And....a bonus quote

Because the first may have inaccurately reflected the book...

T

hey had a particular way of addressing each other when the old bitterness was about to flare up.

"Have I offended you in some way, Reverend?" my father would ask.

And his father would say, "No, Reverend, you have not offended me in any way at all. Not at all."

And my mother would say, "Now, don't you two get started."

Quote of the Day

Lately, I've been reading my way through Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Amazing book, but I'm not sure how to talk about it. Instead here's a quote. I'll probably put up more later.

When I was a child I actually believed that the purpose of steeples was to attract lightning. I thought they must be meant to protect all the other houses and buildings, and that seemed very gallant to me. Then I read some history, and I realized after a while that not every church was on the ragged edge of the Great Plains, and not every pulpit had my father in it. The history of the church is very complex, very mingled. I want you to know how aware I am of that fact. These days there are so many people who think loyalty to religion is benighted, if it is not worse than benighted. I am aware of that, and I know the charges that can be brought against the churches are powerful. And I know, too, that my own experience of the church has been, in many senses, sheltered and parochial. In every sense, unless it really is a universal and transcendent life, unless the bread is the bread and the cup is the cup everywhere, in all circumstances, and it is a time with the Lord in Gethsemane that comes for everyone, as I deeply believe.

The Magician's Craft

I've heard there is such a thing as a "short" blog entry. I'm skeptical, but I'll try one.

Stumbled upon an interesting quote from Laura Miller's The Magician's Book:

The Chronicles [of Narnia] are unified, not by anything resembling the exhaustive cultural stuff that Tolkien invented for Middle-earth, not by a single aesthetic or style, and not even, really, by a cogent religious vision, but by readerly desire. Lewis poured into his imaginary world everything that he had adored in the books he read as a child and in the handful of children’s books he had enjoyed as an adult. And there is more, too: treasures collected from Dante, from Spenser, from Malory, from Austen, from old romances and ballads and fairy tales and pagan epics. Everything that Lewis had ever read and loved went into Narnia, and because he was a great reader, these things were as deeply felt by him as actual experiences. In his own way, Lewis, too, believed that everything in the Chronicles was true, and this conviction is what he communicates to his young readers.

I think she has in mind a very important distinction, and one not exclusive to Lewis. "The Medieval" in post-medieval literature has often (like the orient) been considered a place of disorder, anarchy, and chaos. In a sense, that has given medieval fantasies--whether the early Gothic novels of Walpole or the bizarre dream-visions of MacDonald or the postmodern pastiches of Gaiman--a particularly immediate link with "readerly desire" and the experience of fiction. If one can put whatever one wants into a story, without fretting too much about the physical realities of the world, then one is better equipped to put down, well, whatever one wants. But of course, what one wants is often a lot more complex and weird than one might first assume.

But I wonder. Following Tolkien, a whole industry seems to have popped up centered around realistic, non-fantastic otherworlds; that is, books where magic is just an alternate system of physics, with politics, economics, history, religion, and geography fleshed out to a remarkable degree. I enjoy these books. At their best they offer an alternate perspective from which to question our own world while sidestepping the reality of our position in favor of abstract thought. Recently I've greatly enjoyed Robin Hobb's alternative take on the social, economic and political development of a land that doesn't exist. More commonly, these tales offer a believable world in which to see characters who don't exist overcome struggles and become happy. It may be "escapist," but it's a nice break between periods of dealing with an often scarier reality.

But I wonder. While the relatively iron-clad realism of these books seems designed to make them sell, Lewisian fantasy hasn't lost any of its popularity. Think of Gaiman's Stardust (now a Major Motion Picture), in which the characters are rescued by sky-pirates, as Gaiman put it, "because I kinda thought it seemed cool at the time." Or almost any film by Tim Burton, in which creativity is king and continuity a secondary afterthought. Or for that matter the Chronicles of Narnia themselves, which (despite considerable stylistic roughness) continue to sell well even among people who violently disagree with Lewis's religion and politics.

Fantasy always has existed on the edge of dream-land; sometimes I wonder why it seems so obsessed with crystalizing itself into the solidity (and respectable predictability) of our daylight hours.

**edit: well, maybe not so short an entry after all.

Social Oceans -- Robin Hobb, Pirates and Dinner-Guests

A Renaissance-era pirate's cabin is often seen to be the furthest thing possible from a Austenesque dining room. After all, a pirate's life is full of all sorts of physical skills: tacking against headwinds, being skilled with a blade, knowing what trade routes carry the most valuable and unguarded prizes. Austen-era housewives are traditionally represented as passive, timid things, and their actions seem a part of an entirely different milleau: gathering families for dinners; seating table guests according to their stations and compatibility, always keeping an eye out for good matches for their daughters.

But when it comes to fictional situations, the two are more alike than one might think. The life of a successful literary pirate, like the life of a socially skilled Jane Austen protagonist, is made or broken on a single ability: the ability to judge and make use of both individual psychology and group sociology. Indeed, both the world of the dining room and the outlaw high seas, as found in literature, have another theme in common: they are places with strict and all-encompasing rules and power-structures, that are nevertheless constantly violated and renegotiated when no one seems to be looking.

Long John Silver knew this, of course, and showed his knowledge by his insistence on the ambiguous term "Gentleman o' Fortune." By assuming the name (and genteel mannerisms) of a civilized member of the upper class, he opened up new spaces for himself--he could command troops without resorting to excessive physical violence, but he could also negotiate skillfully with the forces of law and order. Indeed he is perhaps literature's greatest social chamelion, shifting his social identity seamlessly from kindly cook to vicious killer to nautical commander to kindly father-figure.

Mr. Wickham knows the power of social illusions as well. He takes on the role of a dashing soldier, and Lydia accepts it as the truth. Yet when they begin to live together, Darcy, Mr. Bennet, and Elizabeth--three characters who understand the flexible-but-real nature of society--play their own game with social conventions. Lydia and Wickham aren't married out of any religious or moral conviction (as much as D, B, and E might wish they were), but the bribe the forces them into the form of piety allows them to work within society. Wickham becomes, indeed, a "Gentleman o' Fortune," but he's intimidated enough to act the part and so for Lydia's sake (and Elizabeth's!) we are happy.

But in all cases, it is the indeterminate locations that are the source of adventure. This is what makes the desert island negotiations in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies so much fun--people switch from the role of hero to villain, subordinate pirate to ambitious soldier, rum-drinking Englishwoman to practical manipulator. Sometimes the roles work, and sometimes they don't, but the real-world results are always real.

This is a connection I probably wouldn't have made on my own, but lately I've been reading Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders series. In summary, it seems like a very odd hybrid: nautical adventure (and romance) intercut with scenes of a female-only household (the men are at sea) full of clashing personalities and one very difficult teenage daughter. But it all works, since Hobb has a profound understanding of how people work in culture. Whether the question is "should we liberate slaveships when we could be stealing jewels?" or "should I engage in a dumb game of bear-bating in order to look like a "real" crew-member?" or even "what clothes should I wear when meeting my daughter's suitor?", the fundamental issues are the same: "how do I want to appear and what difference does my appearance make?" And the real fun is watching how, in the play of appearances and masks and pretensions successful and unsuccessful, character is revealed and made.

Of course, Hobb does write unapologetic genre fiction; this is a fantasy story, which means action will drive the characters through emotional crisis to some sort of triumphant ending (though not, perhaps, the one we expected.) But it is the tapestry of mixed motives and social skills she weaves along the way that captivates. Hobb writes in the tradition of the greatest historical novelists, but without being enslaved to any particular historical period, she is able to consider touchy topics while minimizing their historical baggage. Hobb takes on: the cultural effects of owning (and transporting) slaves, the psychology of prostitution (from all perspectives involved), the effects of a culture swiftly evolving to strip power from women, the slow erosion of agreements made between a powerful king and his relatively powerless colony, and a vast arrays of stupid or wise decisions found on every level and every side of her unique society. But her fantasy world--and her wise understanding of the play of social identity--keep this from being a straightforward sermon. Instead she provides the reader with experience, of sorts: the ability to see actions which are similar to our own from an alien and relatively disinterested perspective.

(Two brief warnings: Hobb (as you might have guessed from the review) doesn't shirk from clear depictions of either sexuality or violence. Unrelatedly, she suffers from the most common plague of fantasy writers: rushed to publication, her books seem to contain at least 33% more words than are useful to her narrative.)

Real Fantasies

If I ever get to be a published author, there will be two short-story collections I'll want to release.

The second one, which contains all the stories that don't fit into the strict constraints of the first, may be called "Real Fantasies." In any case, it seems a suggestive term.

For a long time, I've thought about "true fantasy." It's a category that I tend to classify books that move me in a certain way. "True fantasy" isn't about coherent narrative, exciting adventure, fleshed-out characterization, or any of the things that most commonly gets stuck in quotes on the back cover of fantasy books. It's about images and legends which slap you in the face with a sense of place and time that is of its nature heightened; it almost doesn't matter whether what is heightened is peace and comfort or strife and peril.

This isn't what most fantasy books do today--not, I think, because most fantasy authors are bad so much as because that's not their goal. (I actually enjoy thoroughly many books in the "fantasy" section of the bookstore without experiencing any of the particular pleasure I associate with fantasy literature.) Perhaps it is a mis-interpretation of Tolkien; Tolkien's world was profoundly fragmentary, with pieces of the legendary past constantly being discovered in all their wonder, but most fantasists would rather emulate his consistency and complexity. But there is something unique at work when one hears:

Gil-Galad was an elven king
Of him the harpers sadly sing
The last whose realm was fair and free
Between the mountains and the sea.

Nothing is mechanistic, nothing is related to plot, there is no clearly-implied moral for how the reader ought to live. These are stories set off by themselves, even if places (Mordor) and themes eventually overlap with the main narrative. And somehow, in the reading and re-reading of this re-telling of a fictional legend, a measurable, profound emotional experience is created which has nothing to do with Cambellian plot-structure or the moral themes of the book. The narrative seems, for the moment, to reach beyond politics and setting and simply depict some essential element of the joys or sorrows that make up human life. For me, very few authors can do this trick, but it's a trick of which I never grow tired.


But I also think there is a converse to True Fantasy, which is Real Fantasy. If True Fantasy lifts us up to (like Troilus in Chaucer's classic) behold the world as if from orbit in the Heavens, Real Fantasy jerks us back to Earth, and revels in the violence of the process. Pan's Labyrinth juxtaposes Ofelia's childhood imagination with the localized tragedy of militarization, revolution, and counter-revolution. Gaiman starts a story with "Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail, it was under a fur coat." The Bridge to Terabithia highlights the powers of imagination only to show their limited utility in the face of life-shattering tragedy. If True Fantasy departs the story to arrive at lofty abstractions, Real Fantasy moves downward, towards the limited power and perspective of mere mortals instead of Heroes of Legend. This is the realm of the domestic, but also the political (since politics, by definition, refers to that which people have different perspectives on based on their position.) And in a sense, of course, it has always been a part of any memorable fantasy; Tolkien evokes the sensation as well as anyone in his introduction to The Lord of the Rings:

If [WWII] had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get posession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

This is, of course, far from the plot of The Lord of the Rings itself, nor is it the story Tolkien wants to tell. But it is the type of story, Tolkien makes clear, that the reader ought to remake in order to fill out the story's significance, to make it mean something to the reader whose life and experiences are different from the author:

I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author. An author cannot of course remain wholely unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.

The reader is free to "apply" The Lord of the Rings to World War II; he or she is also free to apply it in many other ways or to many other things. Politics may be contrary to the beauties of Tolkien's text, but the ability to imagine Middle-Earth in political terms and politics in Tolkien's terms is essential to making the text worth reading.

Which is why I add the "s" to "Real Fantasies." There is an infinity of ways of locating fantasies of nobility in our fallen, ignoble, everyday world. But each act of ironic localization also reminds the reader of the beauty that is overwritten, just as each utopic text reminds the reader of the gap between ideals of beauty and truth and his or her present existence.

Lacan (if I understand him correctly) defines the "Real" as the terrifying realm that is forgotten in our day-to-day life (made up of "symbolic" self-narratives and cultural metanarratives.) One of the joys of poetry is its ability to challenge our understanding, and for a moment to jar us out of the Symbolic and into the Real. But of course, one of the oldest doctrines of Christianity (predating Christ's incarnation by thousands of years) is that there is more than chaos and nonsense beyond the limits of our comprehension. God, too, is Real, but by virtue of his reality and completion he stands beyond the comprehension of any human.

Fantasy is uniquely suited to depict worlds outside of our immediate expectations. In delving further into the "real" it points out its own artificiality; in pursuing ideals it stands ready to condemn and criticize the world in which we live. In both forms, it broadens our mental world, even as it reveals to us the limitations of all our ways of seeing.