Sarah Micklem Getting Past “Fantasy”   Let’s begin with a little honesty: raise your hand if you have a lurking prejudice regarding what is called “fantasy literature.” Well, I’ll cop to it. To me, “fantasy literature” always seemed like an oxymoron. Fantasy was escapist crap; a mishmash of swords and spaceships; an ahistorical goulash of static societies ungoverned by the laws of physics or politics or economics; a stew of cartoonish characters who were little more than their muscles and their boobs and their silly costumes; a humor-free zone devoid of irony or the faintest trace of anything cool. In short, fantasy was for the kind of adolescent that I never wanted to be. Or rather, the kind of hippie that I never wanted to be. (I grew up in the Sixties and Seventies.) For those of you of the non-hippie persuasion, here’s a little Hippie Sociology 101. Fundamentally, there are three types of hippies: black, green, and purple. Black hippies predominate in cities; they’re smart, politically engaged, funny, edgy-artsy, and they like to wear black. Green hippies, on the other hand, are more your back-to-the-land types, easy-going, granola-eating, tree-hugging — they may or may not wear green, but they do smoke it. Purple hippies, they of the purple cloth, douse themselves with patchouli, learn weird instruments like dulcimers and panpipes, and get really, really obsessed with semi-occult arcana — astrology, alchemy, crystals, the enneagram. The Renaissance Fayre is purple hippie heaven. Which brings us back to fantasy. When I first met Sarah Micklem I certainly didn’t peg her as a purple hippie, and I still don’t — she’s as smart and hip and politically aware as the blackest of hippies, as grounded and crunchy and natural as the greenest. I won’t give you a lot of bio because Sarah doesn’t; in fact, I knew her for several years before I discovered that we’d attended the same college, and then for several years more before I discovered that we were in the same class. All you really need to know about her is this: Sarah is the daughter of intellectual contrarians who encouraged her to think for herself, read for herself, write for herself. She’s a high-school dropout with an Ivy League education, a long-time art director of children’s magazines, one of the founders of Cave Canem (a hothouse for the best young black poets), and a writer I revere. Which brings us to Firethorn, Sarah’s first novel. Yes, yes, in the apartheid system of American publishing, where every book must be assigned to one marketing niche or another, Firethorn is Fantasy. But forget the roaring dragons and ripped bodices and all those damn quests. My stupid snobbery against “fantasy” couldn’t withstand the clear, quiet assurance of even the first few sentences. Listen: I took to the Kingswood the midsummer after the Dame died. I did not swear a vow, but I kept myself just as strictly, living like a beast in the forest from one midsummer to the next, without fire or iron or the taste of meat. I lived as prey, and I learned from the dogs how to run, from the hare how to hide in the bracken, and from the deer how to go hungry. Now that’s good writing — prose as unpurple as can be, prose that is simple and right in the way that a well-made stone wall is simple and right. Mesmerized by that voice, I surrendered my prejudices and gave myself over to Firethorn’s richness of character and the epic scope of its plot, all of it as finely made as that opening passage. Firethorn presents a world of beauty and wonder, brutality and sickness, choice and consequence, and no escapism in sight. Yes, there is magic — in exactly the same way that there is magic in this world, the magic that comes with knowledge and attentiveness and a humble willingness to acknowledge forces beyond human ken. The real magic of Firethorn is the magic of all fine literature: even as we marvel at what is novel or strange, we recognize what we know to be the truth, and we feel ennobled to have shared in this vision. May Firethorn be only the first of many books by this wonderful author. Please extend a very warm welcome to Sarah Micklem.   © Michael Fleming New Ipswich, New Hampshire June, 2007   top of page   other essays   e-mail to Mike   Fox Paws home page