John Crowley has died, one of the finest and most distinctive American writers of our time and the author of Little, Big, the best fantasy novel this side of Tolkien. In fact, if I were not a Christian I would probably think that Little, Big is even greater than The Lord of the Rings, because there is no more beautiful and powerful book about the poignancy of mortality. I have read it many times and have never navigated the final pages, which go through me like a knife, without weeping. I used to teach the book sometimes but couldn’t maintain my composure while doing so, so I stopped.

The best American novels of the last half-century are Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, DeLillo’s Underworld, and Little, Big. Some years ago my friend Francis Spufford commented, in an email to me, that Little, Big is “the Middlemarch of the fantastic,” and that is an exceptionally acute comment.

Adam Roberts has a tribute here, Henry Farrell here. They’re both good, but if any essay has ever captured what’s so special about Crowley, I haven’t seen it. This piece by James Hynes, primarily on the Aegypt tetralogy, is … no, it’s fine, but it’s not quite right. And I don’t have the words myself.

“We’re going,” she said, when near dawn she stood on the point of rock that jutted out over a pool in the woods into which a waterfall fell with a constant song.

Spears of moonlight were broken by the pool’s surface; new leaves and blossoms floated there, gathering in the eddies. A great white trout, pink-eyed, without speckle or belt, rose slowly at her words. “Going?” he said.

“You can come or stay,” said Mrs. Underhill. “You’ve been so long on this side of the story that it’s up to you by now.”

The trout said nothing, alarmed beyond words. At last Mrs. Underhill, growing impatient with his sad goggling, said sharply, “Well?”

“I’ll stay,” he said quickly.

“Very well,” Mrs. Underhill said, who would have been very surprised indeed if he had answered differently. “Soon,” she said, “soon there will come to this place a young girl (well, an old, old lady now, but no matter, a girl you knew) and she will look down into this pool; she will be the one you’ve so long waited for, and she won’t be fooled by your shape, she’ll look down and speak the words that will free you.”

“She will?” said Grandfather Trout.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“For love’s sake, you old fool,” Mrs. Underhill said; she struck the rock beneath her stick so hard it cracked; a dust of granite drifted onto the stirred surface of the pool. “Because the story’s over.”