The Man Who Knew Too Much, 2

Chesterton is a very strange author. His prose (with some justice) has been used by Thomas Merton as a textbook model for how not to write. He writes with an apparent absolute lack of subtlety, pitting exadgerated caricatures against exadgerated characters in surrealistic stories that are at once never fantasy (pretty much always set in his contemporary England) and unbelievably fantastic. Worst yet, the caricatures often do apply to religions and ethnicities in seemingly simplistic manners (Chesterton himself had no problem differentiating between his friends and their dangerous ideologies, but the concept doesn't always come out right in his hastily-written prose.) Yet for all that, it is impossible to go away from one of his stories unchanged, and generally the change is generally a very happy one.

So, in the end, it seems to be with The Man Who Knew Too Much. In this case, I knew I'd found a book worthy of endless rereads when I came to the conclusion of Chapter 6. Now, you must remember that this is Chesterton we're talking about, an Englishman's Englishman if ever there was one, to realize exactly what he's saying about humanity:

A cloud came across the brow of Horne Fisher. "I knew only too much about it already," he said, "and, after all, it's shameful for me to be speaking lightly of poor Bulmer, who has paid his penalty; but the rest of us haven't. I dare say every cigar I smoke and every liqueur I drink comes directly or indirectly from the harrying of the holy places and the persecution of the poor. After all, it needs very little poking about in the past to find that hole in the wall, that great breach in the defenses of English history. It lies just under the surface of a thin sheet of sham information and instruction, just as the black and blood-stained well lies just under that floor of shallow water and flat weeds. Oh, the ice is thin, but it bears; it is strong enough to support us when we dress up as monks and dance on it, in mockery of the dear, quaint old Middle Ages. They told me I must put on fancy dress; so I did put on fancy dress, according to my own taste and fancy. I put on the only costume I think fit for a man who has inherited the position of a gentleman, and yet has not entirely lost the feelings of one."

In answer to a look of inquiry, he rose with a sweeping and downward
gesture.

"Sackcloth," he said; "and I would wear the ashes as well if they would stay on my bald head."

But then again, once I start quoting Chesterton, it's very hard to stop; and I think Chesterton's political pointedness (applicable every bit as much to our America now as to his England there) is misrepresented whenever it's taken out of the overarching context of his Christianity. Human systems of compassion that work without grace turn to nothing but futile condemnation, which is the reason (when one comes to it) why Liberation Theology and Humanism alike will never have the solidity of the message of the Cross. (They're a lot simpler, yes, as they paint an easy path to virtue so that one can be better than one's fellow man. But they don't work in the long run in the light of the more difficult and marvelous concept of universal sin.) And so, I give you a final quote of the day, and let Chesterton have the final word in this post.

After a silence Fisher answered in a lower voice, looking his friend in the eyes.

"Did you think there was nothing but evil at the bottom of them?" he asked, gently. "Did you think I had found nothing but filth in the deep seas into which fate has thrown me? Believe me, you never know the best about men till you know the worst about them. It does not dispose of their strange human souls to know that they were exhibited to the world as impossibly impeccable wax works, who never looked after a woman or knew the meaning of a bribe. Even in a palace, life can be lived well; and even in a Parliament, life can be lived with occasional efforts to live it well. I tell you it is as true of these rich fools and rascals as it is true of every poor footpad and pickpocket; that only God knows how good they have tried to be. God alone knows what the conscience can survive, or how a man who has lost his honor will still try to save his soul."

A New Side of Chesterton

So, lately I've been listening (through the wonders of Librivox!) to Chesterton's The Man Who Knew Too Much. This is not, of course, to be confused with Hitchcock's film by the same name, but it is quite entertaining, and very fascinating to look at the political (and thus far more cynical) side of Chesterton.

The protagonist (Fisher) begs comparison to Father Brown, and not just because he goes around solving Chesterton's ... unique style of mystery stories. He is, like Father Brown, posessed of a profound and topsy-turvy understanding of the vile depths of depravity common throughout all areas of society, and solving the case for him generally involves being able to see through the illusions of security everyone else builds for themselves. (So far, the list of whodunit includes: the warm and friendly peasant who everyone loves, the innovative London police officer leading the investigation who shoots his own men, and the celebrated general who stands as the last icon of all things British and good). But he forms a far darker protagonist than Father Brown, a man of almost infinite passivity, far more interested in what he doesn't know (such as fish that glow in the dark) than the dark deeds he does. And while Father Brown generally instructs people towards godliness at the end of each story, the narrators of Fisher's stories generally realize that they're happier people than Fisher because of their ignorance of the corruption surrounding them.

It's a very new side of Chesterton, and makes me wonder when it was written. Certainly Fisher spouts all the hallmark Gilbertian defenses of Christianity, so my early suspicions that this was the writings of the early atheist Chesterton seem unfounded. Yet there is certainly something more of the spirit of Doestoevski (who Chesterton always loved) here, something like The Man Who Was Thursday at the moment before it makes the transition to full-blown surrealism. And while I don't know what to think of it, one thing is sure: it is quite fascinating, in my opinion much more so than Father Brown. And pretty much any book that fascinates and dances through realms of philosophy is pretty much irresistable to me.

Update...again

For a while, I've been blogging exclusively on my Xanga account, for the very valid reason that I don't have enough time to make the slightly-polished essays that find their way onto this site.

I just realized that there are a few articles that actually are worth posting here. Two (on Fantasy) are up now, two more will go up once I figure out how to make back-dating work in this new Google-run Blogger.

Responding (Indirectly) to Littlemanpoet

I have no time (this week), alas, for a full-fledged duscussion, but I think I wanted to make a couple of points as they clarified.

1) There can certainly be a distinction between Myth and Fantasy (according to my definition from the last post) in the sense that Myth is a universal desire within all humans, and Fantasy is one specific way in which Myth can be expressed. The distinction is certainly entirely artificial, but is useful in at least one sense: it allows us to talk about Fantasy as a singular phenomenon and look at its roots, its branches, its misinterpretations and how a Christian artist can deal with it. (Pretty much everything from misogyny to subcreation to neopaganism, which apply pretty specifically to 20th- and 21st-century fantasy.)

2) In talking about Fantasy as Myth, I think in many ways I was approaching Littlemanpoet's Unity of Meaning. I certainly don't agree that Tolkien is the only one to achieve this, or even that Tolkien's works particularly encapsulate such unity any better than, say, LeGuinn's The Beginning Place or Gaiman's Anansi Boys. It is good here to remember that Lewis and Tolkien both wrote their fantasies because they had seen such beauties in the works of McDonald, Morriss, et al. That is, Tolkien may have done something new (and he certainly did), but he was participating in a tradition. It is very sad to me that "High Fantasy" seems a confused branch, draping downward towards readers from Tolkien's branch rather than trying to find its own way to the sun. But as far as what Tolkien did do, I'm not sure at the moment that I much disagree with Littlemanpoet. If I were to put Elves into a video game, I'd give them advantages against supernatural creatures in combat, a sort of limited prescience to allow for their advanced intelligence, many skills for reading the subtle signs of nature, no need to sleep, etc. But that would be missing the point. The point is that they are wise, natural, sorrowful and powerful--all tied up in the fact that they are simply Elfin. (I can use the term--Tolkien did.)

So....there's today's update.

What is Fantasy and Where Did It Come From

It is a thought that I have had for many, many years--pretty much ever since I came to realize that the tales told in the Middle Ages weren't precisely identical with the stories that raged through my imagination after reading The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. The question is: "what exactly is this thing called fantasy that, while entirely (and self-consciously) imaginary, exerts such an immense power over people who hear even mere icons of fantasy such as knights, castles, and dragons.(1)

First, a definition of terms. The majority of "fantasy" books seem to have as little to do with fantasy as possible. Tamora Pierce, for instance, has written a great number of highly-successful stories that take place in a highly-developed world with pretty much all the fantasy tropes: knights, spells, Kings of Thieves, honorable desert nomads, kingdom politics, etc. Yet in the end, each feels more like a combination world-striding spy novel and coming-of-age story. That is, we get to see a multitude of fascinating cultures, watch a successful and long fight against a truly evil and clever villain, and find ourselves absorbed pretty much entirely into the sights and experiences of a likable and interesting protagonist. At the same time, that protagonist (normally a girl with an indomitable passion for hitting people with swords) grows into adulthood, learning the meaning of courage, love, dilligence, etc.

Of course coming of age is a hugely significant thread in the rope of fantasy tales, but it is most certainly not the only thread. Compare the above summary of Tamora Pierce's stories with, to take an example that I was watching when I started this post, The Last Unicorn. Here we have two central protagonists, the unnamed unicorn and the inept magician Schmendrick. They travel through a great variety of locations, face various dangers, and rescue all the unicorns while coming into a much more mature understanding of life. But unlike any of Pierce's protagonists, each step of the story means far more as a story than it means to the characters.

Let me illustrate. If a character in a Pierce novel gets thrown in prison (as is quite plausible to happen at some point), it means simply that someone in the government is against her for some reason, and she must find a way to (a) convince the king she's worth letting go or (b) escape. But the Unicorn is captured by an evil witch who exploits people's need for wonder by providing her with a false horn that is visible to those who can't see her real horn. She is released by an inept wizard because he is pure of heart enough to instantly recognize her true self. (Also, he stole the keys from the stupid guard, but we only know that because of a slight dropped comment allowing us to ignore the effecient cause and get on with the story.)

Both circumstances have an immediate meaning for the reader. In Pierce's book, we will feel the panic of being stuck in a prison, the need to escape and finally the wonder of freedom again, as the protagonist gets her sword and horse back and takes to the open roads. If it's well enough written, we will read it in a frenzy, scared that around any corner there might be enough guards to overcome the protagonist. We might even have an ethical question to muddy up the waters--is the mission important enough for the protagonist to kill an innocent guard in her escape? More likely, the protagonist will see the evil man who imprisoned her, but learn self control as she realizes that she must repress her desire for vengeance and flee in order to accomplish the mission.

The questions presented in The Last Unicorn are much more philosophical, and also much less questions. We may wonder what it is in humanity that desires beauty but prefers things that are "false" even when the slightly harder truth is much more beautiful. We may want to be like the inept wizard, capable of seeing the true beauty of people and courageous enough to destroy whatever cages destroy that beauty. Or we may think of the crowds, and think about the blindness and corruption at the heart of man, how our very desire for beauty and wonder can destroy the things we claim to love. Or we could not think in words at all (which may be the best way of doing things), and just feel our heart clench at the sight of a unicorn behind bars with a second false horn. But the point is, if it moves us at all, fantasy moves us by presenting us a world much more concerned with ideas and ideals than schemes and skills. Beauty transforms the Beast into a Gentleman because of True Love, and the point is really quite lost if we start asking what degree of devotion is required for the love to be True and has Rose really been acting in the cautious and wise way that we want our daughters to act.

Which, now that I think of it, is all in Plato. Or at least, if I want to say that Fantasy is better than all other forms of storytelling (which, in my biased heart, I really really do) my job is simple. "Action" literature concerns itself with Plato's Efficient Cause, that is "how is the bad guy to be defeated." This is true rather the story is a romance novel, a spy novel, or low fantasy. But fantasy transcends the Efficient Cause and goes straight to the Final Cause. We know that a fairy tale doesn't make sense--that's why we call it a fairy tale. Sauron isn't defeated because of Gandalf's wisdom, he is defeated because in all his evil wisdom, he still cannot imagine that someone who has power would seek to throw it away. All the wars and plotting and distractions are just side-games to make us a bit more involved in the story.

So...I haven't yet arrived at a working definition of fantasy, showing that this requires a lot more thought. But I'm on my way there, and this is a blog, so now I hit "save changes."



(1)The Inklings, of course, had something of a solution: "myth," properly speaking, shouldn't be contrasted with reality. Fantasy reflects the crying out of the human heart, a thirst which is itself better than earthly satisfaction, a hunger for something earthly pleasures cannot supply. All of which I think, in the end, to be quite true. But that is somewhat tangential to the question which I may or may not continue to pick at in a number of new posts: in our culture, which is about as far from Medieval as one can imagine, what is it that has worked together to create this absolutely enrapturing field of the imagination that is so recognizable Medieval--even when talking about Jedi guardians of distant galaxies, for instance.