Book Alert: Novelties & Souvenirs

The first time that I read John Crowley was when I encountered Little, Big as a teenager. It was a bemusing, fantastic, numinous experience. Somehow that story of young lovers and a land beyond the mundane was framed in a lens so utterly familial and homely that at the end of it, I wanted to be there.

This volume contains fifteen of his short stories, spanning twenty-five years. They range in chronological order from Antiquities with its perverse but strangely sad ailurophilia, to the particularly Kafkaesque The War between the Subjects and the Objects. I will single out just one of the stories in the middle for particular mention (after all, these columns are alerts, not reviews).

The Nightingale Sings at Night is, quite simply put, one of the most beautiful creation-myths I've ever read. It is at least as beautiful as those by Ted Hughes, is probably at least as tragic as the Celtic Twilight, and is as charming as Lang's retellings of the ancient folktales. Here's how it begins:

The Nightingale is called a Nightingale because it sings at night.

There are other birds who cry in the night: the whippoorwill complains and the owl hoots, the loon screams and the nightjar calls. But the Nightingale is the only one that sings: as beautifully as the lark sings in the morning and the thrush at evening, the Nightingale sings at night.

But the Nightingale didn't always sing at night.

=====

And this is how it ends; well, almost. I've taken a section from near the end.

"It's all right," sang the Nightingale.

"It's all right," said the Man, and he held the Woman in his arms. "I think it will be all right." He closed his eyes, too. "Anyway," he said, "I don't think the story's over yet."

And so, from that day to this, the Nightingale has sung his song at night.

In the spring and summer, when his heart is full and the nights are soft and warm, he sings his song of hope and remembrance, his song that no one can imitate and no one can describe.