Flex Mentallo

Given his almost supernatural ability to bring birds to life, he does not consider himself a wildlife artist, which, although he admires many exponents of this genre, has never been his raison d'etre. His love of the look of birds and his desire to depict them, especially in flight, is his continuing passion. There is a lightness of touch, an interest in birds in motion, of rendering qualities of light even at the expense of anatomical and surface detail that perhaps distinguishes him most.

I've had a lifelong interest in nature painting - especially those produced in the nineteenth century by the likes of Edward Lear and John Gould - but only recently began to look at contemporary artists in this field and seek out books on them.Ray Ching was born in Wellington, New Zealand and has been called an ‘artist’s artist’ and among bird painters is a draughtsman without peer. A renowned artist of life-like portraits, Ching paints obsessively to push the boundaries of bird painting from its more familiar tradition, to break entirely new ground. Obtained from a German book dealer on Abebooks relatively cheaply, I was surprised by its enormous size - it is 19" tall [yet still not the largest book found this year!] And the production values are amazing.

It was a decision to replace a lifetime's worth of sci fi and fantasy paperbacks with hardcover editions that sparked my current focus on book collecting, not realizing how challenging many editions would be to find [let alone to afford, in certain cases]. While it's very satisfying to obtain a pristine limited edition of a set of books like Wolfe's - and incidentally, already selling on the secondary market for $2000 or thereabouts - the real thrill of book collecting for me is and always will be the discovery of something previously unknown. Raymond Ching. The Bird Paintings Water colours and pencil drawings/ 1969- 1975

One may best summaries the tetralogy as a bildungsroman, that is, a story that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, in which character change is a key factor. If this seems familiar to afficionados of comic books, it should!

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.”

The edition sold out within two weeks of publication.

The Folio Society Limited Edition was published soon after Wolfe's death, though he did sign the limitation labels shortly before he died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun

“. . .Consciousness came and went. Consciousness went and came like the errant winds of spring, and I, who so often have had difficulty in falling asleep among the besieging shades of memory, now fought to stay awake as a child struggles to lift a faltering kite by the string.” “And it came to me that these trees had been hardly smaller when I was yet unborn, and had stood as they stood now when I was a child playing among the cypresses and peaceful tombs of our necropolis, and that they would stand yet, drinking in the last light of the dying sun, even as now, when I had been dead as long as those who rested there.” ― Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun

The Book of the New Sun Gene Wolfe Illustrated by Sam Weber Introduced by Neil Gaiman Limited to 750 hand-numbered set The tetralogy The Book of the New Sun is one of the greatest works of speculative fiction. In 1998, Locus Magazine ranked it third in a list of 36 all-time best fantasy novels before 1990, based on a poll of subscribers. [It was behind only The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but is nothing like either, though Wolfe and Tolkein corresponded.] He was often considered to be not only one of the greatest science fiction authors, but one of the best American writers regardless of genre. Michael Swanwick: "Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Meliville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning." Harlan Ellison: "Gene Wolfe is engaged in the holy chore of writing every other author under the table. He is no less than one of the finest, most original writers in the world today. His work is singular, hypnotizing, startlingly above comparison. The Shadow of the Torturer breaks new ground in American literature and, as the first novel of a tetralogy, casts a fierce light on what will certainly be a lodestone landmark, his most stunning work to date. It is often said, but never more surely than this time: This book is not to be missed at peril of one's intellectual enrichment." George R. R. Martin: ''The books are chests full of wonders; full of images like jewels, of words a reader can get drunk on, of people and incidents that will linger long in memory.''

That's what he said!

Luckily there was no tongue.

But hey ho, it's Christmas, so let's leave the last word on this topic to you-know-who [the jester in all of us] - and yes, his roots are Rabelasian!

And yet - and yet counter to my own argument, according to Anastasia Denisova [ Lecturer in Journalism, University of Westminster] it would seem that it is the Far Right that has most successfully appropriated Carnival: '...the 2016 US election highlighted... the carnivalisation of public politics. Memes are arguably instances of medieval-like carnival: it is the logic of upside down, ridicule and mockery, stupidity and opposition to any possible elites. 'Originally, of course, the carnival was limited to one week before Lent. People gathered in the central marketplace to unleash their desires and let off steam. The e-carnival is dramatically different: it expands beyond the constraints of time and space. It is ever present, and here to stay. Increasingly, attention-deficit voters draw their news and opinion from the fast food media communication and then return their inputs to the same shallow realm.' Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent.

Rabelasian!

Medieval Carnival was a powerful creative event, not merely a spectacle. The Russian writer Mikhael Bakhtin suggested that the separation of participants and spectators has been detrimental to the potency of Carnival. Its power lay in there being no "outside": everyone participated, and everyone was subject to its lived transcendence of social and individual norms: "carnival travesties: it crowns and uncrowns, inverts rank, exchanges roles, makes sense from nonsense and nonsense of sense." Carnival King or Queen today, maybe we would crown Greta Thunberg.

Perhaps the world needs more carnival in the medieval sense, to counteract the swing to the right that is evident in the West, in India, in Brazil – to say nothing of our helplessness in the face of Global Warming. The spirit of carnival grows out of a "culture of laughter". In its focus on the bodily functions common to all, in its bawdiness, in its anti-elitism, carnival is empowering of the common people rather than their masters.

Above all, in the crowning of a carnival 'king', who each year is replaced, carnival celebrated change itself [not that which is changed].

The medieval carnival treated people of all ranks and classes together as equals and encouraged the interaction and free expression of themselves in unity. The natural order is overturned. Unacceptable behaviour is welcomed and accepted in carnival, and one's natural behaviour can be revealed without consequences. Respect for official notions of status, piety and the sacred are stripped of their power — blasphemy, obscenity, debasings, 'bringings down to earth', celebration rather than condemnation of the earthly and body-based.

Gargantua and Pantagruel was controversial and considered deeply subversive of existing institutions [especially the Catholic Church]. Today it is seen as the embodiment of the form of humanistic social expression embodied in Medieval Carnival, long lost to us today.

Merriam-Webster defines the word 'Rabelasian' as describing someone or something that is "marked by gross robust humor, extravagance of caricature, or bold naturalism". If he had been alive in the mid-twentieth century, he would probably have written for Mad magazine.