Will linked us to this piece by James Bowman earlier.  Bowman writes:

I mention this difference between the fantastical as it existed in olden times and today, which some may think a trivial one, because we are or ought to be coming to realize that acknowledged fantasy, of the kind the movies have inherited from science fiction, is a different kind of thing from fantasy that doesn’t know it is fantasy…. But if there is no longer any attempt at imitation of reality but only the aptly-described “magic” of the movies making new realities, then there is no longer any such thing as art as it has been understood for the last three thousand or so years in the West.

Then again, when someone writes of myths they believe in this is usually not considered fantasy is it? Such writing would surely be considered religious texts. Bowman misses a much larger and more important aspect of fantasy which is that it is – at its best – an elaborate allegory. Tolkien’s Middle Earth was not something he believed in, per se, but it was most certainly a vehicle through which he could explore his beliefs. The myths he borrowed from may have been more Pagan than Christian, but the themes Tolkien was exploring were certainly in the Christian tradition. As Michael Weingard notes in his excellent essay on the dearth of Jewish fantasy:

Christianity has a much more vivid memory and even appreciation of the pagan worlds which preceded it than does Judaism. Neither Canaanite nor Egyptian civilizations exercise much fascination for the Jewish imagination, and certainly not as a place of enchantment or escape. In contrast, the Christian imagination found in Lewis and Tolkien often moves, like Beowulf or Sir Gawain, through an older pagan world in which spirits of place and mythical beings are still potent. Nor is this limited to fauns and elves. This anterior world can be dark and frighteningly alien, as Tolkien has Gandalf indicate in The Two Towers. “Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves,” the wizard says, “the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not.” Lewis sounds the same note in Perelandra when, far below the surface of the planet Venus, his protagonist catches an unsettling glimpse of alien creatures, and wonders if there might be “some way to renew the old Pagan practice of propitiating the local gods of unknown places in such fashion that it was no offence to God Himself but only a prudent and courteous apology for trespass.”

Fantasy is, after all, an exploration of our history and of – to put it somewhat crudely – what it means to be human. The fantastical often serves as contrast to our own humanity. The ‘other’ serves as a sort of mirror. Tolkien’s elves are a glimpse at a sort of perfection we humans cannot attain – at least here on Earth (or Middle Earth). The humans in Narnia have a very special role in the determination of events there. Magic is a window (indeed, a house full of windows) into all the ways we could be, or wish to be, but are not and never will be. In a sense, fantasy takes new worlds and false histories and creates little laboratories of experience. It is more inward looking than science fiction, which is by its nature a forward looking genre. It requires that we see beyond the fantastic to get to the deeper meanings.

What it does not require, in any sense, is a belief in the fantastical worlds it creates, either on the part of the writer or the reader. Bowman misunderstands the very nature of fantasy. Tolkien’s exploration of power and loss (of the war-torn, fast-changing world he existed in, the death of the agrarian society and the rise of the machine) could have as easily played out in a non-fantastical piece (though perhaps it would not have been quite so memorable). He did not need to believe in his creation to believe in the meaning behind it, any more than he would need to believe in any other fiction he created – on our own world or in some other.

Bowman writes elsewhere:

What I objected to in our contemporary fantasists — the question of their predecessors was too complicated for me to go into in such a short article — was that they deliberately and as a precondition of their art cut me off from any possibility of belief in the worlds they represent to me because they do not believe in them themselves. And if they don’t believe in them, why should I? And if I can’t believe in them, why should I care about them?

To draw a comparison between the fantasy of our modern world and the fantasy of some ‘olden-days’ is to miss the point of fantasy in the first place. Homer did not write fantasy novels, but the works of Homer, like the folklore and myth of so many cultures, provides the inspiration for much of what fantasists do today. If we believe in our own myths, after all, then they are not really fantasy.

Why should we care about these stories if we cannot be bothered to believe in them? I would say, quite simply, because the truth of a story is not always found merely in its narrative. If Bowman cannot see past the fantastical – something that even Homer surely wanted his readers to do – to see the humanity beneath it, then he is not reading either myth or fantasy in the way it was meant to be read. Nor Homer, for that matter.

Furthermore, we should read because we enjoy a good story. If we cannot enjoy a good story because the author who wrote it did not ‘believe’ it, then we should stop reading fiction altogether. Like perfection, a critic can easily become the enemy of the good.

Fantasy will never be like the ‘olden days’ and nor should it.  At least not in this world.

Via Alan Jacobs, here’s an interesting critique of modern fantasy writing from The New Atlantis: [Read more →]

Tyler Cowen and Peter Suderman have both compiled (non-definitive) lists of books which have influenced them the most over the years.  I have thought about this some, and come to the decision that the books I read as a child were by far the most influential – far more influential than anything I read later as a college student or the ones I read nowadays.  So here’s a list, from memory, of the most influential books I read as a child.

The Lord of the Rings – This one is the obvious choice for a fantasy reader, I suppose.  I read it in fourth grade for the first time and loved it, and have read it several times since. It is still the definitive work of epic fantasy, I believe.  The only downside is that so many people attempted to imitate Tolkien when they should have been writing their own ideas.

The Prydain Chronicles – Lloyd Alexander was never as well known as Tolkien, but his Prydian books were wonderful young adult fantasy novels steeped in Welsh myth.  So while some of the characters mirrored those in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, the stories themselves were unique and interesting and lively.  I read these ones countless times.

The Dark is Rising Sequence – This series taps into the old Welsh and British mythology fairly heavily, mixing the modern world and Merlin and time travel together in an epic clash between good and evil.  One of many books I read and loved that transports us from the mundane world into one much darker and more fierce.

A Wrinkle in Time – This was one of those books that really stopped me in my tracks. Free will, conformity, and the seduction of evil are all present here.

The Giver – Another glimpse into totalitarianism and conformity and the dangers of ‘sameness’ and ignorance of history.  Less fantastical than my typical childhood read, but sort of shocking also.

The Bridge to Terabithia – They made a movie about this book recently.  Please don’t watch it.  Sometimes movies can enrich the book experience, but not when they are mangled by over-Disneyfication. Terabithia helped me understand tragedy and loss better.

The Castle in the Attic – To be honest, I can barely remember this book, but like Narnia it helped transport me into another world – something I did a lot of as a kid.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – This was a good, funny, cynical take on the King Arther stories.  Very helpful to round out all that heroism and chivalry with some good, honest, witty realism.

Narnia – Like the Lord of the Rings, these books are simply staples of young adult fantasy.

King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table – I have read so many King Arthur books at this point I can barely keep track of them.  This was one of the first.

I Am the Cheese – This was far more dystopian a tale than I typically read as a child, and still sort of haunting whenever I think about it.

Some honorable mentions:

Watership Down, Lord of the Flies, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, The Wind in the Willows, The Last Unicorn, the Redwall books, the books of Roald Dahl and many others…

I should probably put child’s things away at this point and read more serious works of fiction and non-fiction – more philosophy, theology, et alia.  And yet … perhaps it is having children of my own now, or perhaps it is simply that I read to escape, but when it comes down to choosing I still find myself with some fantasy novel in hand, or some work of science fiction or mystery.  Yes – I do dip into non-fiction at times.  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is certainly one of the most influential histories of my adult life. A Short History of Nearly Everything has been one of my favorite non-fiction reads in the past few years.  Crime and Punishment is hardly fantasy, and has been one of my favorite works of fiction that I’ve read since high school.  I blazed through a great deal of literature both contemporary and classic during college.  Some of it was quite good.

But the books that I’ve really loved have been Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell; the George R. R. Martin books; even the Harry Potter books.  True – much of the fantasy genre is fairly awful. Perhaps that’s why I’m so glad whenever I do find something good – even older children’s fantasy that I missed somehow as a child, like the work of Diana Wynne Jones.

What I’d like to read soon are the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks. And Jane Jacobs. And Diane Ravitch’s latest. And Joe Abercrombie (who, like Banks, is mysteriously missing from the local library…) And some Chesterton.

I’m currently reading  the sprawling Malazan books of Steven Erikson (now on House of Chains); and After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre – though I do not spend enough time reading (and I have a suspicion that this will remain the case until my children are older.) I’ve also got Mieville’s The City and the City lined up, though I admit to being a little stuck in Erikson’s series, making it hard for me to move on to other things.

So much to read, so little time.

Via First Thoughts, here’s a great essay on Jewish faith and fantasy writing. One of the authors featured, Lev Grossman, was interviewed by our very own E.D. Kain not too long ago.

Fantasy is a genre dominated by sword-and-sorcery epics, mysterious dragons, and tyrannical sorcerers.  Few fantasy novels have joined the ranks of ‘great’ literature, and fewer still have crossed over into the contemporary literature aisle.  The Lord of the Rings has of course become iconic, and the Harry Potter books were inexplicably popular among non-fantasy readers. But when trying to find a book to compare to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, I came up pretty much empty-handed.

This is the trouble one has categorizing the sort of book that receives high praise from such disparate authors as Junot Diaz and George R. R. Martin.  It is a book you might read in a class on contemporary literature, but its plot is rooted squarely in the realm of the fantastical, drawing upon Narnia and other fantasy works a great deal, but tackling themes rarely found on a fantasy bookshelf.  The novel’s protagonist, Quentin, struggles not only with magic, but with loss and heartache, and the clumsy pains of young adulthood.

I had a chance to talk with Lev Grossman about The Magicians, his thoughts on magic, and whether the world he explored and created in this novel might see a second run.  Lev attended Harvard and Yale before ditching academia and remaking himself as a journalist. He’s written for a number of publications including the Village Voice and The New York Times, and was hired by Time magazine in 2002 as its book critic.  The Magicians is his third novel.

[Read more →]

Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is an excellent read, and its sequels – Son of a Witch & A Lion Among Men – are as well.  They should be on your to-read list, and not just for the prose, which is at once witty and ironical, lush and even at time frustratingly counter-intuitive - but because the works speak so clearly of the dangers of centralized power and a too-centralized economy.

In Maguire’s Oz, the Emerald City has eclipsed all the rest of the country.  Its military is well funded and oppressive.  It has plundered the emerald mines of the north to decorate its streets and houses.  It has drained the southern swamps for their water.  It has begun the disenfranchisement of the Animals (as opposed to animals, who cannot speak or dress or think like Humans.)  And Munchkinland has been forced to secede from the union in order to protect its “bread-basket” from the greedy paws of first the Wizard, and then his successors who continue in his tradition of brutalizing the country-side (though they become more lenient in their enforcement of Animal discrimination laws.  The Animals, after all, can contribute to the economy as laborers, etc.)

Suffice to say, this is fantasy that, while not exactly conservative, speaks to localism and decentralization and the dangers of unfettered power in ways that conservatives should better understand.  The modern conservative is far more concerned with power and centralization than they should be.  Such is the temptation of the game.

I won’t go into the novels in any great length.  Suffice to say that should you read them, look for these themes.  The Witch is a wonderful curmudgeonly crusader.  The Cowardly Lion is a hapless sap, tossed about unwittingly and unwillingly through the center of events outside his control.  Aside from the Emerald City, the real villains are apathy and loneliness.  The sense that the world has been ripped apart leaving everyone spinning through it alone runs like a current through each book.

As we place more and more of our faith in Washington and national politics, we’d do well to recall the Emerald City.  There is nothing more splendid about it than any other place in Oz, except that with the wealth it’s drained from the rest of the country it has been able to erect a lovely, shiny-green facade.  And all the power, and the intellectual currency, and the might of that nation are drawn there like moths to flame.

“Every time you hear some version of the imperative “Believe!” cringe and fear for the future. It is the clearest symptom that we live in a culture of wilful delusion–one that actively encourages billions to think they’ve won the Magical Belief Lottery.” ~ R. Scott Bakker

I just finished Bakker’s novel The Darkness that Comes Before.  Really, truly an excellent fantasy, extraordinarily written, very dark and complex, and wholly unique.  What Bakker does especially well is create a world that is familiar yet disconcertingly unfamiliar at the same time.  I have a notion that this is what the fantasy genre is supposed to accomplish, but that very few of its writers actually pull it off.  Bakker does, and he does it with some of the best and most thought-provoking prose I’ve read in the genre in a long, long time.

How did I never hear of this book before?  R. Scott Bakker’s first novel and the first in The Prince of Nothing series is, for lack of a better word, tremendous.  I’m only about 100 pages in and already this is one of the finest fantasy novels I’ve ever read.  I probably haven’t been this impressed in the first hundred pages of an epic fantasy novel since I read “A Game of Thrones.” [Read more →]

I’m not done with this book yet, though I’m close.  Initial thoughts: [Read more →]

I stumbled across this short essay from February by Richard Morgan whose book, The Steel Remains, I am currently reading.  (And it’s good so far, and very dark, and very adult.)  Anyways, Morgan takes on Tolkien and offers up some pretty strong criticism of his Rings books.  Discussing a scene of dialog between two orcs, he writes: [Read more →]

I think most of the books I’ve read and loved were written by conservatives or libertarians – the fantasy I’ve read was written largely by conservatives, I think because good fantasy plays on themes of decentralization (the villain often attempting to shore up and centralize their control) and tradition.  The science-fiction often as not came from libertarians, because like libertarianism itself, science fiction warns us against the perniciousness of the all-encompassing state, the uses of technology by the government to strip away civil liberties, etc.  So in many ways, a good deal of my formation politically has been between these two dynamics – fantasy and science fiction; traditionalism and classical liberalism.

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I just finished A Lion Among Men, the third installment (picking up where Son of  a Witch left off) in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked series (an alternative vision of Oz).  It’s a good read, and has a strong decentralist message – the Emerald City is essentially the heart of Oz, an upstart capitol that has begun to centralize the economic and political and natural resources of Oz itself into a bastion of power and corruption and increasing militarization.  Even after the departure of the Wizard of Oz, who began this centralizing trend, successor after successor maintains their grip on power, even expands it – continuing the persecution of Animals and moving, by the third book, to retake the secessionist state of Munchkinland.  Fascinating stuff – dark, and lovely, and sardonic.  A bit tilted toward the anti-hero, but that was the premise all along, I suppose, when detailing the “life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West.”

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From here I think I will read, based on commenters’ recommendations either Witch Week or The Steel Remains or probably both at once.  It’s nice to have a blog if only to have a fantastic comments section to plant questions in.

My initial reaction to E.D.’s latest post was something along the lines of “oh dear, I’m not sure we need a comprehensive rundown of our favorite erotic fiction.” Fortunately, he’s talking about the other fantasy genre, so I’m happy to chime in with my recommendations. My (short) list is proudly traditional and leans rather heavily on the Welsh. Enjoy:

Porius – John Cowper Powys. A bit dull in stretches, but a must-read for fans of philosophical meanderings, ethnic conflict in post-Roman Britain, and giants.

Sword at Sunset – Rosemary Sutcliff. Arthurian revisionism has taken a few hits of late, so ignore the new stuff and go straight to the source. Sutcliff’s wonderful book is the first to re-imagine Arthur as a Romano-Celtic cavalry commander.

Any of the Conan stories – Robert E. Howard. The original sword-and-sorcery enthusiast, and a Texan to boot, Howard single-handedly invented the genre. Quite a few of these are awful to mediocre, but several of his longer Conan stories remain very enjoyable. Beyond the Black River is my personal favorite.

Tales of the Dying Earth – Jack Vance. An antecedent to Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, mixing science fiction, fantasy, and occasionally impenetrable prose.