My pieces: Chloe and Rockfish. Frank Frazetta's The Dancer from Atlantis, framed, in the background.
I've been revisiting my adolescence. Green in color; fertile in effect. Wordsworth may have claimed that "the Child is Father to the Man," but I would give some credit to the Adolescent also. The dreams I had of being a hero, of being a story-teller, grew out of my particular child-self, but that adolescent-self groomed those dreams: stablehand to Pegasus, in my fancy. Treasure Island and The Tale of Ulysses were followed by Tarzan the Terrible, Conan, Swords Against Death, Raiders of Gor, Grey Maiden, and Fire from Heaven, all books that matter in their own odd ways to the man I've become, just as much or more than all the books I have read, avidly or dutifully, as homework. I think that sort of story may be told of most of us.
I want to thank some of my boyhood heroes: Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Lieber, Poul Anderson, Lin Carter, Norvell Page, Talbot Mundy, among many others. Mary Renault deserves an ovation for all of her historical novels, but especially for The King Must Die. The artists Frank Frazetta and Jeffrey Jones mattered also. As that boy, that young would-be man, I revelled in their work enough to put Conan the Adventurer and The Sea Demon on my bedroom walls and to buy up any novels with their cover illustrations, pretty much without even checking the content or style. Didn't matter, really. Jones' cover art for Talbot Mundy's The Purple Pirate recently hung in my kitchen with charts of Drake's Bay and postcards of coastal points north and south as inspiration for one of those Nisus of Troy stories I dabble with, setting free those grey ghosts and purple demons a few at a time.
Frazetta's cover for Poul Anderson's The Dancer from Atlantis held my attention, more than the novel itself, though I did enjoy Anderson's unhappy 20th-century time-traveler and his travails in the ancient world. (As I've gotten older, the novel has "improved." That's also happened with John Steinbeck's first novel Cup of Gold, an anti-genre pirate tale of Sir Henry Morgan.) That cover of Dancer mixed in my mind with the host and horde of wondrous, heroic, athletic, and acrobatic images I'd already gotten from reading Renault's first Theseus novel, The King Must Die, a more potent tale than Anderson's. The amalgamation, or maelstrom, of bulls and bull-leapers, of Greeks and Cretans, of daring men and poised, more daring women, had a powerful effect on my adolescent imaginings. I revisit that "time-lost" world in dreams, when I am lucky, or by picking up one of those novels for an hour's jaunt away from, say, my current homework. (Who said looking back at your past isn't a bad thing, just so long as you don't stare?)
Frazetta's cover for Poul Anderson's The Dancer from Atlantis held my attention, more than the novel itself, though I did enjoy Anderson's unhappy 20th-century time-traveler and his travails in the ancient world. (As I've gotten older, the novel has "improved." That's also happened with John Steinbeck's first novel Cup of Gold, an anti-genre pirate tale of Sir Henry Morgan.) That cover of Dancer mixed in my mind with the host and horde of wondrous, heroic, athletic, and acrobatic images I'd already gotten from reading Renault's first Theseus novel, The King Must Die, a more potent tale than Anderson's. The amalgamation, or maelstrom, of bulls and bull-leapers, of Greeks and Cretans, of daring men and poised, more daring women, had a powerful effect on my adolescent imaginings. I revisit that "time-lost" world in dreams, when I am lucky, or by picking up one of those novels for an hour's jaunt away from, say, my current homework. (Who said looking back at your past isn't a bad thing, just so long as you don't stare?)Chloe takes her name from a supporting character in a Tros of Samothrace novel, a volatile, cunning, yet forthright courtesan in The Praetor's Dungeon. Here, she is resting. She is my dancer from Atlantis. Sculpture mix, cobalt carbonate oxide, and copper wire; a 20-minute exercise with a model. The result is rough, but happy enough for me.
