bellairsia

A Tribute to Bellairs

2009-07-05T12:05:00.001-05:00

Amy Martin pens a nice tribute to Bellairs:

It seems little recognition is given to the late John Bellairs who died in 1991. Hollywood, with its remakes of Friday the 13th and paranormal vampire romances, seems to have overlooked the young adult classic gothic thrillers by John Bellairs. However, I do not understand why some of his books have not been made into movies because, to me, there are nothing short of genius.

Shelf Life: June 22

2009-06-22T01:30:00.001-05:00

The Wonders of EHAG
The June 2009 theme for the Eclectic Halloween Artist Group (EHAG) is tributes to Edward Gorey. There’s a plethora of Gorey-inspired wickedness and other great Halloween artistry to lose yourself for an hour or so...so get crackin’! Jennifer MacNeill-Traylor has a nice Washington Irving-inspired piece and Laurie Hardin has created a majestic orb.

The Graveyard Book
Blogger bedsight mentions Bellairs’ name in his review of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.

Portraying the real Myra Eells
The Fort Walla Walla Museum has hosted a few Living History performances recently including one of pioneer missionaries Cushing and Myra Eells. No, it's not the Myra Eells you think we're talking about, and, yes, there really was a real-life Myra Eells.

A Visit to Edward Gorey’s House
Twisted Susan tells the tale.

Time Capsule: 68 AD

2009-06-09T02:00:00.003-05:00

July 9, 68 AD: The Roman Emperor Nero committed suicide after he was deposed by the Senate 1,941 years ago today (we think it was a Saturday). Nero is best remembered all these years later for his tyranny and lavishness – that he “fiddled while Rome burned” and later constructed a golden palace.

As for the fiddling, the Great Fire of Rome started on a July night in the year 64 AD. Who or what caused the fire is up for debate but popular legend placed the emperor playing his lyre and singing whilst the city burned (fiddles weren’t popular at the time, partially due to their non-existence). Following the fire Nero sought to construct a palace to show off his wealth and give the greatest parties the world had seen. The resulting Golden Palace, or Domus Aurea, was brick and mortar but took its name from the gold leaf that covered its walls. In addition to the interior of gold and jewels and paintings, Nero had a massive golden statue of himself installed outside the palace in the event anyone forgot where they were going or the name of their host.

During the 1960s, Bellairs was quite familiar with both Nero and the extravagances of his reign as emperor. John’s aborted doctoral dissertation was an analysis of The Tragedy of Nero (1624) written by an anonymous author in the midst of the Elizabethan era. While some of the historical names and places from this play popped up later in his fiction (i.e. Melichus and Sporus and even the Golden Palace), we’re told that once St. Fidgeta became a published reality, whatever remnants there were of the thesis were destroyed and John “never looked back.”

We cracked a smile at this bit of trivia: Nero is a major character in the film The Sign of the Cross (1932) where he is portrayed by actor Charles Laughton. A number of people we’ve interviewed over the years have responded with Laughton’s name* when we’ve asked for a description of Bellairs.

* Laughton and that Hitchcock fellow.

Bibliofile: June 1

2009-06-01T19:00:00.001-05:00

With the Memorial Day weekend – the unofficial beginning of summer – behind us, we thought it best to start thinking about summer reading choices. Here’s a few suggestions that we’ve come across:

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The Salisbury Cathedral angle caught our eye on Laura Casey’s blog about this “...historically accurate [book] set at Salisbury Cathedral built around 1220 in Salisbury, England.”

An Enemy at Green Knowe by Lucy Boston
Nick Campbell posted a comment in our Bellairsia newsgroup about An Enemy at Green Knowe:

..."Enemy..." is about demons and witches and things that go bump in the night – I think it's deliberately [M.R.] Jamesian (there's a hideous white hopping thing, just like in "Casting The Runes") and it definitely gave me a shiver, whilst obviously being something very individual, a children's novel, and with a happy ending - for the goodies, that is....

The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney
John Hornor says he has

...an unapologetic love for John Bellairs books. Bellairs was really a precursor to all these magical orphan YA novels you see coming out, the Potter books, the Lemony Snicket. Bellairs, to me, established a tone remarkable for its clarity and quirky characters decades before J.K. Rowling cobbled together Hogwarts from the stones of previous fantastic worlds.

He also discusses The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch, also known as

The Spook's Apprentice (which is the UK title - I don't understand why everybody thinks Americans need the bombastic, Hollywood titles)....

The Bone Key by Sarah Monette
Charlotte recommends The Bone Key:

In this collection, ten old-fashioned ghostly stories are connected by their unwilling and frequently-appalled narrator, the unfortunate Kyle Murchison Booth. Awkward, insomniac, painfully shy, the archivist participates in just one badly-orchestrated necromantic ceremony and now the dead won’t leave him alone.

Inspired by the antiquarian ghost stories of M.R. James, Monette’s elegant prose delivers shivers without gore, Lovecraft without the bombast.

Huh...sort of sounds like the Bellairsia archivist raising Cain at staff meetings.

Wicked Will by Bailey MacDonald
Finally, Bailey MacDonald’s debut book – Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare – will be published June 23, 2009:

When some wandering actors stroll into his home town of Stratford to perform their plays, Will Shakespeare thinks that he is going to have a lot of fun. He doesn't count on someone murdering Edmund Speight, an ill-tempered old farmer. Nor is he prepared when one of the actors, young Tom Pryne, needs Will's help because Tom's uncle has been falsely accused of the murder!

MacDonald is a professional actress and playwright who lives near Atlanta, Georgia and when she is not writing, she performs under a different name in a theater group in that city.

How about you? What's your summer reading schedule looking like?

Shelf Life: May 25

2009-05-25T06:00:00.003-05:00

Goreyana: The Curse of the Blue Figurine
The Goreyana blog moves ahead several squares to discuss Edward Gorey’s artwork in The Curse of the Blue Figurine, which established the beloved format of wraparound dust-jackets in color and black-and-white frontispieces.

Stone Cold Crazy
In the novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell there is a wonderful passage in which the statues in York Minster Cathedral are brought to life by magic and begin to speak. The “Into My Own” blog speculates what the “statues and figures that can be seen in Edinburgh” might be pontificating about.

And this Irving Finkel, mentioned in the article in regard to the Lewis Chessmen? He’s real...though probably not Edward Gorey’s doppelganger, this inspired curio of the British Museum (“an Assyriologist specializing in Mesopotamian magic and medicine...also interested in the history of board games throughout the world...”) reminded of us of Murgatroyd Freel, the man ran-afoul by Professor Childermass’ temper.

Links:
britishmuseum.org
time.com
photo at flickr

Science Fiction and Fantasy Ethics
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Ethics blog goes live June 1st, with contributors Tony Ballantyne, Eric Brown, James Lovegrove, Jeffrey Thomas, and many others. Their mission is to “celebrate everything positive, funky and exciting in the Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Universe!”

A most massively useful thing
Oh...and it's Towel Day, by the way. Share and...oh, never mind.

Shelf Life: May 18

2009-05-18T02:00:00.001-05:00

Photographic Memories
Andrew Devenney writes on his blog that he’s decided to “do an art/history project of some sort that'll be a mixture of photography and personal memoir...the subject will be my old hometown of Marshall, Michigan....” We look forward to seeing John's hometown through another pair of eyes.

Collecting the elusive Bellairs
Brer at the Power of Babel blog writes about his growing collection of Bellairs books: “Thirty years on I am grateful that my instinct and luck led me to buy that first Bellairs.” There is also a plug for the Magic Mirrors omnibus to be published...well, best we can tell now August. How about we say (and hope) “this year.”

Bookmarking the late John Bellairs
We couldn’t help but scratch our heads this week when we received an interesting email from people soliciting bookmarks for a Chicago-area celebrity bookmark auction. It began innocent enough but the message soon took an odd turn:

We...would LOVE it if John could sign a bookmark for us to auction off. It would be great if he could make the bookmark, but if you already have one he could sign and send that's great too. All proceeds go directly to our programs that teach adults the joys of literacy.

We think a lot of people would love it if John could sign anything, let alone a bookmark. The only such item we’ve ever seen is one released by Dial in the early 1990s that promotes the “mysterious worlds of John Bellairs.” There may have been some variations on this bookmark - we've heard of one that said "chillers" or something - but this is the first of any we've ever seen.

In all seriousness, there is more about the event online (www.bookmarkauction.org) and the sponsoring organization (www.literacychicago.org). It sounds like a worthy and exciting cause...just not one John will be able to participate in.

However...what would you do if you could create a Bellairsian bookmark? Got an ideas?

Photographic Memories: Staunton Harold

2009-05-14T19:20:00.004-05:00

Here’s a great picture from Richard Trim of the Staunton Harold manor house near Leicestershire, England. Imagine young Johnny Dixon racing from the church to the Glomus manor house in a blinding rain all the while the Guardian is close on his heels. And then our soupy friend Godfrey de Bouillon shows up....

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Celebrating Michigan Week 2009

2009-05-13T21:24:00.003-05:00

Michigan Week was created in 1954 to unite members of local communities and promote the good things the state has to offer. The Battle Creek Enquirer reports that “Marshall is one of the few cities across the state that puts on a host of activities celebrating Michigan's past, present and future.”

As part of the week-long calendar of events, the city will open many of their local museums to the public free of charge on Saturday, May 16 – or Hospitality/Tourism Day. From 10 AM to 5 PM one can visit the Honolulu House Museum, the American Museum of Magic, the Capitol Hill School, the Governor’s Mansion, and the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) Hall, among other locations.

At 11:00 the Brooks Memorial Fountain Rededication ceremony will take place at the intersection of Kalamazoo and Michigan Avenues. The Enquirer says that “over the past eight months, the fountain has undergone an extensive restoration, which included removing and replacing its historic columns. [...] A fundraising effort called Give to the Fountain Today, or GIFT, [raised] $257,000 in donations from groups and individuals in the community.”

Links:
Marshall Area Chamber of Commerce

Memoriam: Dominic DiMaggio

2009-05-09T07:15:00.002-05:00

Dom DiMaggio, the former center fielder for the Boston Red Sox from 1940 to 1953, and the younger brother of Yankees center fielder Joe, died Friday, May 8. He was 92.

DiMaggio was special favorite of Johnny Dixon's because both wore glasses and Johnny had been to Fenway Park to hear the kids chant:

He’s better than his brother Joe,
Do-mi-nic Di-Mag-gi-o!

(The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt, 39).

Goreyana: The House with a Clock in Its Walls

2009-05-07T20:21:00.003-05:00

Our friends at Goreyana present the first post (of hopefully many) about the artwork found in the work of John Bellairs. Today it's the book that started everything, The House with a Clock in Its Walls.

Shelf Life: May 4

2009-05-04T18:00:00.004-05:00

John Bellairs and Edward Gorey
The Goreyana blog discusses the artwork Gorey used to illustrate John Bellairs and Brad Strickland's books. We also learn that "In 1994, Edward Gorey found that his home needed extensive repairs which could be put off no longer. To this end, EG decided to sell many of the original illustrations he had been commissioned to create for various projects and authors over the years. Gotham Book Mart offered the original art, which included many of the Bellairs illustrations."

Memoriam: Tom Deitz
Author Tom Deitz has died; he was 57. He was the author of the Soulsmith Trilogy and nine books staring David Sullivan. The Gainesville Times discusses his memorial services:

It was not your typical memorial service, but probably one that [fantasy author] Tom Deitz would have wanted.

Brad Strickland, a longtime friend, colleague and fellow fantasy writer, put on a blue flowery shirt that he said he wore a couple years ago at a faculty picnic. "Tom came up to me and said, ‘Professor Strickland, that is a cool shirt. Only you’re not cool enough to wear it,’" Strickland said, drawing laughter from the crowd.

Always take the weather vane with you
Learnteach’s weather vane 1) apparently does not make snarfling noises, and 2) is a whale, not a hippo. Sort of like Prospero's house.

The Book in the Bathroom
Makebelievedude says he "was trying to remember the name of a children's book I read years ago last week. Tonight, I stumbled upon the first book in the series, randomly in a bathroom." Sure.

And finally, May the 4th be with you.

Gorey exhibition shows combination of humor and macabre

2009-05-02T14:17:00.002-05:00

From the Gaea News:

In Edward Gorey’s world, malevolent forces hover around Edwardian mansions, fashionable people cluster uneasily in drawing rooms and scores of tiny tots come to unspeakable ends — all narrated with dispassion and illustrated with macabre pen and ink drawings.

The work of Gorey, artist, author and award-winning costume designer, is celebrated in “Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey” at the Brandywine River Museum in suburban Philadelphia. The first traveling exhibition of Gorey’s work, it features 180 drawings, sketches, notebooks and other items.

In Edward Gorey’s world, malevolent forces hover around Edwardian mansions, fashionable people cluster uneasily in drawing rooms and scores of tiny tots come to unspeakable ends — all narrated with dispassion and illustrated with macabre pen and ink drawings.

The work of Gorey, artist, author and award-winning costume designer, is celebrated in “Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey” at the Brandywine River Museum in suburban Philadelphia. The first traveling exhibition of Gorey’s work, it features 180 drawings, sketches, notebooks and other items.

Gorey wrote dozens of books ostensibly for children with titles like The Glorious Nosebleed, The Fatal Lozenge, and The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas. He sometimes pops up as a character in his own work, dressed in a gigantic beaver coat that hangs in a case in the exhibition.

The artist is perhaps best known for the satirical animation that opens the long-running PBS “Mystery” series. A lady swoons on a wall as mustached men in bowler hats creep by a mansion on a dark night. Later, conversation in a drawing room is hushed by the sound of shots as a body sinks into a lake outside — and a trench-coated detective writes it all down.

Gorey can tell truly ghastly stories, such as the mutual destruction of The Deranged Cousins or the child-killing career of The Loathesome Couple, but with an impartial narration that keeps the chills at bay. In a 1996 interview for a retrospective of the “Mystery” series, he said he didn’t consider himself a horror writer like Stephen King.

“Only very occasionally do I try to shock in a mild sort of way,” he said. “I’m very squeamish, really.”

Memoriam: George Kell

2009-03-24T19:27:00.003-05:00

George Kell, a former third baseman who played for, among other teams, the Detroit Tigers from 1947 to 1952, has died. He was 86.

Shortly after arriving in New Zebedee in 1948, Lewis and his uncle Jonathan discuss Tiger baseball and whether Lewis knows Kell’s batting average that year.

Time Capsule: March 8, 1959

2009-03-08T08:00:00.002-05:00

March 8, 1959: Tonight’s the night that John Bellairs makes his television debut – live from Washington D.C. Fifty years ago tonight Bellairs, along with three other students, represented Notre Dame on the G.E. College Bowl program. In a battle of the wits with Georgetown University, these other Four Horsemen from Notre Dame buzzed in their answers but it was Bellairs who made the night memorable.

"It was well known that...John was a Chaucer expert," fellow contestant Thomas Banchoff recalls. A question was presented that would offer bonus points for every line of Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales that the team could quote in Middle English and, "John was the first to hit his buzzer. Any of us could have identified the reference, but John was able to reel off the next dozen or so lines, a strikingly erudite performance. He would have gone on but the point had been made."

"That was like throwing a lamb chop to a wolf," adds Al Myers. "He used to be able to empty rooms with that very recitation."

Charles Bowen doesn't know if Bellairs contributed more correct answers than anyone else, but confirms he ran up the score with the bonus points. "It looked as if he would get through the entire Prologue and half of the Knight's Tale before he ran out of breath – but there was a maximum score and they stopped him much sooner than that. Georgetown had ruled for an ungodly number of weeks, so it seemed a significant triumph and John certainly did his part to make our ephemeral victory a sweet one."

During the commercial break host Allen Ludden commented on Bellairs' ability to not only to buzz in quickly but also speak fluently in Middle English. Bellairs commented matter-of-factly, "My mother is Middle English. When I was a child, we spoke it at home all the time."

Fellow contestant Phillips Gibson relates that "even though all the contestants, the students, and the host broke out in laughter, after the show and even beyond, our team, and various other friends, were sure that Ludden had taken the 'Middle' in Middle English to be geographical; something like Southern or Midwestern English."

Two days later the triumphant Notre Dame team returned home where a crowd of 4000 students, professors and citizens turned out to welcome them back much like the Fighting Irish Football team. Bowen recalls hearing the chant 'Go Bellairs! Quote Chaucer!' - "a moment to make any English major's heart beat proudly."

The Top 20 Greatest Horror writers

2009-02-26T18:03:00.002-06:00

Tim Janson has listed "The Top 20 Greatest Horror Writers of All-time" -- and if you know Bellairs then some of the names on Janson's list should be familiar.

To dim his Hand of Glory

2009-02-19T17:04:00.003-06:00

We once read that someone became interested in the works of John L. Stoddard after reading The House with a Clock in its Walls. That made us wonder how much of John’s work has inspired younger readers to explore the works of the different authors that John (and later Brad) mentions throughout his fiction.

Well, here’s another example: someone decided to check into that magical device called the Hand of Glory after reading it in House.

Tea exhibits my tongue - most beautiful

2009-02-18T03:39:00.000-06:00

It’s always interesting seeing where John’s name pops up. This time it was at the end of a discussion of tea, specifically mentioning a particular blend beloved by Miss Eells.

Trivia 13: a dream and fruitless vision

2009-02-17T02:06:00.002-06:00

Here’s something we though somewhat appropriate for today, the supposed end of analog television here in the states: on this date in 1958, Pope Pius XII declared Saint Clare of Assisi (1193-1253) the patron saint of television.

Why, you’re no doubt asking (much as we were)? The pope made his decision:

...on the basis that when she was too ill to attend Mass, she had reportedly been able to see and hear it on the wall of her room.

John surely would have gotten a kick out of this, what with his familiarity with certain saints.

That creep like shadows

2009-02-16T03:00:00.000-06:00

An interesting study of the works of M.R. James from the Guardian:

The "ominous thing" in James's stories, written between the 1890s and 1930s, might be a sheeted ghost (Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come to You, My Lad), a corpse crawling from its grave (The Mezzotint), or something grotesque and tentacular (The Treasure of Abbot Thomas). Whichever form it takes it will be malevolent and capable of killing. There are no Caspers to be found here.

...

Much of James's skill as a writer resides in his talent for evoking a sense of place - particularly when writing about the East Anglian countryside he knew as a child – and an often perfect judgment of what to reveal and when. The stories thrive, too, on their scholarly depth and his knowledge of folklore. His characters are for the most part antiquarians who, through intellectual curiosity, stumble into the unknown. Frequently James will wrap a web of quotations, footnotes and references to historical documents – both fictional and real – around his stories (he begins one with a block of Latin), giving them not only an air of authenticity but also an essay-like quality, so that the expertly handled intrusion of horror arrives all the more powerfully.

The 2009 C. S. Lewis Tour

2009-02-15T01:21:00.001-06:00

NarniaFans.com reports the C. S. Lewis Society is delighted to present “The Path of C. S. Lewis and British Christianity,” a nine-day educational tour of England, May 31st through June 8th, 2009. With its main focus on Oxford and Cambridge, the trip has been designed to touch minds and hearts –to inform and transform. By tracing the remarkable spread of the gospel in Great Britain and beyond-and C.S. Lewis’s unique role in that advance-we seek to inspire a vision of what God can do yet again, facing today’s challenges.

“The tour will include visits to Salisbury Cathedral, Stonehenge, colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, the Kilns (Lewis’s home for 30 years), and the Eagle and Child Pub, where Lewis gathered with his Christian soul mates, the Inklings. We will enjoy Ely Cathedral’s Evensong Service, and worship at Cambridge’s historic Holy Trinity Church, where the gospel has been fearlessly preached for four centuries! Dinner is planned at the Trout Inn, where J.R.R. Tolkien ate often with ‘Jack.’”

Plans include daily talks on C.S. Lewis and the British Reformation by Society director Tom Woodward, and a guest lecture by the brilliant young theologian Dr. Peter Williams. British evangelical leaders Ranald Macauley and Peter Loose will speak, and, from Portland, Oregon, will be C. S. Lewis scholar Darren Jacobs.

The 100th anniversary of August Derleth

2009-02-14T06:00:00.000-06:00

The Sauk Prairie (Wisconsin) Eagle reports that on February 2, Governor Jim Doyle signed a proclamation declaring February 24 August Derleth Day in honor of what would've been the prolific author's 100th birthday.

"We approached the Governor and asked if we could have this declared and he said absolutely," said Kay Price, Executive Secretary of the August Derleth Society. "It's quite an honor."

Derleth was a friend of H. P. Lovecraft and it was Derleth who coined the term "Cthulhu Mythos" to describe the fictional universe described in the stories of Lovecraft and other writers in his circle. Derleth and Donald Wandrei founded Arkham House in 1937 to publish the works of Lovecraft. The first book, The Outsider and Others, was published in 1939 and Arkham House continues to print Lovecraft's and others works.

Another interesting note: on hearing that Arthur Conan Doyle had no plans to write more Holmes stories, the young Derleth wrote to Conan Doyle, asking permission to take over the job. Conan Doyle graciously declined the offer (and Solar Pons was born).

Happy birthday!

Links:
August Derleth Society

The Metal From the Stars

2009-02-13T02:13:00.000-06:00

Here's a nice way to spend your Friday...the Thirteenth (rather than watch a silly movie with that for a title): The Metal From the Stars.

The author has some commentary on writing this fanfic, too:

I had thought that everybody had read John Bellairs as a kid. Apparently that's not the case, because when I was looking desperately for a beta I found out that nobody I knew had even *heard* of the Lewis Barnavelt series.

(Our blog must be getting big - Walter swears we already mentioned this fanfic once before. But nuts to him, we're promoting it again.)

Trivia 13: Long remembering Lincoln

2009-02-12T02:12:00.000-06:00

"If an assassin's bullet hadn't cut him down, Abraham Lincoln would have been 200 years old on February 12, 2009." Or so claims our friends over at Roadside America.

Yes, break out the logs and your lucky pennies, the sixteenth president has a birthday (200 – that’s “ten score” for those counting along at home). To celebrate, here are Roadside America’s Loopiest Lincoln Landmarks and a collection of stories about Lincoln’s ghost.

Photographic Memories: Marshall Library

2009-02-11T03:03:00.004-06:00

Deltiology, anyone? Here’s an interesting site showcasing library postcards from decades past. Recently the site highlighted the former Marshall Public Library.

Extreme purple pride

2009-02-10T02:43:00.000-06:00

A picture of this house in Marshall passed through our inbox and we knew we had to share. We're not sure of its location - we don't think it's next door to the Cronin House - but we doubt Mrs. Zimmermann lives there.

But it would be fun to think so.