Lloyd Alexander Passes Away

[filkertom]

At the age of 83. His most famous work is the excellent fantasy series The Chronicles of Prydain, the first two books of which were turned into a really lousy and unworthy animated movie by Disney.

Thanks to sazettel for the heads-up.

Comments

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Awwww. ;___;

I have to pass my set on to an almost-nine-year-old. The best way to keep a writer immortal is to pass his books on, after all.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Ouch...

[brigidsblest.livejournal.com]

Awwwwwwwww...

[arucartoonguy.livejournal.com]

I loved The Black Cauldron in book form.

For the movie Gurgi should have been Cousin It with a sword, not the cutesy-poo sidekick of a weedy you've-got-to-be-kidding-me Hero we got through Disneyfication.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised Disney went near the book at all (and I really wish they hadn't), since it had no princess, just a tomboy peasant, and the Prince Charming clone got killed before page 40.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Ummm... Eilonwy is a princess.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

And Gwydion Prince of Don doesn't get killed - he sails away at the end of the last book.

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

I assume he meant Adaon, who wasn't exactly a prince. Then again the actual prince in that book wasn't charming.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Didn't think of Adaon. But then I didn't think he was exactly "Prince Charming" either.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

Ummm... Eilonwy is a princess.

OK, that'll teach me to opine about a book I haven't read in 20 years until I can find the box it's buried in.

I assume he (sic) meant Adaon, who wasn't exactly a prince

Yup. Book me for a misplaced royal modifier.

[dubheach.livejournal.com]

He'll be missed. I loved his Black Cauldron series too.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

I did not read a single book of his I did not like, nor one that did not have levels for both children and adults.

May he find Gwydion Prince and the Sons of Don waiting for him in the Isles of the Blessed. He'll be dearly missed.

[annechen-melo.livejournal.com]

This is a sad thing, to know that he is not writing anymore (for us, that is) but the Disney atrocity was much worse.

I wonder if there isn't some young artist in an animation warehouse somewhere trying to figure out how to sell a proper adaptation to the producers. I hope there might be someday.

[ginevra007.livejournal.com]

This is indeed a sad day. thank you for letting us know. I love his work. When children ask me for fantacy books to read i always include his. I do not think he has been given as much credit as C.S.Lewis but he sure deserves it.

LOL I named my very first DnD character after Eilonwy.

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

I loved his work from 'way back. I was into him before I discovered Tolkien. I found out later that he'd fiddled around with the Mabinogion, but that's not necessarily bad.

I admit, Eilonwy (if she were only real) is the sort of girl I like...add "book nerd" to her list of traits and I'd be on my knees proposing. Taran's a hero that could sit with Frodo Baggins in whatever Valhalla there is for heroes of fantasy, and his friends, especially Fflewddur Fflam (a particular favorite of mine) would be there too.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

My favorite of the Prydain series is Book 4. Because the first thing Taran does is admit he's in love with Eilonwy and wants to be worthy of her, and he goes off on what he thinks it's a looking-for-lineage quest, but which turns out to be a looking-for-nobility quest. His time with the craftspeople is fantastic, because it adds so much to both his character and the reality of the world of Prydain.

[ginevra007.livejournal.com]

That is my Fav book also. IMO it turns out to be a, finding yourself quest. Which in the long run does make Taran face his own nobility of character.

Fflewddur was fun wasn't he? Ok now I have to go re-read them.

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

Mine as well. Taran finally grows up, and faces up to what he should have seen two books ago - that a hero isn't defined by where he comes from, but who he chooses to be.

The Chronicles of Prydain is by far my favorite fantasy series. I've just read it again recently - I'm introducing my daughter to the series and to roleplaying with a fantasy world inspired heavily by Prydain. Not just the Welsh myth background, but the whole feel of it.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

=( Though to be honest, it had never occurred to me he was still alive. I don't really know why.

I remember in 7th grade our teacher had us reading Newberry books and started us on "The High King." I went and checked out the other 4 Prydain books and raced my class to the end of number 5. I've never been sorry I did so.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Awww. Sigh. Loved the chronicles.

[susan-the-rogue.livejournal.com]

When I was about eleven or twelve years old, my mother decided that she was going to force-feed this series of books to me. I ended up loving them, although I haven't read them in several years. I really need to get back into that, and also start reading them to my cousins.

Also, in my personal opinion, the only really redeeming quality about the Disney-fied version is that at least they didn't turn it into a musical with singing animals.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[razorjak.livejournal.com]

To be fair to Disney though, "The Black Cauldron" was what got me into MR. Alexander's books.

I grew up in a VERY small town. A town so small that going to a town big enough to have a K-Mart was an event! Any new author to discover was like a fossil dig. I took any source I could in order to discover a new series or book.

He will be sorely missed.

He's made his mark, that's for sure.

[pickledcritter.livejournal.com]

When the first Narnia movie came out, I decided to back and re-read the books that hooked me into fantasy/SF as a kid - the Dark is Rising Sequence (which is being made into a movie as well) by Susan Cooper, the Time Quartet (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, etc) by Madeline L'Engle and The Chronicles of Prydain. Now Alexander's gone, L'Engle doesn't have too much more time (she's almost 90) and Cooper is in her 70s...time doth marcheth on...sigh...

[connor-campbell.livejournal.com]

i hate to be the one to go against the flow...okay, maybe i don't, but anyway...

i have to say that i actually liked the disney movie. i saw it as disney "growing up", as it were, by showing a movie with such a dark theme. i liked the gurgi character, enough that our family pekingnese is named after the character. (she loves crunchings and munchings...)

disney dared something with that movie, which did not do at all well for them. in fact, they have tried to brush it under the rug. but they did slack once a few years back...they released it to vhs for a very short time before returning it to the vaults, and i happily snagged a copy as soon as it hit the shelves. up to that point, all cartoons seemed to be all goodness and light. (at least to me, especially at that time) and here disney dared show an animated film that took such a cute character and killed him. (yes, he came back, but he had to die first...not your run of the mill disney)

and, if nothing else, as is mentioned above, it spurred what has become a lifelong interest in celtic culture and folklore. though it was years between my seeing the movie as a child and being loaned the whole collection in a single volume to read. i had never known it was a book. by this point however, i had heard of the celts,and so this led on to my discovery of the Mabinogion. (and my eventual sitting for hours at my college computer lab, sneaking printouts page by page until i had the whole thing) now i retell these tales as a storyteller when i visit medieval events and faires, sometimes the Mabinog, sometimes Alexander's Chronicles.

in my book, he was a true bard, in the strictest, oldest, and truest sense of the term. he will be missed, and in future tellings i do will be in his honor. thanks for the heads up on this, Tom.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. Please understand that I consider this the nadir of Disney's animation, not because they tried it but because they botched it so badly and then decided it the failure of the film to go over was because the material was too dark, not because they'd botched it. This was why they needed the shake-up that led to The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin... because the people in charge of Disney animation at the time simply did not understand storytelling. (Exhibit B: Oliver & Co.)

And they did get some stuff right, 'cause it's Disney, and it's very difficult for them even at their worst to completely screw things up.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Eilonwy was my first butch heroine, and I loved her immediately -- a girl with a sword more at home hacking Huntsmen than sewing hankies... All I had to see of Disney's dungpile was a clip of Eilonwy flinching at a flung axe and squeaking "Save me!" to Taran to make me refuse to see it.

And "The High King" was the book that changed me. Plain and simple. Dragged me through a horror of a story where people I'd grown to love were dying right and left, or changed forever, or going away. (The very moment I knew I'd left kiddy-book-land behind forever was when Fflewdur Flam breaks his beloved harp so they'll have fuel to burn that icy winter night.) I've since read other YAs that take you through hell and don't necessarily bring you back, but "High King" was the first and most important.

Another book I love is his collection of tales, "The Town Cats" -- very amusing folktales set all over the world and starring clever felines.