Butterflies and Peter S Beagle

I'm beginning, more and more, to identify with the butterfly from Peter S Beagle's The Last Unicorn. My life seems nothing but a cobbled-together, jumbled-up mass of snatches. Snatches of thoughts, songs, and random mood swings.

Excellent well, you're a fishmonger. You're my everything, you are my sunshine, you are old and gray and full of sleep, you're my pickle-faced consumptive Mary Jane.

I was trying to explain to Mom why I like that book so much, and I discovered that I don't really know why. The closest I came was, 'The language is luminous,' and seriously, how un-descriptive is that?

You know better than to expect a butterfly to know your name. All they know are songs and poetry, and anything else they hear. They mean well, but they can't keep things straight. And why should they? They die so soon.

I love, I guess, the strange mix of Shakespeare, Hopkins, and modern pop songs. I love that it takes something so essentially postmodern in style and makes it beautiful. It makes me think there's hope for my generation of writers after all. Which doesn't quite make sense, because Peter S Beagle is definitely not of my generation, but heck, I'm a butterfly right now, so don't bother me with details.

No, no, listen, don't listen to me, listen. You can find your people if you are brave. They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them and covered their footprints. Let nothing you dismay, but don't be half-safe.

I also like the plot. I'm essentially enamored of fantasy stories, and this is a great fantasy plot. A unicorn facing a deadly unkown enemy in a darkened landscape, the most beautiful of all creatures pitted against the most depraved of kings, and a magician who can't find himself. Plus or minus a whole bunch of other mystical creatures, curses, blessings, and identity crises.

His firstling bull was majesty, and his horns are the horns of a wild ox. With them he shall push the peoples, all of them, to the ends of the earth. Listen, listen, listen quickly.

Who could not love the flash of sly humor that caused Schmendrick the magician? Schmendrick - I mean, c'mon. That's an amazing name.

Oh I am a cook and a captain bold and the mate of the Nancy brig. Has anybody here seen Kelly?

Another reason I love the book? The villain gets defeated in the end. I know, what a cliche, but I still love it. Especially since, at times, I say with Peter S Beagle: "The butterfly is a self-portrait, and so - the villain of the story though he may be - is King Haggard, with his dreadful hunger for a beauty that can never escape him, and his crippling knowledge that nothing is worth loving because everything dies in his hands."

It's you or me moth! Hand to hand to hand to hand to hand...