I first picked up Tam Lin in college, because I’d fallen in love with the ballad (after my roommate loaned me a tape she’d gotten at her local Renn Faire), and also because I’d adored the Secret Country books and gone to great lengths to find the third of them. I still reread the Secret Country books every few years, actually, in the original Ace Fantasy editions, and consider them some of the best kids-find-their-way-into-a-magical-fantasy-world books ever. (As well as also probably part of my introduction to meta. Which now has me thinking about how awesome a Princess Tutu/Secret Country crossover would be, especially if it included Claudia/Drosselmeyer in any form … but I digress.)
Yet as I kept reading, I became more and more uneasy. And in the end, I bounced off the book, hard. It’s been ages now since I read it, so I’m working a little from memory here, and things that loomed large for me then may or may not loom as large for me now, but my main objections were: The strong science/humanities dichotomy: I’d found my place by the time I read Tam Lin, too, and that place included being a writing geek with a science major who hung out with engineers and talked books with them. The way the main characters talked about the sciences (as something apart from them, as something a little distasteful) was problematic for me–as was their continued puzzlement of protagonist Janet’s roommate Molly’s decision to pursue a biology major and go to med school–and it just didn’t ring true. The dissing of the mundanes: At first, I loved how the characters connected over reading and other shared passions, as I said–I’d begun to find my own people by doing this, too. Yet as the book went on, I became uneasy with the sense of, well, superiority to those who didn’t share those passions. Part of that is that we’re dealing with the faerie court here, and faerie folk are indeed like that–but that’s no excuse for the humans, including Janet. I was especially bothered by their treatment of Janet’s other roommate, Christina, who’s greatest fault seemed to me then to be not sharing the interests of the others–something we learn within the first couple of pages when (if I remember right) she reveals that she likes playing tennis and listening to the wrong kind of classical music. I kept wanting Christina to run off and find her people, the ones who would appreciate her for who she is, instead of hanging around with her freshman year roommates through to graduation–that never made any sense to me, and I always thought Christina deserved better. But for some reason she can’t even imagine leaving them. It’s as if the narrative knows who the cool kids are, and Christina can’t help wanting to be a part of that. Eventually, near the very end, she does find some folk dancers to hang out with, and even that is deemed to alien and mundane by the others to make much sense to them, though they at least have the decency to be glad it makes her happy. So like I said, I bounced off this book. But here’s the thing–even when I think, a couple decades later, about my issues with it–I’m still thinking about it. And I’ve come to realize this book has been influential on me, because it helped clarify a couple of beliefs I was already groping my way towards: That there is no science/humanities dichotomy, not really, and doesn’t have to choose to live in one realm or the other, and turning one’s gaze toward both–and in a million other sideways and in-between directions–makes for a more interesting time of things. And that there’s no such things as a “mundane”–everyone’s own life and interests are of value to them, and everyone’s entitled to find their place and their people, and the search for them isn’t limited to those we perceive as sharing our interests and our outsider-ness. And both these beliefs have continued to color my writing and my life.
Sometimes, it’s not the books we like most that have the most influence on us, which is an interesting thing to ponder.