.

It is a beautiful story that is presented within these pages, with characters that command your attention and sympathy and a climax that resonates with true magic.

CONCLUSION

A lyrically engaging and beautifully quiet novel that brings whimsy to life, Beagle is indeed a master of magical realism.

For more info about IN CALABRIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on SUMMERLONG, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Design by Elizabeth Story

January 24, 2017

Peter S. Beagle’s SUMMERLONG is a lovely bit of whimsy and wonder

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized alias faith rivens, constance grady, elizabeth story, essay, magdalena korzeniewska, michael dashow, peter s beagle, poor people's campaign, review, summerlong, the artisanry of acorn cottage, the last unicorn, the rhinoceros who quoted nietzsche, vox

ALIAS FAITH RIVENS is enjoying Peter S. Beagle’s SUMMERLONG.

Anyway, this book is a lovely bit of whimsy and wonder, somewhat reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s work. Shamefully this is my first Beagle novel. I’ve been meaning to read THE LAST UNICORN (the movie has always managed to terrify me and devastate me)! For now, I must say that Beagle has caught my attention.

THE ARTISANRY OF ACORN COTTAGE is slowly experiencing the novel.

Given the general state of the world and our country in particular, I am attempting to balance action and effort with a modicum of self-care. There are only few things I know that compare to the delight of exploring a new-to-me book by a favorite writer. I was able to borrow SUMMERLONG by Peter S Beagle, and am allowing self a few pages at a time, several times a day, to encourage my forward momentum. The wonderfully rich and specific way he uses words, and what to me feels like a glimpse of essential inner lovingkindness, have been invaluable to me.

I first read his THE LAST UNICORN in 1970 (according to my memory and the copyright on my very battered paperback, bought at the New England Mobile Book Fair with a combination of allowance and babysitting money) and have been a delighted if inconstant fan ever since. I read things, and then life distracts me, and then I come back again and remember how nourishing the writings are… Am considering making a reading list, and then after that choosing to add a bit to my heavily curated home library…

Photo: Rina Weisman

Constance Grady at VOX shares a beautiful, forgotten essay by Peter S. Beagle.

The Poor People’s Campaign is a nearly forgotten protest of the civil rights movement, but in 1968 it was one of the most important expressions of the movement.

Planned by Martin Luther King Jr. but carried out after King’s assassination, the Poor People’s Campaign saw thousands of people march into Washington, DC, to join Resurrection City, an encampment on the National Mall. It was, as Vox’s Jenée Desmond-Harris has written, Occupy before Occupy, and the results it achieved were mixed. It fizzled slowly out over a period of months without ever landing a major landmark victory — but it did successfully pressure the federal government into investing heavily in food stamps and school lunches.

One of the best accounts of this almost-forgotten campaign is in an almost-forgotten essay by Peter S. Beagle. Beagle, who is best known as the author of the fantasy cult favorite THE LAST UNICORN, spent the 1960s working as a freelance magazine writer. In 1968, the SATURDAY EVENING POST sent him off to cover the Poor People’s Campaign — a real immersion piece, with Beagle marching and living and demonstrating with the rest of the protesters — but the POST folded before the piece was ever published.

“The Poor People’s Campaign,” Beagle said, was the best magazine writing he ever did, but it didn’t see the light of day until he included it in his 1997 anthology THE RHINOCEROS WHO QUOTED NIETZSCHE AND OTHER ODD ACQUAINTANCES. By then, Beagle wrote, the world had changed, and not for the better: “It seems to me that today’s America not only gives far less of a rat’s ass about the poor than it did thirty years ago, but can no longer be bothered even to pretend that it cares.”

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In Beagle’s account, the movement began with beautiful ideals and energetic and enthusiastic protesters ready to march all over Washington if they had to, only to be stymied by an often absent, always poorly organized leadership from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was founded by King and carried out the campaign while still reeling from his death:

“The rain wouldn’t have mattered if the campaign had been moving. Boredom and confusion — not paid agitators from SNCC [The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], as we kept being told — were the saboteurs of Resurrection City; but at the first flicker of direction, the slightest hint of real confrontation, the marchers surged together and functioned perfectly well. They picketed the Department of Agriculture in the rain, day and night; they spoke their minds to everybody from jumpy cops with two-foot billies to Attorney General Ramsey Clark; they went to jail for singing and praying in the streets on Capitol Hill. The SCLC leaders were annoyed about that, because it hadn’t been planned in advance. Spontaneity made them as nervous as it did the Washington police.

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Beagle’s achingly tender, sorrowful account of the campaign is a reminder of the enormous political power that disenfranchised people can have when they are unified en masse — and of how wastefully that power can be squandered by an incompetent leadership. It’s a powerful prescriptive for how today’s protest campaigns can plan their work. It’s also an enormously beautiful essay.

For more info on SUMMERLONG, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on THE RHINOCEROS WHO QUOTED NIETZSCHE AND OTHER ODD ACQUAINTANCES, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Michael Dashow