Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [576]
But no one expected what happened when The Mists of Avalon was published. Some of its success was no doubt due to the editorial and promotional genius of Judy Lynn Benjamin Del Rey, who got the book reviewed in the New York Times. But the rest has to be put down to Marion’s ability to resonate with the zeitgeist. Glowing reviews certainly helped, but what made the book a bestseller was word-of-mouth publicity, and that’s what keeps it selling today. People bought and read and loved it, then bought copies for their friends. Suddenly Marion found herself world-famous.
This was not what she had expected, especially when people began to phone her in the middle of the night wanting spiritual counsel. Morgaine herself could not have fulfilled all the expectations being laid upon the author of The Mists of Avalon. Marion continued to write, but she began to withdraw from public life.
Her health was also beginning to fail. To the heart trouble from which she had suffered for many years was added diabetes, and then a series of strokes. She managed to complete the first draft of The Forest House, a story based on the opera Norma that she had wanted to tell for many years, but it showed the effects of her illness, and she asked me to help her revise it. We were both pleased with the result, even though there was not much we could do to make Gaius nicer—his character, after all, is based on the opera’s tenor role.
As I discussed the book with Marion, I came to understand the place of the Avalon mythos in her work much more clearly. Not only were the characters in Forest House ancestral to the later people of Avalon, but Marion considered several of them to be reincarnations of the major characters in her early occult novel, which was eventually published as The Fall of Atlantis. That suggested a further development of the mythos, and we proposed a new project, Lady of Avalon, which takes the characters through three incarnations: the first section is a continuation of the story line in The Forest House, while the third tells of the youth of Viviane and helps explain how she got that way. Our last collaboration, Priestess of Avalon, surrounds the middle section of the previous book with the story of Helena the mother of Constantine. In Priestess of Avalon, I have taken the opportunity to try and show not only Helena’s spiritual quest, but Marion’s religious position, which was that of a student of the Mysteries who could find truth and inspiration in both Christianity and paganism. The vision at the end of Mists in which the Goddess takes the form of the Virgin Mary expresses a truth beyond dogma.
—Diana L. Paxson
March 26, 2001
Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion
1. The Mists of Avalon revolves around a number of dualities: male/ female, Christianity/Druidism, duty/desire. How are these duali- ties represented in the book? Can you think of others that were presented?
2. How does the book strive to challenge common stereotypes? How does it reinforce them?
3. Is Gwenhwyfar a sympathetic character? In your opinion, does Marion Zimmer Bradley treat physical beauty in a positive, negative, or neutral manner? Explain.
4. How responsible is Arthur for allowing the spread of Christianity and ultimate disappearance of Avalon? Was he simply being an honorable husband to Gwenhwyfar? Did you find the Arthur, Lancelet, Gwenhwyfar tryst disturbing? Although