The Midnight Circus, стр. 2

Welcometo the Midnight Circus

TheodoraGoss

INITS THREE RINGS you will find a seal maiden and a queen of the sea,wolves that howl under the bed and wild girls who know how to fight forthemselves, angels who are less than angelic, a boy who dreams ofwinter, a weaver of fates You may have seen some of the performersbefore (surely you’ve met Little Red Riding Hood?), but never quitelike this. In this book, Jane Yolen weaves beauty and darkness, realityand the fantastic, imagination and the ordinary, as only she can.

Iknew Jane from her stories long before I met her, so when I did finallymeet her at a science fiction and fantasy convention where we were onthe same panel, I was meeting that Jane Yolen. I was (don’ttell her) a little intimidated, particularly because she knows moreabout fairy tales and fantasy than most professors in the field. She isformidably intelligent and articulate, unafraid to challenge viewpointsthat are not historically sound or backed up by solid evidence. But sheis also deeply kind and supportive to other writers, as she was and hasbeen to me.

Ifirst read her stories in the wonderful anthologies edited by TerriWindling and Ellen Datlow—the various fairy-tale anthologies beginningwith Snow White, Blood Red, and, of course, The Year’s BestFantasy and Horror volumes, which were such an important part ofmy teenage years. Now I teach them in classes on fairy tales and thefantastic, along with her novel Briar Rose, which has the samebeauty and darkness as the tales in this Midnight Circus. It is thestory of a young woman who discovers that her grandmother’s version ofthe Briar Rose fairy tale both hides and illuminates a dark secret.Like several of the stories in this volume, it is a tale of theHolocaust, told without any of the darkness diminished, but with thebeauty of both the fantastical and of ordinary, everyday things. Thisis Jane’s magical elixir, with three ingredients: the transformativebeauty of fairy tale, which J. R. R. Tolkien called faërie; thesadness and cruelty of human life; and the strong, solid reality of ourworld. However fantastical her stories, they are grounded in breadand butter and wine, the landscape of Scotland or Massachusetts, theinescapable truths of history. This is why her stories always feel realand true—and wise.

Thestories in this collection remind me of a garden of dark flowers: theold rosa gallica Cardinal de Richelieu, tulip Queen of theNight, hellebores and monkshoods and snake’s head fritillaries, deeppurple violets. They are darker than most of Jane’s stories, but thatdarkness is there in much of her work, both fiction and poetry, becauseher writing is grounded in history and human nature, which have a darkedge. She has been called America’s Hans Christian Andersen, and I cansee why—Jane is as prolific and imaginative as the Danish writer offairy tales. She has published so many books that you could read a newone every day for a year, and they are so different, in genre andsubject matter and intended audience, that you would never feel asthough she were repeating herself. She has also, by the way, wonnumerous awards, some of them multiple times, including the NebulaAward, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award, Golden KiteAward, Rhysling Award . . . the list goes on. However, for me, a JaneYolen story is fundamentally different from one of Andersen’s tales intwo ways. First, Jane is never sanctimonious. Her characters aresometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes broken, but they are alwaystreated as people, not vehicles for a message. And second, her storiescontain a strong dose of her own common sense and pragmatism. They showus how we can survive in a difficult world and teach us what tovalue—in that sense, they are moral without being moralistic, wiseguides to our lived reality. Andersen may sentimentalize, but she neverdoes.

Ihave a personal list of favorite fantasy writers whom I read over andover again, because they capture what feels to me like true magic—boththe numinous magic of fairyland and the ordinary magic of human lifeand love and hope. It includes such writers as Peter S. Beagle, AngelaCarter, Susanna Clarke, John Crowley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Hope Mirrlees,Patricia McKillip, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and T. H. White. And for along time now, it has included Jane Yolen. She transports me to magicalworlds and teaches me how to create magic myself through the ultimatespell, which is the one cast by a master storyteller. Her fiction andpoems are a masterclass in craft. (Do, by the way, read the wonderfulpoems in the story notes. Jane is one of the rare fiction writers whosepoetry is as rich and compelling as her prose.) I would recommend themto any aspiring writer, together with her wonderful book Take Joy onthe pleasures and challenges of the writing life.

Butyou’re not thinking about that right now, are you? No, you want thestories themselves, and I don’t blame you. You want the mysterious DogBoy, the man who worships owls, and the truth about Scott’s Arcticexpedition. Here you stand at the entrance to the tent, ticket inhand. You’ve come to see a performance.

Youwant marvels and delights, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Welcometo the Midnight Circus. Please take your seat. The show is about tobegin.

WhoKnew I Was a Writer of Dark Stories?

JaneYolen

ACTUALLY,I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW, though I’d had several darkish stories inthe Year’s Best Horror Stories collection, been nominated forhorror awards, was in the Horror Writers of America for fifteen secondsor so, and read Tales from the Crypt comics as a young teen,huddled in the bathroom of our house, before creeping back to mybedroom with the (borrowed) comic safely down the front of my pants.And no, my parents never knew.

Butwhile I have written the occasional vampire or werewolf story, threeHolocaust novels, and a novella about the Russian Revolution withdragons, and