R.I.P. to the man who brought me Erik

If you’d asked me if there were a single member of Monty Python who might die, where I might not drop everything then and there and write a remembrance the moment I heard it, I’d say “Of course not! Are you mad?”

But when Terry Jones died this week, I didn’t drop everything nor write a remembrance.  

Better late than never, I suppose. And as you’ll see, thinking about it for a few days has given me an angle to remember the man that others probably wouldn’t have considered, because they probably couldn’t have considered it.

The reason Jones might not have initially triggered such a response in me is that he was, by some object measures, the least memorable member of the troupe. He certainly had the least distinctive post-Python career out of John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin, while poor Graham Chapman has already been dead lo these 30 years.

But Jones should have been, and was, someone special to me, in a way he wasn’t special to anyone else and in a way that far exceeds his Python antics.

In the waning years of the troupe’s existence – in fact, in the same year as their last movie together, The Meaning of Life – Terry Jones wrote a children’s storybook called The Saga of Erik the Viking. That was 1983. It couldn’t have been long afterward, maybe even that same Christmas, that the book was under the Christmas tree of a ten-year-old Vance. Maybe a year or two later, I don't know for sure.

In any case, I think my dad came across it even though it wasn’t something that many, or really any, other children were talking about. That’s not something my dad would have known, of course. I’m pretty sure our mutual love of Monty Python – which was not really established at that point, but had already taken root in him – had something to do with it. But he also could have just thought it looked like a cool book, and its authorship was just a coincidence.

It was, indeed, a cool book.

You might be surprised to learn, especially if you saw the woeful cinematic adaptation of this book, that The Saga of Erik the Viking is not a comedy. In fact, I don’t think it has a single joke in it. Of course, you could say the same thing about the adaptation Jones himself wrote and directed, 1989’s Erik the Viking, which has a completely different story and was, ostensibly, a comedy.

What it was instead was a wonderfully illustrated – thank you, Michael Foreman – series of short chapters related to a Viking adventurer named Erik, and his group of Viking cohorts with fabulous names like Thorkhild, Ragnar Forkbeard and Sven the Strong. They set out to sea to find The Land Where the Sun Goes at Night, which, I suppose, would have probably been somewhere very far north, and only at the right time of the year. Their ship is called the Golden Dragon, and in each chapter, they get in and out of peril meeting such villains as giants, ogres, mermaids, hungry wolves, and their recurring nemesis, the Old Man of the Sea. In structure, it’s not unlike The Odyssey, as it involves a long journey out and a long journey home.

You know how some books can just open your mind wide to the wonder of fantasy? That’s what this book did for me.

Where some kids had The Hobbit, or later on, Harry Potter, I had Erik the Viking. It was just one shortish book rather than a series that could ensnare me for years, but I read it over and over again, and particularly marvelled over the illustrations. It formed a truly lasting impression on me, such that when I finally saw The Seventh Seal, the chess match between Death and the knight played by Max von Sydow reminded me of this book's climactic chess match between Erik and Death. The setting was even similar. (This was, of course, a theft by Jones of Bergman, not the other way around. I prefer to think of it as an homage.)

Just so you get some idea of the wonders that filled my head, here are some of its gorgeous illustrations:

I'd like to include every watercolor glory in the whole damn book, but then we'd both be here all day.

Jones' abilities as a writer really impressed me here, particularly his economy of language. There is not a sentence more than is needed in this entire book. It is told in a child's version of an epic, heroic style, very simple yet also exquisite in its detail. And though it is based on existing stories, which Jones hoped to preserve for his children, his imagination about what to do with these stories impressed me to no end.

Just as an example of some of the adventures this ship has, they go over a waterfall that takes them over the edge of the world, they land on an island where they are turned to stone, they encounter a field where they can hear the plants and animals speak. They even spend time in the center of the earth. It's a lovely adventure and I'm sad for most of the people on earth for never having been exposed to it.

My love for The Saga of Erik the Viking was such that when my older son was less than two years old, I read it to him. He might have been closer to one year old. I did voices for all the characters and everything. I have no idea if any of it got through to him, or if he just liked the colors and the sound of his father's voice, but he listened patiently, almost like he had the ability to humor me at that age. My wife probably thought I was crazy, but she humored me as well.

When we moved to Australia, I left the book behind in the U.S., something I came to greatly regret. Never fear, copies of this book still existed, on shelves in a town not far from me. It was not the same cover as the edition I had, which you see above, but the same glorious illustrations filled the pages. I bought it last year for that same son on his eighth birthday, and we read it again. I didn't remember the voices I'd done on the previous reading and felt less proud of my ability to fix voices for the characters and keep them consistent throughout. But I did not love the experience any less. And he said he loved it, too. (Possibly humoring me again.)

So while I loved Terry Jones' contributions to one of my favorite comedies of all time, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the countless other roles he's played in skits I've memorized and in some instances can still recite three decades after I first memorized them, I'd say Jones had no greater impact on my life than as an author.

It's that Jones that makes me shed the metaphorical tear today.

Oh, and you deserve your own lovely artwork as well:

Rest in peace, o imaginer of great worlds.