Book 53: "Tapping the Dream Tree" by Charles de Lint
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 08:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwake"I lived in a tree," he said. "Not in some little house nestled up in its branches, but deep inside the trunk itself where the sap flows and old secrets cluster. It was a time, let me tell you, but long gone now. Then I was a king in a forest of green, now I live like a beggar in a forest of stone."
Lots of short stories plus a novella called "Seven Wild Sisters".
Unfortunately, this book contains the most annoying story called "The Words that Remain". A young woman who is brilliant at every creative activity she has tried and could have been a professional, singer, artist, musician, or whatever else she turned her hand to, is persuaded by her father to follow him into the hotel business. Instead of finding fulfilment in having creative hobbies, she kills off her creative side so thoroughly that it becomes a ghost haunting the hotel she works in! The protagonists of Charles de Lint's stories are nearly always artists or musicians, either professionals or else working at some dead-end job while following their artistic vocation and trying to make it professionally. He seems to despise anyone in a normal job, and think that they must have no interior life, imagination or spark of creativity. In his mind, if you aren't a professional creative you might as well despair of your life and go and live on the streets, because no-one else counts! It's a pity really, because I do like Charles de Lint's magical and life-affirming stories except for certain niggling irritations, and his books are all staying in my bookcase for a future re-read.
Lots of short stories plus a novella called "Seven Wild Sisters".
Unfortunately, this book contains the most annoying story called "The Words that Remain". A young woman who is brilliant at every creative activity she has tried and could have been a professional, singer, artist, musician, or whatever else she turned her hand to, is persuaded by her father to follow him into the hotel business. Instead of finding fulfilment in having creative hobbies, she kills off her creative side so thoroughly that it becomes a ghost haunting the hotel she works in! The protagonists of Charles de Lint's stories are nearly always artists or musicians, either professionals or else working at some dead-end job while following their artistic vocation and trying to make it professionally. He seems to despise anyone in a normal job, and think that they must have no interior life, imagination or spark of creativity. In his mind, if you aren't a professional creative you might as well despair of your life and go and live on the streets, because no-one else counts! It's a pity really, because I do like Charles de Lint's magical and life-affirming stories except for certain niggling irritations, and his books are all staying in my bookcase for a future re-read.
