Whenever I’m struggling to write stories or even sentences, when the creative process or the world outside my window or both are in such a state of crisis that it feels impossible to articulate what stories are for or why anyone bothers with them, I turn to my folklore and mythology shelf.
I’m a member of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark generation, and a D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths kid. The old stories, the ones scary or funny or weird enough to keep coming back, to spread from person to person spawning variants – these were my first loves.
When I was trying to get back to writing regularly after becoming a parent and spiraling my way through a pandemic and an insurrection, I turned again to my favorite shelf. I needed something sturdy, because the world was not and I was not.
One of the sturdiest images offered up by my old pals the D’Aulaires came back to me: the interlocking rooms and winding corridors of the Labyrinth. I began to see the Minotaur stalking along a riverbank. Sentences grew into scenes, chapters, and then into my first book, Daedalus is Dead.
Finishing a book had eluded me, even in the salad days of 2019, when I slept better and was only afraid of men some of the time. But the old tools I picked up moved of their own accord, the old stones practically stacked and mortared themselves.
I wonder sometimes if humans are most important as carriers, and certain stories, the ones that outlive and outgrow us and move through us at will, are really in charge.
Here are some of the titles that have, of late, called me back to my favorite shelf. Maybe some of them will call to you.
Underworld Lit by Srikanth Reddy
How do you process the triple whammy of a cancer scare, parenting a young child, and the grotesque idiocy of Operation Iraqi Freedom? If you’re the professor protagonist of Srikanth Reddy’s modern epic, you grapple with the crushing weight of mortality by writing a loose, some might say error-riddled adaptation of the story of Chen, a Qing dynasty bureaucrat who follows a motorized airport staircase (the fruit of mistranslation) through three distinctive versions of the land of the dead, based on Mayan, Egyptian, and Chinese mythology. The arbitrary and legalistic violence of the old stories continues to reflect the arbitrary and legalistic violence of early aughts American empire, and a healthy sprinkling of academic satire (“All readings in English. Requirements include the death of the student, an oral report, and a final paper.”) suffuses the whole work with an atmosphere of mournful hilarity.
Fairy & Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry by William Butler Yeats (ed.)
Yeats organizes this folklore compilation like a bestiary, with sections and subsections devoted to banshees, changelings, ghosts, witches, and giants. Odder entries include the Cluricaun, a little man who climbs through keyholes and raids people’s wine cellars, and the Pooka, a shapeshifting spirit that can look like a horse, or a donkey, or an eagle, and is sometimes magically compelled to perform scullery work. One standout tale is “Teig O’Kane and the Corpse”, about a man who runs a gauntlet of fairy shenanigans while tasked with burying the corpse of a wastrel whom no churchyard will accept; comic book writer/artist Mike Mignola later adapted this one into a beloved Hellboy story.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
Drawing on equal parts Homer and Borges, computer scientist Zachary Mason retells the Odyssey not once but forty-four times, focusing on different episodes and interpretations of Odysseus’s journey (with interjections from the Iliad and other Greek myths). Odysseus becomes a mental patient, or an amnesiac, or the spouse of a werewolf, or a damned soul, or a traveling storyteller who fabricates all his adventures. Achilles becomes a golem, Paris becomes Death, Theseus wanders in a labyrinth without end, the Homeric epics become heavily embellished records of chess games. Each story is as precise and undeniable as a mathematical proof. I found them deeply moving, and admired their crispness and brevity, and the careful brush strokes of Mason’s imagery (“The humming of arrows as they darkened the sky above us. The interior of the horse, confined and creaking like the hold of a ship.”). The desire to pull off something like this stewed in me for a decade and eventually led me to write Daedalus is Dead.
Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith and Boulet
What if the celebrated Old English poem about Danes and Geats defending their mead hall from monsters was, instead, a lavishly illustrated storybook about feral warrior children defending their treehouse from a terrifyingly normcore adult, the mere touch of whose hand could transform the wildest and most ornery kid into a boring, newspaper-reading grown-up? Would such a book, by committing fully to the bit, incorporating the original poem’s nested stories and alliterative flourishes, succeed as both a marvelously funny adaptation and a poignant meditation on the joy, energy, and insatiable candy-seeking ids of small children? Yes.
The Watkins Book of African Folklore by Helen Nde
Helen Nde, of the Mythological Africans project, has curated a remarkable new book of stories that span the African continent, from Tuareg foundation legends to Zulu trickster tales to a darkly comic Mauritanian story about El Aviye, an enslaved woman who places a curse of flatulence on her masters. This collection would be enjoyable enough based on the tales alone, but Nde sets her book apart with a one-two punch of engrossing scholarship and lyrical, economical retellings (sample sentence from “The Cunning Girl”, describing rival suitors: “So great was their rivalry, it was said the Sun rose to see how they meant to outdo each other that day, and the Moon and stars chased the Sun from the sky so they could also watch the spectacle of gift-giving, praise singing and acts of daring.”) An explanatory note follows each story to provide sources, social context, and examples of regional variants. If you’re looking to fill some gaps in your folklore knowledge, as I was, you couldn’t ask for a better starting point.
Gods, Demons, and Others by R.K. Narayan
R.K. Narayan, the author of numerous celebrated novels and short stories set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi, has also written some of the more entertaining and accessible English-language retellings of the great Hindu epics. His was the first version of the Ramayana I had the pleasure of reading, as an underclassman who had yet to leave the western hemisphere. But my favorite of Narayan’s retellings is his collection Gods, Demons, and Others, which brings together stories from a variety of sources, including the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Shiva Purana, and the Tamil epic Silappadikaram. In “Manmata”, the eponymous god of love disturbs Lord Shiva’s meditation and is incinerated by Shiva’s third eye. In “The Mispaired Anklet”, a woman destroys the city that wrongfully executed her husband by tearing off her left breast and hurling it over the city, along with her curse. In my personal favorite, “Savitri”, a recently-widowed woman follows Yama, the god of death, into his realm, and uses her eloquence, devotion, and rules-lawyering to convince him to return her husband to the land of the living.
No one working today is drawing comics quite like Juni Ba. Eye-popping character designs, clean, kinetic action, buildings and cityscapes with their own implied histories, a nimble cartoon sensibility that doesn’t devolve into weightlessness – the guy is good. His graphic novel Djeliya showcases all this and provides a window like no other into West African folklore and history. It’s about the last prince of a fallen kingdom, his Djeli (official storyteller), and their journey across a postapocalyptic landscape to confront a powerful wizard with the visage of a warthog who has laid the world to waste. But it’s also about magic, history, contemporary politics, and the responsibilities of storyteller and audience. Even better, it includes a bibliography with recommendations for further reading. In an interview with The Comics Journal, Ba describes his approach “not so much as an expansion of the folklore, but more as, sort of, an invitation to it.” What an irresistible invitation it is.
Vertigo & Ghost by Fiona Benson
It can be easy to forget how terrifying the world of Greek mythology is, where rapacious gods prey on the rest of us and sometimes turning into a tree is the happiest ending you can expect. Fiona Benson’s poetry collection, Vertigo & Ghost, is a chilling reminder. She personifies the threat of sexual violence by portraying a Zeus whose bottomless appetite for victims and control makes him something like a Law & Order: SVU perpetrator by way of cosmic horror. “WHAT I LOVE:” he intones. “THE MOMENT BEFORE DEATH / THAT CANDLE-SNUFF LOOK / AS THE FLAME BLACKS OUT / UNDER THE HOOD”. He cannot be redeemed or reasoned with or killed. The book’s second half is more earthbound, with bats, toads, floods, clouds of flies, and other images of nature used to evoke loss and depression, as well as bloody depictions of postpartum recovery, and a constant undercurrent of fear for one’s friends and children and self. The poems are so stunning that I finished the collection quickly even though it is a truly scary read. There is love here, but Vertigo & Ghost, like myths of old, does not traffic in false hope. It leaves you, in Benson’s words, “something beyond afraid.”
Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India by Rakesh Khanna and J. Furcifer Bhairav
This hefty encyclopedia-style tome was originally published by Blaft, a Chennai publishing house with a special focus on pulp fiction and folklore. It rules. Entries are organized alphabetically, but you can pick pages at random and have a blast. Open the J’s to read about the Jhunjharji, a type of warrior so hardcore he continues to fight after being decapitated in battle, or flip over to the S’s and meet Songduni Angkorong Sagalni Damohong, a giant crab monster that dwells where the Brahmaputra River flows into the sea. While no collection will fully capture India’s sprawling diversity of languages, castes, religions, and tribal groups, Rakesh Khanna and J. Furcifer Bhairav rise to the attempt, cramming in as much cultural context and as many regional variations as a diligent reader can hope for (the entry on Vetal, the infamous storytelling corpse who so plagued King Vikramadityan, references eight versions, from Tamil Nadu’s Vethaalam to the seven Mahavetala of Tibet). If you’re don’t already have a favorite Indian ghost story or monster when you pick this book up, you’ll have several by the time you put it down.
About the Author
Seamus Sullivan’s fiction has appeared in Terraform and his book reviews have appeared in Strange Horizons. He lives in Jersey City with his family. Daedalus is Dead is his first novel.