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.

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.

Salon captures Austen’s enduring appeal: [Read more →]

A few people have objected to a Naomi Wolf article on pornography I linked to earlier. If you don’t buy the idea that rampant over-exposure to porn deadens our erotic senses, I recommend you check out this excellent post from Ross Douthat on sex and literature; I think he has a good handle on the relationship between restraint and transgression.

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 →]

This sort of thing really pisses me off.  For more on the CPSIA and dangerous, lead-inked vintage children’s books, go here or here or here.  Then go buy up lots of used books at your local used bookseller before it’s too late….

I saw the Broadway production of Wicked this past weekend.  It was very good.  An under study performed the part of Elphaba, the wicked witch, and she was superb…. [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 →]

So in the comments to this post, I received a lot of reading suggestions for good fantasy.  They are listed below with updates to follow… [Read more →]

The other day I was sitting around drinking beers with a friend and talking about magic.  Specifically, we were discussing the abuse or misuse of magic in fantasy writing.  It is my theory that, among other things, the success of a fantasy book, aside from all the basic prerequisites of good fiction (i.e. plot, character development, etc.) – requires that magic is done well.

Alas, in much of what passes for fantasy these days, magic is not done well.  It is often used too much, and it is even more often the most unimaginative element of the story next to the characters (often cheap Gandalf knock-offs residing in cheap Middle Earth knock-off worlds).  Indeed, aside from the formulaic character development and overuse of standard fantasy races – elven ranger, curmudgeonly dwarf, human fighter, barbarian priestess, and so forth – which read like D&D characters more than actual people, the sad state of magic in fantasy is probably the worst thing about the genre. [Read more →]

Well, it looks like HBO will begin shooting the pilot episode for George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones in October in Northern Ireland.  I am gripped with excitement and trepidation.  And at least one character has been cast: Tyrion Lannister, who will be played by Peter Dinklage. [Read more →]