Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2023.htm
Start Date
8-5-2023 3:00 PM
End Date
8-5-2023 3:50 PM
Description
Last Call (1992), the first book in Tim Powers’s mythopoeic Fault Lines Trilogy, is a retelling of the Fisher King story in which a villainous King prolongs his life by stealing other people’s bodies. He acquires these bodies by using the powerful “Lombardy-Zeroth Tarot” in a game that allows him to “assume” the souls of other unwitting players, thereby condemning them to a twenty-one-year descent into hell that is experienced by way of fatal illnesses, alcoholism, and various tragedies, including an archetypal dance with Death. After this period, a second game is played during which he is able to completely take over their bodies and make their entire “self” permanently subordinate to his will. Even Last Call cartomancers who use different decks to try to help the hero, who happens to be on this dark path, are endangered by the overflow of malevolent magic affecting him. This paper examines the creative construction of the images and roles of Tarot in Last Call with reference to historical Tarot cards, decks, and associations.
Included in
Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other English Language and Literature Commons
Tarot as Ticket to Hell in Tim Powers’s Last Call (1992)
Last Call (1992), the first book in Tim Powers’s mythopoeic Fault Lines Trilogy, is a retelling of the Fisher King story in which a villainous King prolongs his life by stealing other people’s bodies. He acquires these bodies by using the powerful “Lombardy-Zeroth Tarot” in a game that allows him to “assume” the souls of other unwitting players, thereby condemning them to a twenty-one-year descent into hell that is experienced by way of fatal illnesses, alcoholism, and various tragedies, including an archetypal dance with Death. After this period, a second game is played during which he is able to completely take over their bodies and make their entire “self” permanently subordinate to his will. Even Last Call cartomancers who use different decks to try to help the hero, who happens to be on this dark path, are endangered by the overflow of malevolent magic affecting him. This paper examines the creative construction of the images and roles of Tarot in Last Call with reference to historical Tarot cards, decks, and associations.
Comments
SESSION IV
3:00 PM—3:50 Eastern
2:00 PM—2:50 Central
1:00 PM—1:50 Mountain
12:00 Noon—12:50 PM Pacific
7:00 PM—7:50 GMT