Write About It

This article is about reading, learning, living, pondering and then, perhaps, writing. And, the title is:

So Who Is Lucien, and Why Do I care?

I remember reading about Lucien not so long ago and my recollection is that Lucien was the librarian for the Library of Books Never Written. Thanks to a Wikipedia article which I found more recently online, and which appears below in part, I can speak to you more factually and completely about Lucien. I can now relate that Lucien can be found in Neil Gaiman’s comic book series The Sandman. In that book he serves as the chief librarian in The Dreaming, and is a tall, thin, bookish man. Also, from looking up the word “bookish” in the dictionary, I can imagine that he was “given or devoted to reading or study” and was possibly even “more acquainted with books than with real life”. I have maintained most but not all of the links from the full, original article.

The article below is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Characters of The Sandman”

Lucien is the effective keeper of the Dreaming in Dream’s absence, and becomes one of Dream’s most faithful and trusted servants after proving his loyalty by never abandoning his post during that period. His primary function is to protect the Library, wherein are contained all the books that have ever been dreamt of, including the ones that have never been written. We learn of the titles of some of these books, a more complete list of which can be found in the Invisible Library, a list of fictional books.

Like Cain and Abel, Lucien, created by Paul Levitz, Nestor Redondo, and Joe Orlando, was originally the host of a 1970s “weird tales” comic, specifically the three-issue Tales of Ghost Castle (May/June-October 1975). In that series, he was portrayed as the guardian of an abandoned castle, watching over its forgotten library. In his first appearance in Preludes and Nocturnes this was retroactively revealed to be Dream’s castle, deteriorating in the Dream Lord’s absence. In issue 68, it was revealed that Lucien’s existence in the Dreaming began as serving the role of Dream’s first raven. An allusion to “Mr. Raven”, the ghostly librarian in George MacDonald’s novel Lilith, may be intended. Being that Lucien was the first raven, it has also been theorized that he could be the first man (Adam).

This was all new information to me, and, I was most struck by the concept of Lucien’s role. I have now added as a life goal to move as many creative works as possible, of the number that I may dream of, from the Library of Books Never Written to the public library. I can also work hard to make these works as interesting, useful and informative as possible.

I enjoy math, secret codes, writing stories, swimming, reading books,  horse riding, camping, birthday parties, church, walking, shopping, receiving gifts, giving gifts, Stargate SG-1, Smallville, French, School, chess, the library, the civic centre, playing outside, helping my mom, talking with my friends and relatives, talking, dancing, singing, saving colorful trinkets, music, meeting interesting people, drawing pictures, and pretending.