{"id":11382,"date":"2015-10-24T14:22:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T14:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/four-principal-wizards-inhabited-my-childhood\/"},"modified":"2015-10-24T14:22:02","modified_gmt":"2015-10-24T14:22:02","slug":"four-principal-wizards-inhabited-my-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/four-principal-wizards-inhabited-my-childhood\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Four principal wizards inhabited my childhood. These were, in order of discovery, TH White\u2019s Merlin, JRR Tolkien\u2019s Gandalf, Susan Cooper\u2019s Merriman Lyon and Ursula K Le Guin\u2019s Ged, more commonly known as Sparrowhawk, true names being a serious business in Earthsea. Other magicians and witches also lived on my boyhood bookshelf, but even at 10 years old I sensed that these belonged to a lesser order. Growing up, I adored A Wizard of Earthsea, Le Guin\u2019s slim but muscular 1968 novel, which I read and reread until my ratty old paperback copy required emergency surgery, and I still have a precious memory of getting to the last page for the umpteenth time, staring at the final line \u2013 \u201cand Yarrow ran to meet them, crying with joy\u201d \u2013 and realising with a giddy clarity that being a goalkeeper or inventor or forester was yesterday\u2019s news, and that I had to be a writer and nothing else would do. I yearned to do to other people what A Wizard of Earthsea had just done to me \u2013 even if I couldn\u2019t articulate exactly what that was. Adulthood brings more demanding critical standards and many a childhood favourite has been booted off my podium of most cherished books, but my admiration for Le Guin\u2019s artistry has only grown with every rereading.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class='attribution'><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2015\/oct\/23\/david-mitchell-wizard-of-earthsea-tolkien-george-rr-martin\">David Mitchell<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/azspot.net\/\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">azspot<\/a>)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four principal wizards inhabited my childhood. These were, in order of discovery, TH White\u2019s Merlin, JRR Tolkien\u2019s Gandalf, Susan Cooper\u2019s Merriman Lyon and Ursula K Le Guin\u2019s Ged, more commonly known as Sparrowhawk, true names being a serious business in Earthsea. Other magicians and witches also lived on my boyhood bookshelf, but even at 10 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-quote"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-2XA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}