Old Loves

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Kamal H.

One of the great advantages of my apartment building is the bookshelf in our laundry room. I'm not sure why, exactly, but we seem to have a very well-read building. I've rescued public administration studies and A Woman In Charge from that shelf, among other things. And this weekend, I just couldn't resist when I meandered downstairs and found someone had put out a copy of The Mists of Avalon. This is not a book I'm capable of being entirely rational about: it hit me too young, and too hard with a vision of female power that surpassed anything I'd ever known. It's part of why I dig She-Hulk, and superheroines in general. So I'm reading it again, and trying, as hard as I can, to figure out if the book is masterful, or a little silly.

This 1983 essay does a nice job of putting the novel in literary context. And reading this article about the 2001 miniseries adaptation, I wonder how The Mists of Avalon might have been remembered had it been made into a megamovie (a concept about which there is a fascinating essay in an upcoming issue of The Atlantic. Check it out.) rather than a stripped-down four-hour miniseries. I suppose today that it seems a bit silly to claim a feminine divinity; we're a long away from separatist feminism, and even further away from the integration of mysticism and ritual with most of our everyday lives. But Marion Zimmer Bradley was hardly an ideologue: she ended her life as a Christian, after having spent many years as a pagan--she grew, as her characters did. And even though I feel that nagging strain of skepticism, The Mists of Avalon is as difficult to put down as it was when I read it what must have been 13 years ago. Since then, I've learned how rare ritual and real power are in life. Even, and perhaps only, literary magic has some force in our world, no matter how far everyday wonders have receded from us.