Reading Marathon Mile Three
(completed: 1896/9898 pages)

I finished reading Memory and Dream by Charles de Lint a few days ago. It’s actually mile #9 of my reading marathon, so it’s a bit out of order, but 400 pages of careful historical and textual exegesis was pretty grueling, and I didn’t want to follow that up with another academic work.

Nevertheless, Memory and Dream made it into my reading list as a study of sorts. The fiction I’ve written and that I want to write perhaps best fits into the categories of magical realism and urban/contemporary fantasy. De Lint is considered by many to be one of the masters of the latter sub-genre, and Memory and Dream a representative work.

Memory and Dream is very different from the fantasy that I’m used to reading–it starts slowly, and devotes a lot of time developing the main character (an art student named Izzy) and her relationships with her brilliant but abusive mentor, her best friend and roommate, and the spirits that she brings into this world through her painting. De Lint doesn’t have to spend as much time on world creation as traditional fantasists, but the world he creates and the rules of magic in it are believable and detailed.

I love reading introspective writing, and you could say that Memory and Dream is as much about Izzy and her paintings as it is about de Lint and his books and about any artist/author and the children that they so painstakingly create and then send forth into the world. The numena that Izzy brings into this world through her art are tied to their paintings–destroy the painting and you kill the numena. At first she refuses to sell them (or even display them much), feeling that they are much safer in her hands. Later (after talking to some of the beings she is responsible for bringing across), she is able to sell some of the paintings, and regrets it when she finds that some are killed (devoured, in a sense).

Both parents and artists can relate to Izzy’s struggles, as we inject a portion of our souls into our children (of the brush, of the mind, of the loins) and then set them free to experience for themselves this harsh and beautiful world. And anything set free in this way ultimately asserts its own influence and is in turn transformed by the world, for better or for worse.