Here Be Dragons by Stefan Ekman

Author:Stefan Ekman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: 2013-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

NATURE, MAGIC, AND MISFITS: WILDERNESS WITHIN NEWFORD36

Canadian writer Charles de Lint’s city of Newford is, according to the blurb of the collection Moonlight and Vines (1999), a “quintessential North American city,” seen as Canadian by some and as American by others.37 It is the setting for more than a dozen novels and several collections of short fiction. The stories are set under the looming shadow of social failures in Western urbanism: child abuse, homelessness, prostitution, and drug abuse. The fantastic elements range from the clearly impossible to the almost possible, from Faerie creatures and dreamworld journeys to vague suspicions and doubt.

The city culture in Newford is challenged in three ways: physically by the wilderness it contains but cannot control; ontologically by the existence of fairies, the Otherworld, and magic; and socially by an alternative culture that comprises those who, voluntarily or involuntarily, lead a life in contravention of social norms: criminals, prostitutes, and the homeless, but also artists, poets, and street musicians. The three sets of domains in Newford intersect and overlap, and de Lint’s stories are predominantly about people who find themselves on the border between one or more domains. Newford is a city dominated by culture rather than nature, by mundanity rather than magic, by those who fit into society rather than those who do not; but in the stories, these hegemonic domains are constantly challenged by their subjugated opposites. Rather than merely examining the relation between nature and culture, we can benefit from looking at the three divisions that cut through the city.

The first division is that between nature and culture. Just as with Minas Tirith, a clear distinction exists between wilderness and (cultured) city, with tame nature separating wild nature from culture. When police officer Thomas Morningstar drives up to the Kickaha reserve in From a Whisper to a Scream (1992), he observes how the landscape changes around him “from the crowded city streets to blocks of [industrial and commercial estates], the suburbs and finally farmland” and up into the hills, which are “heavy with pine, cedar and hardwoods.”38 The transition happens in stages from the center of cultural control, the crowded streets of central Newford, to the wild nature beyond the city’s periphery. The suburbs and farmland recall the tilth, orchards, and homesteads of the Pelennor. Although one need not pass through a wall in order to leave Newford, there is a distinct difference in feeling inside and outside the city. Having left the city behind, Thomas feels reborn; and to the artist Jilly Coppercorn, the most frequently recurring of Newford’s many characters, the air outside the city “tastes like it’s supercharged with oxygen and everything smells as fresh as a sweet Sunday morning.”39 The dominant picture of Newford is that of a city that keeps the wild at bay, outside and generally quite a distance beyond the city limits.

This external, wild nature is contrasted with the parks, gardens, and other pockets of tame nature that can be found within Newford. These places of controlled nature are few and mostly only implied or mentioned in passing.

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