I like to read. I like to read a lot. And while I try to stay current with new books and trends, I have a real soft spot for the classics. I am always searching for the book “you must read”.
A few years ago my wife turned me on to Ballantine Adult Fantasy series which was published between 1969 – 1974, though they published 18 other books between 1965-1969 that are considered forerunners of the series starting with J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. We were equally drawn to the amazing cover art and the list of “great works” of fantasy. Needless to say I have been working my way through some of these titles. I have read a lot of Tolkien, Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan series, Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, and so on… but as I have researched the list, there was one book that a lot of authors I really respect (C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and G. K. Chesterton) have sighted as being important to them; Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women written by George MacDonald.
Now Phantastes was originally published in 1858, and while I didn’t doubt that it had merit after reading that it was at least in part a Christian allegory I think I was expecting something more like Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur (published 1880*). Good, but a little heavy handed. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
While Phantastes is just your average coming of age story of a young man walking through Fairy Land (and who hasn’t been there) I found it very fresh and modern. Anodos (Pathless in Greek, talk about a Aimless Pilgrim) reminded me a lot of Kvothe from Patrick Rothfuss’ 2007 The Name of the Wind. They are both adventurers who’s stories are largely their recollection of their exploits set in little vignettes. Kvothe’s experience with Felurian even seems like a combination of Anodos’s with the maidens of the Beech and Alder.
I think you could also compare Anodos to Bastian Balthazar Bux in the The Neverending Story (1979). You have stories like ‘Cosmo and the Mirror’ where our hero is transported into a book. An adventure with the two brothers who work with Anodos to fight giants. Each could just as easily have happened in Fantastica as in MacDonald’s world.
I can actually think of many other works that seem to borrow elements from this book, but that is not the point. I don’t know that either of these authors sighted have even heard of Phantastes. I do know that the story that MacDonald tells still works. Works to the point that others great authors are still telling similar stories. This book is a classic in every sense, and it has found a place on my recommendation list.
And remember:
“Trust the Oak,” said she; “trust the Oak, and the Elm, and the great Beech. Take care of the Birch, for though she is honest, she is too young not to be changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder; for the Ash is an ogre,—you will know him by his thick fingers; and the Alder will smother you with her web of hair, if you let her near you at night.”
* I don’t have a bias against books published in 1880 since that is the same year The Brothers Karamazov was published.
