Skip to main content

Gary Gygax Has Died

It is rare to be the creator of a new genre. Dungeons & Dragons was co-created by one Gary Gygax - and it was part-game, part-fantasy novel (or series of novels), and part, frankly, ambitiously-imagined (if sometimes derivative) alternate world. His work was hugely influential - often despised as (especially before video games took over as enemy number one) the instigator of teenage murder, suicide or derangement; or at least, nerdy alienation - and then again loved by millions. D & D clearly proved the worth of the fantasy market, and is as responsible as Tolkien for its continued popularity, in later film and book incarnations (including Rowling). Anyone who has had a Palladin or Elf confront a many-eyed gelatinous monster in a dank corridor will know the thrill (and perplexing complexity) of those many-sided dice, those well-thumbed books. He will be missed, his game will live on.

Comments

darren bifford said…
I owe Gary Gygax a great deal, and I'd bet I'm not the only small-town North American poet who does. Forget about being a geek (I was), or about my parents misgivings of a game my friends and I spent consecutive days and nights playing (under library tables; in basements).
The fact of the matter is that D&D gave our small, starving brains something to hold onto. It gave us a mythology; it gave us stories; it told us to create.
The public schools sucked. Our parents were young and unreligious (so no King James bible, etc). The only "literature" we had as boys were role-playing games.
I think they kept my mind alive until I was finally introduced to poetry and philosophy in my late teens. By then we had pretty much left role-playing games behind, as was probably right. Still, I remember what I did (and loved) as a kid and what I do (and love) as an adult as being only different in degree, not in kind.

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".