Book news:
Title: The Waves of Manannan mac Lir
Author – Charles MacQuarrie | Illustrator – R. Tato
Find it: Sagebrush Cafe has a limited number of promotional copies and is offering them to customers starting Monday, January 12.
Mythology is populated by figures of sky and sea, fire and water, might and wisdom and all that stuff. We like to think that mythology belongs to the past. Greek culture, in terms of mythology, is not identical in our minds with the reported lethargy and decadence of today’s Greece. (I’ve never been there, but that is what people say…) No. Our image of Greek mythology is set firmly in the past.
But those stories somehow translate to the present. One reason this is true – people keep making new translations of ancient stories.
Who is doing that translation and breathing life into those stories? Well, one person doing it hails from the Antelope Valley. Professor Charles W. MacQuarrie has made a book on a figure of Irish and Scotish mythology – Manannan mac Lir, god of the underworld.
“Manannan mac Lir was the king of the Celtic underworld in the sea and under the earth of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. There are many stories told of him from the Voyage of Bran which was written down around 750 a.D. to his appearance in James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses, which was published in 1939. This is a long life, over 1200 years, but Manannan is an immortal after-all. In this book we have translated and adapted the very earliest, and some of the best, stories about Manannan. We very much hope you will enjoy them.”
The illustrated collection of stories produced by MacQuarrie includes the work of R. Tato, an Antelope Valley artist who also has ties to the Antelope Valley College/Cal State Bakersfield satellite campus in Lancaster.
Sagebrush Cafe is located at 42104 50th Street West, Quartz Hill , CA 93536.
Supplies are limited.
Antelope Valley Arts 