I was an edgy teenager, somewhere between grunge and jock. In the late 90s, I had bleached blonde Eminem hair. I listened to the Beastie Boys and Bob Dylan. I was also a sports fanatic who played basketball and ran track in high school. I wasn’t gonna be boxed in. As a freshman in college, I was pretty puffed up about my reading tastes, too. I read Beckett and Faulkner and Herman Hesse. I drank in the Beats and the post-modernists. I was trendy, intellectual, counter culture.
Yet I remain a sucker for “The Alchemist.” In time, I’ve come to accept myself as someone who craves a fairy tale, even as an adult. What I didn’t know as a teenager, but what I do know now, is that I’m not the only one.The father of modern fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien, believed that escapism, hope, and happy endings were powerful psychological needs.
As for the happy ending, Tolkien coined a term in the essay, the “eucatastrophe.” When the happy ending arrives, “we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire.”, author of “Tuesdays with Morrie” and “The Five People You Meet In Heaven.” I interviewed Albom a few years ago and asked him about Tolkien and the adult fairy tale. “We’ve become more attracted to stories of bad people, broken people and irredeemable people,” Albom told me.
Another recent entry in this category of adult fairy tale is Shelby Van Pelt’s runaway debut bestseller “.” Van Pelt tells the story of a friendship between a widower and a gentlemanly, philosophizing octopus named Marcellus. While the book is pitched as a literary mystery, it has the hallmarks of the classic Tolkien fairy tale: an unquestioned magical element , and an improbable, upswinging ending that the reader deeply craves.
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