{"id":2379,"date":"2024-01-21T10:35:04","date_gmt":"2024-01-21T15:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/?p=2379"},"modified":"2024-01-21T10:35:04","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T15:35:04","slug":"byatt-a-s-ragnark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2024\/01\/byatt-a-s-ragnark\/","title":{"rendered":"Byatt, A.S.: Ragnarök<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"book<\/p>\n

Back in November, I was sad to hear of A.S. Byatt’s death. Having re-read Possession<\/em> somewhat recently<\/a>, at least in the grand scheme of things, I instead picked up her Ragnarök<\/em>, which was written as part of a series of novellas<\/a> that rewrote various myths.<\/p>\n

Byatt chooses to tell the story of Ragnar\u00f6k through the POV of a "thin child," evacuated from London during the Blitz, who reads a 19th-century book of Norse myths and revels in all their uncertainty and contradictions and distance—as Byatt herself did in her own childhood. It’s a neat way of dealing with the question of whether to attempt psychological realism, especially when the present-day reader is so far removed from the mindsets of the original audience. I’m not entirely sure I agree with Byatt (in the afterword) that a modern retelling requires<\/em> personalities, but I do appreciate the clear-cut stand the book takes on this: these are myths as understood by a child who is reading from a non-modern source, and therefore there shall be none of that. <\/p>\n

One might well find the conceit of the book a little on-the-nose, which is fair; reality is not always a defense against such reactions. It works for me. More importantly, the prose is so good that I just want to roll around it in. I wish I could analyze what makes Byatt’s prose so compulsively readable to me, because I cannot put my finger on it. But it is; I even got a quarter of the way into The Virgin in the Garden<\/em> before I remembered that I don’t really like mainstream fiction. <\/p>\n

Finally, the bit about the cow made me remember this delightful family tree<\/a> by Korwin Briggs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in November, I was sad to hear of A.S. Byatt’s death. Having re-read Possession somewhat recently, at least in the grand scheme of things, I instead picked up her Ragnarök, which was written as part of a series of novellas that rewrote various myths. Byatt chooses to tell the story of Ragnar\u00f6k through the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Byatt, A.S.: Ragnarök<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15],"tags":[151],"class_list":["post-2379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-byatt-a-s"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2379"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2649,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions\/2649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}