“It’s our duty to search out anywhere the excellent that exists within culture, and to promote it — because the excellent is always going to be in the minority. Excellence is the particular, whereas crud is universal. We find only the goodness where we look for it.”

Brad Birzer said those words amid an interview on “Great Film and the American Spirit”, and they sum up Mythic Realms fairly well. It is common to divide books into Literature and popular fiction, or film into Cinema and regular ol’ movies — but there is often truth buried in the mundane, so much so that classics do not become classics for until centuries have passed, and people realize the buried truth is still speaking. Many a classic author was wholly ignored in their lifetime, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare being prize example. In Mythic Realms, Brad Birzer takes literature, film, and even a few TV shows seriously — probing them for what they say about the human heart and our place in the Cosmos. They are a mix of old and new, ranging from Willa Cather’s O Pioneers to Star Trek and Stranger Things.

Dostoevsky remarked that Beauty will save the world, and books have been written on written on that remark alone, and on Beauty’s connection with Truth and the Good. In Mythic Realms we explore the practical application of that, of the power that stories have to awake us, to draw us out of the drowsy haze of the everyday and into the transcendent. He begins by sharing the authors who first made him aware of the power of literature, who formed him through their words and ideas, before settling into reflections on books and film. Mythic Realms is in large part surprising because he so often focuses on obscure and and unusual picks, like the pulp era in adventure, fantasy, and SF. (C.S. Lewis and Tolkien both feature, but one can’t write a book on the power of literature without looking at those two!) The excellence that Birzer finds here — sometimes glittering on the surface, sometimes needing a little smelting — varies on the book. Cather provides the deep, earnest love of the land that makes it possible for human civilization to endure despite hardship, whether that be prairie winds or Gulf coast humidity; pulp writers like Robert Howard celebrated strength, heroism, and man’s essential fire, which may be tamed and squelched by modernity but which will never be extinguished; in Star Trek, Birzer sees not only the power, but the importance of friendship. Jim Kirk was treble the man he would have been alone, because of Spock and McCoy, whose virtues complemented and balanced his own. It is not good for man to be alone — that is true whether a man is alone in a garden, a family struggling on the plains, or the captain of a ship to the stars. The film section does deep dives into he works of John Ford, Hitchcock, and — interestingly — The X-Files. I never watched the latter, but Birzer makes both it and (gasp) the Disney remake of Beauty and the Beast sound compelling enough to sit down and experience properly.

I thoroughly enjoyed Mythic Realms, from Birzer’s personal reflection on the power of literature, his appraisals of emerging genres like science fiction and progressive rock (at some point I need to listen to some to find out what he and Tom Woods find so compelling), to the case-by-case studies themselves. He’s introduced me to more than a few new names here, and prompted me to revisit films like Vertigo that I’ve watched previously and take them more seriously. My only caveat to the reader would be to keep in mind that this began as a collection of essays, and that mark lingers in some repeatedy quotes and background information. If you take books and film seriously, though, this is a volume to look for and savor. There’s nothing like discussing either with someone who loves and is inspired by them.

Quotes from Highlighted Authors:

“Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin, but economics and art are strangers.” (Willa Cather)

The clear white lamp of science and the passionless pursuit of knowledge are not enough for me; I must live deeply and listen to the call of the common clay in me, if I am to live at all. Without emotion and instinct I would be a dead,stagnant thing. . . . Defeat waits for us all. (Robert E. Howard)

Related:
Brad Birzer’s writings at The Imaginative Conservative, which is probably where I first found him — either there, or Tom Woods’ podcast or Liberty Classroom.
Other books by Birzer, including Beyond Tenebrae: Christian Humanism in the Twilight of the West, Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, and American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll