Escape

Stephen Lawhead is an author I've recently come across. His writing focuses on Celtic mythology, and Old Engligh legend, mixed with the supernatural. If you're in any kind of school still, especially some form of grad school, or about to start, you know how much reading is ahead of you that will be exclusive to your field of interest. That reading can be great, enlightening, and of course its growing our minds in the area we want to specialize in.But sometimes that reading can get really old.

This summer I've tried to escape through reading, by diving into books I wouldn't normally read and genres I was unfamiliar with before. It's been awesome.

I came across an interview with Lawhead about why he writes the kind of stories he does... I thought it was incredible.

"In fantasy, the author echoes the creation of this manifest world, in which we live, with the fashioning of a sub-created world, in which the story's characters live. A common feature of such literature is a portal- C.S. Lewis' wardrobe must surely be the most well known, through which the reality-bound protagonist travels into a more stylized imaginary, yet somehow more true, world. ..

J.R.R. Tolkien, was criticized in his day for indulging the juvenile whim of writing fantasy, which was considered- an inferior form of literature and disdained as mere "escapism".

'Of course it is escapist', he cried. 'That is its glory! WHen a soldier is a prisoner of war it is his duty to escape- and take as many with him as he can.' He went on to explain, 'the money lenders , the knownothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we're partisans to liberty, then its our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as possible."

That is the aim of the great story, the grand narrative, the great epic of fantasy.

Enjoy reading something this summer that takes you into another world, a more beautiful place, where your mind can be free, where it can relax, where it can "escape".