“Remembering Lloyd Alexander” A remembrance by Jason Fisher, in Mythprint: The Monthly Bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, Volume 44:12 #309 (December 2007): 5–6.

❧ One of the longest literary relationships I can boast has been with the children’s fantasy author, Lloyd Alexander. Only my relationship with J.R.R. Tolkien is longer, but in that case, the relationship could only be one-sided; Tolkien died when I was only three years old. But with Lloyd Alexander, once I discovered his work, I was able to greet each new book like a new letter from old friend. And I did just that, reading most of Alexander’s forty or so books over the past twenty-five years. And trading metaphorical letters for real ones, I even corresponded with Alexander briefly in the summer of 1985. His recent death was, to me, a very profound loss. But rather than dwell on what has been lost, I would like to spend a little ink now to celebrate what Lloyd Alexander left behind. I first met his fiction in elementary school, at the urging of a fourth grade teacher who knew of my penchant for fantasy. Wherever you are, Mrs. Abdou, I owe you enormous thanks for the introduction! I devoured The Prydain Chronicles – many times over – then The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian, The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain, Time Cat, The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha, The Westmark Trilogy – indeed, everything I could lay hands on. Within a couple of years, I’d read almost everything Alexander had published up to that time. In July of 1985, I decided to write him a letter. With the insouciance of childhood, I even sent him several poems I had written. He responded immediately – I would learn, many years later, that even into his failing years Alexander continued to respond to every letter he received the same day it arrived. His letter to me was charming, convivial, and droll – typewritten on an old manual typewriter and signed in blue ink. He praised my poems (more than they deserved) and told me that he had once dreamt of becoming a poet himself, but that over the course of time his poems had been lost, “which,” he added, “was probably all for the best.” Instead, he channeled his love of poetry into some of the first (and best) translations of Paul Eluard, as in the collection, Ombres et Soleil. Alexander also made award-winning translations into English of Jean-Paul Sartre, including the first English translation of his existential novel, La Nausée. I wrote to him again immediately, and he surprised me be replying just as quickly. Four letters had traveled the distance between Dallas, Texas and Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania in less than one month. Those were the days. In his second letter, he gently warned me that

if he was not always the quickest of correspondents, it was only because he was hard at work at something “new and different” (this turned out to be The Illyrian Adventure) – but he was, of course, just being modest. The rest of the Vesper Holly series followed, and was in turn followed by many more novels: The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen, The Fortune-Tellers, The Arkadians, The Iron Ring, Gypsy Rizka, The Rope Trick (just to name a few) – and most recently, Alexander’s final novel (and a fitting bookend to an impressive career), The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio, which I reviewed in last month’s Mythprint. In all of his works, Alexander conveyed important lessons in tolerance and diversity, perseverance and loyalty, friendship and love. (Though aimed primarily at children, some adults I know would do well to pay attention.) He set his novels in many different locales, many times, many places, reflecting diverse mores and cultures that readers might otherwise never have discovered. We, his audience – both the young and the young at heart, as he himself was – were fortunate indeed to have been able to turn to Lloyd Alexander for fifty years of delightful, captivating, and rewarding stories – and a kind of literary friendship that is all too rare these days. At the risk of becoming overly bathetic, let me close by saying that Lloyd Alexander will be missed, deeply, but he left the biggest part of his soul here with us, in our libraries, on our bookshelves, and in our hearts.

Remembering Lloyd Alexander

Fortune-Tellers, The Arkadians, The Iron Ring, Gypsy Rizka, The Rope Trick (just to name a few) – and most recently, Alexander's final novel (and a fitting bookend to an impres- sive career), The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio, which I reviewed in last month's. Mythprint. In all of his works, Alexander conveyed important ...

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