Tuesday, January 26, 2016

A Good Egg, a Bad Seed?

Ben from The Fifth Child

I've been reading stories in Emanations 2 + 2 = 5. Just now, I finished a story that echoed something else I've read:
When they'd first called her "Goblin" she'd looked the word up in the school encyclopedia. Yes, she can see what they mean. Here lies the source of all sorcery. Perhaps there always had been others like her, sliding here from wibbly-wobbly worlds? Cro-mags. Neanderthals. Perhaps there always had been others, blown here from ghost continents, unable to return, exiles, trapped here for years, or decades, before moving on. (Andrew Darlington, "My Little Black Egg," Emanations: 2 + 2 = 5, p. 181)
Nice wordplay - "source of all sorcery" - and I'm reminded of Doris Lessing's novel The Fifth Child, the story of Ben, a 'goblin' born into a human family, the mother of which comes to see Ben as some sort of genetic throwback amidst her normal children, so she visits a renowned pediatric doctor for an expert's opinion and asks the doctor's impression of Ben:
He's not human, is he? . . . How do we know what kinds of people - races, I mean - creatures different from us, have lived on this planet? In the past, you know? We don't really know, do we? How do we know that dwarves or goblins or hobgoblins, that kind of thing, didn't really live here? (Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child, pp. 105-106)
The premise is interesting. Goblins, trolls, hobgoblins, and even more were various hominid species other than humans, so they're more than myths. Darlington's construction of the relationship differs a bit from Lessing's on this point. I'm informed, incidentally, that fairy tales are much older than previously thought . . .

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6 Comments:

At 8:38 AM, Blogger Bienvenido Bones said...

Wow! that is going well for the Paradise Lost of 666 Theos-Surrealmageddon! it's seems like my story, Yesterday, maybe coincidence. or represent those who are doing- "What is Truth?" Why we are here? , Why God permitted wickedness? Well only God knows everything. . I prefer the word God. . Everything is Vanities under the sun.. *Bones*

 
At 8:42 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Go hog wild on it, Bones!

Jeffery Hodges

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At 8:42 AM, Blogger Antony Trepniak said...

Andrew's haunting story is very good, one of the (many) high points of E5.

An article published in 1968 first linked the folkloric idea of the changeling to the birth of children with learning disabilities (British use - I don't know what the current acceptable U.S. term is) including physical descriptions reminiscent of Down Syndrome and similar genetic conditions.

 
At 8:47 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Interesting, MC, thanks!

Jeffery Hodges

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At 5:05 AM, Blogger Bienvenido Bones said...

Possibility of a Autistic - Geniuses the world of the Paradise Lost!

 
At 8:25 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Possibly . . .

Jeffery Hodges

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