Saturday 12 February 2011

Realism and Mundanity

There's been quite a bit of talk about "adult" and "realistic" fantasy lately.  I vaguely alluded to it in regards to the upcoming Game of Thrones. Fellow adventurers in the great realms beyond man's reckoning have chimed in: Michal "Taran" Wojcik, fellow Cimmerian Brian Murphy, regular Lost Soul Lagomorph Rex.

Another has stepped into the fray, and by Crom, it's a lion who casts a mighty shadow: Leo Grin is discussing Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien again!  Huzzah! While I don't dare hope that this means a greater leap back into Howardom, it's immensely cheering to see him return - especially when he seems to reiterate a lot of points I share.




I used to think I was a fan of the genre known today as fantasy, and specifically the subgenres of High Fantasy and Sword-and-Sorcery. This was due to a number of factors. A childhood imagination dominated by Dungeons & Dragons. An exposure to memorable movies like Excalibur, Clash of the Titans, Conan the Barbarian, and their lesser 1980s cousins.
Towering above all, though, was (and still is) my unabashed obsession with the two titanic literary talents chiefly responsible for birthing the entire shebang: J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) and Robert E. Howard (1906-1936). I consider each the complete equal of the other, two flat-out geniuses destined to be remembered and reread hundreds of years after the Pulitzer-winning authors praised by most mainstream critics are forgotten.


Mitra bless you, Leo.

But it was only recently, after decades of ever-increasing reading disappointment, that I grudgingly began to admit the truth: I don’t particularly care for fantasy per se. What I actually cherish is something far more rare: the elevated prose poetry, mythopoeic subcreation, and thematic richness that only the best fantasy achieves, and that echoes in important particulars the myths and fables of old.
This realization eliminates, at a stroke, virtually everything written under the banner of fantasy today.
The mere trappings of the genre do nothing for me when wedded to the now-ubiquitous interminable soap-opera plots (a conservative friend of mine once accurately derided “fat fantasy” cycles such as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time as “Lord of the Rings 90210”). Nor do they impress me in the least when placed into the hands of writers clearly bored with the classic mythic undertones of the genre, and who try to shake things up with what can best be described as postmodern blasphemies against our mythic heritage.

Now, I had previously stated somewhere (can't remember if it was The Cimmerian, here or elsewhere) that despite my vast appreciation of Howard, Tolkien, Smith, Merritt, Moore, Vance, Wolfe, Alexander, Wagner, Moorcock, and others, it's a bit of a shock to consider that there's an awful lot of fantasy out there that I simply don't have any time for. I read a little of The Eye of the World, and I felt zero compulsion to continue reading the rest of the book, let alone embark on the rest of the series - which was only eight books at the time, not the twelve it is now.  I can't really pin down why, it just didn't enthrall me. All the other authors had me hooked, or at least greatly intrigued within the first few pages: even if I didn't pick them up again for a few weeks or months, I'd be churning the idea about in my head.  I just didn't have that with The Eye of the World.

I tried out other fantasies, mostly while spending hours at a library or the local Borders. I cracked open Wizard's First Rule, and at the point the Star Wars correlations became unbearable - I think it's when the main character decides to seek out Old Ben Kenobi Zedd to help the beautiful stranger I slammed it shut, never to return to The Sword of Truth. I didn't even bother with the Inheritance "Cycle," the Belgariad, Sword of Shannara, or anything else that thinks the Bildungsroman is the only possible type of character development available.

Curiously, the opposite was the case with Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. The prologue was intoxicating.  I couldn't wait to see where this story with The Others would lead. I can't wait to see the adaptation of that scene, should they choose to bother with it in the series. But I never got that resolution. Just lots of arguing, politicking and depravity among hateful people, the few I liked ended up dead. That still smarts, and is probably why I still haven't picked up the series despite many fantasy fans I respect talking it up.

I don't think I can say I'm not a fantasy fan, as Leo does: there's still something I love about the milieu and tropes therein. However, I'm not a fan of something because it's fantasy: I'm a fan of something because it's good. Hence, I can enjoy fantasy as well as science-fiction, historical fiction as well as romances, true stories as well as mysteries. I guess the one constant with most of my favourite reads is that spirit of adventure and exploration, be it of the deepest inner mind to the Outer Limits. (ho ho.)


Everyone go read Leo's article, it's well worth a perusal.

Oh, and regarding braak's comment on Brian's article:

Though, “poor misguided Southrons” may be giving Tolkien more credit than he’s really due; that could also have just been some straight-up racism.

Braak, if you're reading, I discussed this on The Cimmerian.  In addition, I'll just leave this quote here to speak for itself.

It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace…
The Lord of the Rings, Book IV, Chapter IV, “Of Herbs & Stewed Rabbit”

19 comments:

  1. I'm agree that "too gritty" fantasy and "too colorful" fantasy are destroying the genre. Both are the opposites of the spectre but both have the same problem: disrespect to the mythopoetic creation.

    Maybe Leo is right. I don't like SWORD AND SORCERY. I like LEGENDS.

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  3. "...that can best be described as postmodern blasphemies against our mythic heritage."

    While we dislike the same trends, it seems me and Leo Grin dislike them for very different reasons (see my post on fantasy and postmodernism: http://onelastsketch.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/the-uses-of-re-enchantment-fantasy-and-postmodernism/ , which did a great deal to clarify my position in the "adult" fantasy post).

    I don't however, think that fantasy's gone off the deep end just yet, as long as Guy Gavriel Kay and Ellen Kushner and others like them still live and write. I'm constantly working on my own (very small) contributions to the Canadian fantasy scene with encouragement from the examples set by Charles de Lint and a cadre of fantasy authors who seem to "get it" in a way Morgan, Douglass, and Abercrombie don't. For all the complaining, fantasy isn't in quite such a bad state at the moment; it's just the ones with the loudest voices complaining about "infantile fairy tales" who tend to drown out the rest.

    (Last comment removed because it was posted under a temporary account I used when hotmail ate my emails to get them all back. This is the "official" Google profile.)

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  4. "Call me humorless, call me old-fashioned, but I daresay the good professor had a much better idea of war and heroes than the nihilistic jokesters writing modern fantasy."

    Well said, the grimness and melancholy of Tolkien's works is probably all due to his experience of the trenches in WW1.

    As for Tolkien's "racism", he wasn't. He was pluralist, just look at how he has his races in Middle-Earth get together to fight together.
    Check out his letter to the Nazi party in Germany who were enquiring about his German ancestry.

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  5. Wow, that was a serious shot across the bow from Leo. Loved it.

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  6. An awesome essay from Mr Grin. I suppose it's no surprise that I agree with nearly every word of it.

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  7. Wow. I was just this minute reading Leo's piece at another site and I was just going to try to find a way to tell you about it.

    I should have known, again, that you'd be on top of it.

    As for the point he makes, I think this is inevitable in the genre. Cold, nihilistic "deconstruction" and "realism" has already occurred in other works of fiction, film for a long time, comics in the last decade or so.

    Fans of that kind of stuff in fantasy can have it.

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  9. I just saw other Leo articles in several webpages... For Mitra and Istar. This guy is a radical right-wing populist!!

    I will not say that I'm disagree now with his opinions on fantasy fiction. I'm still very much agree, of course.

    But some of the other stuff he wrote REALLY creeps me out.

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  10. I'm agree that "too gritty" fantasy and "too colorful" fantasy are destroying the genre. Both are the opposites of the spectre but both have the same problem: disrespect to the mythopoetic creation.

    Indeed.

    I don't however, think that fantasy's gone off the deep end just yet, as long as Guy Gavriel Kay and Ellen Kushner and others like them still live and write. I'm constantly working on my own (very small) contributions to the Canadian fantasy scene with encouragement from the examples set by Charles de Lint and a cadre of fantasy authors who seem to "get it" in a way Morgan, Douglass, and Abercrombie don't. For all the complaining, fantasy isn't in quite such a bad state at the moment; it's just the ones with the loudest voices complaining about "infantile fairy tales" who tend to drown out the rest.

    I don't think any genre can really be destroyed, just experience peaks and troughs (I love that phrase for some reason). I guess it's just a phase fantasy's going through. We've suffered through anemic Conan clones and interminable Middle-earth ripoffs, we'll suffer through the Sopranos D&D Sessions.

    As for Tolkien's "racism", he wasn't. He was pluralist, just look at how he has his races in Middle-Earth get together to fight together.
    Check out his letter to the Nazi party in Germany who were enquiring about his German ancestry.


    Most assuredly. Of all classic fantasy authors, Tolkien is the one who least deserves the racist label.

    Wow, that was a serious shot across the bow from Leo. Loved it.

    Me too.

    An awesome essay from Mr Grin. I suppose it's no surprise that I agree with nearly every word of it.

    Grin has a way with these sorts of things.

    Wow. I was just this minute reading Leo's piece at another site and I was just going to try to find a way to tell you about it.

    I should have known, again, that you'd be on top of it.


    Don't thank me, thank Google Alerts (though I appreciate everyone pointing the article out to me nonetheless).

    I just saw other Leo articles in several webpages... For Mitra and Istar. This guy is a radical right-wing populist!!

    I will not say that I'm disagree now with his opinions on fantasy fiction. I'm still very much agree, of course.

    But some of the other stuff he wrote REALLY creeps me out.


    All I can say is, it just shows the appeal of Howard, that guys like Leo, liberals like Steve Tompkins and anarchists like Michael Moorcock all find something to appreciate.

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  11. Couldn't agree more with your insights into the fantasy genre, Al, and Leo nails some of its causes, particularly with this statement: "In the end, it’s just another small, pathetic chapter in the decades-long slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing."

    And here I was wondering why so much modern fantasy comes up short. I thought it was just me as well, as many fantasy books I disliked and couldn't get more than a few chapters into hit the bestseller lists.

    I want, and strive for in my own writing, a hero or anti-hero is true to him/herself, who isn't nuanced into a thousand shades of grey, and the more allusions or outright incorporation of mythological lore that can be worked in, the better.

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  12. One of the bloggers Leo cited in his piece, Adam Whitehead, has fired back, claiming that the "problem with the essay is that its author has fundamentally misread Tolkien and Howard."

    http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2011/02/missing-point.html

    I thought it was pretty funny, anyway :)

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  13. You like books that are good regardless of genre? What? Next you will be telling me that you vote for the best person for office and not a political party. Oh wait, you do that too?
    Unfortunately, you are the exception and not the rule as most people, present blog readers and hopefully mine own readers as well excluded, base everything on lables. They vote for whatever person their party puts up and read whatever comes out under their genre of choice.
    Are fantasy readers dumber? No, readers are generally dumb and the publishers know this. Fantasy is in and is being flooded with books that otherwise wouldn't make the cut because publishers know it will sell to the masses of sheep.

    Maybe we all start as sheep and through reading gain understanding on what good writing is, or what we think good writing is, some of us move forward and spread our wings.

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  14. I thought it was pretty funny, anyway :)

    Funny is right. When someone can call Tolkien a "nihilist" with a straight face, he clearly is a comedian for the ages.

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  15. Peaks and troughs is right. To echo something Brian said, this reminds me of the Watchman/Dark Knight influenced 'grim and gritty' Comic book explosion back about 1985. Alan Moore and Frank Miller each turned out a provocative piece of work and all a bunch of lesser talents brought away from it was "more sex and more violence equals more realistic adult reading".
    There are writers who actually use graphic sex and violence for legitimate reasons, but far more who simply go for the sensationalism. To use yet another genre, look at the rash of serial killer books, each more gruesome than the last, that flooded shelves after the success of The Silence of the Lambs. That fad has mostly died out. This one probably will too.

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  16. Couldn't agree more with your insights into the fantasy genre, Al, and Leo nails some of its causes, particularly with this statement: "In the end, it’s just another small, pathetic chapter in the decades-long slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing."

    And here I was wondering why so much modern fantasy comes up short.


    Thanks, John, good to know I have company on this.

    One of the bloggers Leo cited in his piece, Adam Whitehead, has fired back, claiming that the "problem with the essay is that its author has fundamentally misread Tolkien and Howard."

    Oh, lookie here. *cracks knuckles*

    You like books that are good regardless of genre? What? Next you will be telling me that you vote for the best person for office and not a political party. Oh wait, you do that too?

    Well, in fairness, I'm so disenchanted with the political system it's be more fair to say I vote for the person who disgusts me least!

    Funny is right. When someone can call Tolkien a "nihilist" with a straight face, he clearly is a comedian for the ages.

    No kidding. I see James Enge's commented there, too.

    . To echo something Brian said, this reminds me of the Watchman/Dark Knight influenced 'grim and gritty' Comic book explosion back about 1985. Alan Moore and Frank Miller each turned out a provocative piece of work and all a bunch of lesser talents brought away from it was "more sex and more violence equals more realistic adult reading".
    There are writers who actually use graphic sex and violence for legitimate reasons, but far more who simply go for the sensationalism. To use yet another genre, look at the rash of serial killer books, each more gruesome than the last, that flooded shelves after the success of The Silence of the Lambs. That fad has mostly died out. This one probably will too.


    Excellent point, Charles. There is a definite feel of the Dark Age of Comics about this. I just hope that the new fad isn't just the polar opposite: safe, twee, happy little fantasy lands. Not that there's anything wrong with that - no matter what Moorcock might say, I still delight in Winnie the Pooh - I just dread the inevitable "fantasy is just fluff" that would ensue.

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  17. Agreed, Al. I think there's a happy medium in there somewhere. To be fair, I did like Joe Abercrombie's stand alone book 'Best Served Cold' quite a bit. I just wouldn't want my twelve year old nephew reading that one. I didn't care for The Steel Remains at all. It felt like someone trying too hard to be edgy. Just my take.

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  18. In regards to the authors Leo mentioned, I did try Matt Stover's Heroes Die awhile back and sadly dropped it halfway through. I don't recall enough to judge whether it's nihilistic or not, but it was distinctly unpleasant to read despite a fantastic concept that mixed sci-fi and sword-and-sorcery. Lots of emphasis on excrement and bowel control and most of the characters seemed psychotic to one degree or another. And as usual for books today it was just too damn long, with lots of obviously padded sections.

    I've sometimes thought about going back to it to see if I could finish it with a fresh perspective, because I really do like a lot about it, but haven't yet worked up enough interest to put it ahead of other books I'm eager to read.

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  19. Agreed, Al. I think there's a happy medium in there somewhere.

    No doubt, and cheers!

    In regards to the authors Leo mentioned, I did try Matt Stover's Heroes Die awhile back and sadly dropped it halfway through. I don't recall enough to judge whether it's nihilistic or not, but it was distinctly unpleasant to read despite a fantastic concept that mixed sci-fi and sword-and-sorcery.Lots of emphasis on excrement and bowel control and most of the characters seemed psychotic to one degree or another. And as usual for books today it was just too damn long, with lots of obviously padded sections.

    I've sometimes thought about going back to it to see if I could finish it with a fresh perspective, because I really do like a lot about it, but haven't yet worked up enough interest to put it ahead of other books I'm eager to read.


    A shame: there are a lot of stories I would like if it wasn't for all the descriptions of things.

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