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Chestertonian_Rambler
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Country: United States
State: Texas
Metro: Dallas
Interests: Umm...everything?
Regarding stories, I really like which involve spaceships, swords and/or horses.
Regarding life, I suppose there are only three things that particularly matter to me. I love passionately seeking God, and seeking to understand him and his world (it's harder and more wonderful than it seems.) I absolutely adore my wife, my beautiful lifelong partner in a myriad of adventures. Finally, I couldn't live without friends--without them I would probably be a lot more normal, and what fun would that be?
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Member Since:
10/8/2004
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| 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 in the book it 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 FantasiesIf 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. | | |
| Spenser, Battlestar Galactica, the Iraqui War, and JusticeTwo things have been occupying a good deal of my time and imagination, lately: The Faerie Queene, and Battlestar Galactica.
Both are exceedingly long, rather challenging works of imaginative fiction that delve fearlessly (okay, Battlestar Galactica does pull some punches, unlike Spenser) into the mind and heart of society and civilization. And both are, or have been seen as explicitly political, and concerned with the question of empire and the amount of viciousness a government is allowed in order to procure peace and justice.
Traditionally, the two are read as polar opposites.
BSG is, of course, like "all Hollywood" (as long as you exclude Pixar, Mel Gibson, and a number of other outliers) trends liberal. And of course the beginning of season 3 is one high point of their liberal focus. Humanity is colonized by cylons, who themselves want to institute a new, more humane and cooperative regime, but are willing to face just about any death toll to form the wastes of humanity into a governable civilization. The good guys, of course, are with humanity and against the cylons....
....and, of course, in desperate times a subgroup decides that their most effective strategies are to use suicide-bombers and target cylons and sell-outs alike. Coming during the current war, the allegory has been read as pretty straightforward: resistance fighters and suicide bombers are humans too, and are driven to such methods by desperation and military oppression. Bush bad terrorists good.
Spenser is, of course, the reverse. His book on "Justice" involves the expected allegorical personification of justice, who solves moral quandries with intelligence and grace. It also involves his pet iron robot Talus, who slaughters men, women and children by the thousands (and with absolutely no hesitation or regret.) Talus isn't a hero, exactly, but in some way he is a superego--it's fine and good for justice to be set out, and in fact it is necessary. But unless you're willing to go through the practical injustices of slaughter and unrestrained force, no one is ever going to follow your program. It is (as has often been put out) not insignificant that Spenser was an Englishman in Ireland--shortly thereafter he wrote a erudite and intricate analysis of foreign policy recommending the decimation of the Irish (through both slaughter and starvation) in order to civilize Ireland. Justice good, peace is obtained through superior firepower and the willingness to follow through with an invasion.
But I wonder--are both readings really getting at what is going on? Can we convienently group authors into "hawks" and "doves," and relegate the rest of their writings to the support of their independent ideologies?
The answer, unsurprisingly, is "yes." As art distributed in the public forums of their perspective times, both the creators of BSG and Edmund Spenser knew damn well what sort of effect their writings would have. That is, the former humanizes an enemy and therefore weakens our national resolve to kill them for their own good. And the latter shoves the reader up against the impotence of any form of justice that is so bound by its own conscience as to never respond to inhumane violence with inhumane violence. As Spenser later wrote, "better is a mischief [a purposeful evil done by a government] then an inconvenience [a situation in which the rule of law is prohibited because of civil unrest.]"
The answer, as well, is "no." Read in their entirety, the two works offer resistance to simplistic interpretations of their prima facia position.
In BSG, of course, both the political (former Education Secretary and now President Roslyn) and military (Admiral Adama) leadership are repeatedly forced to live in a darkly Spenserian world--from the very first episode, when thousands of civilians are killed at Adama's command, simply because that is the only way to ensure the survival of the human race (they are on a nuclear-powered ship hijacked by Cylons and headed towards the fleet.) Ethical lines are constantly blurred, enemies are arrested, tortured, and executed without trial, all simply because civilization must be maintained if human survival is to continue. The fact that such atrocities are never treated as commonplace or above reproach is besides the point--contrary to the Bush-bad-terrorists-good impression, BSG is constantly in dialog with the way in which liberal debates about human rights are only possible in a place kept safe by military and executive violence.
Nor is Spenser less complicated (in fact, he is quite a bit more subtle--but then, he had the benefit of a better rhetorical education and more time for composition and rewriting.) Talus, notably, is neither human nor noble; it is an impersonal force, whose vicious slaughter of enemies nearly always exceeds the immediate mandate that unleashed his power. His scenes are uncomfortable to modern readers not because we have progressed but because they are intended to be uncomfortable. Throughout the rest of the text Spenser valorizes knightly combat, aliging it with St. Paul's description of the armor of God and the abstract allegory of Christian-as-soldier. But Talus is something else entirely. Talus doesn't seek quarter, he doesn't use a Shield of Faith or the Sword of the Lord. Talus harvests bodies with a giant flail, leaves them in bleeding masses on the ground, and continues slaughtering people until reigned in by a horrified justice.
So what, then, do these stories have to say about Guantanamo Bay, about the continual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, about the possible invasion of Iran, about the nature of surveliance in wartime? Nothing, perhaps, since they're escapist fantasies. And everything. Both texts offer a remarkably similar entrance into the issues, and a remarkable stubbornness to stay comfortably in the realm of easy and clear decisions. If you pay attention, they should make you think twice about the way you vote, the way you talk, and even the way you think about political issues. But in both cases, I'm not sure that the statement "the author would vote for resolution X" is all that relevant to the way we understand the text--or even the way the creator(s), working in the playground of our civilization and its ideas, want us to understand their creations. | | |
| How to Begin an SF or Fantasy StoryThere is, I think, only one really good beginning to an SF of Fantasy story. It goes like this:
"Reader, imagine this false thing to be true, for just as long as this story lasts. When you're done, then maybe, just maybe, you'll have a bit more wisdom about the world outside our heads. But certainly you'll have a fun time."
Of course, there are a million ways of doing this. "In a hole in a hill there lived a Hobbit" gets the idea across pretty well--we know there aren't Hobbits, but doesn't it sound fun (and maybe there's some Hobbitness in all of us.)
So does "Hwaet! We Gar-Dena in gear-dagum / [th]eod cyninga [th]rym gefrunon" (Loosely: "Lo! We have heard tales of the Spear-Danes, in days of ancient years / those princely-kings.")
Or: "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun." Facts are aluded to, but the big emphasis is fantasy: there are things going on in the galaxy, interesting, fascinating, unimaginable things, and we provincial earthlings are just left out of the loop.
Or: "Now is the winter of our discontent / turned to glorious summer by the son of York."
Or: "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intellegences greater than mans and yet as mortal as his own."
Or, by the same author: "The Time Traveler (for so it will be convienent to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us."
Or even "One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug."
Or, perhaps the most honest (and trenchantly political of them all), Robert Heinlein's declaration: "Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith."
None of these statements prove their premises. This isn't Science Fiction in the strictest form, arguing that something must happen or will happen based on technological advances or societal evolution. This is pure fantasy: "Once upon a time there was" when we know very well there wasn't, and almost certainly never will be.
It is also, I think, what everyone wants when they get a story. Here are words, outside of the reader's immediate experience. It's no less true to make any claim than to say, for instance, "On the morning of Friday, December the 13th, Joe Smith stopped by Starbucks on his way to work." Both are imagined, unreal. Both rely, in the end, on the reader's curiosity. Fantasy just admits the fact.
But exploring these ideas, as any reader of SF or fantasy knows, is as fun as figuring out what it is that makes people tick--probably because the two categories overlap. More fun, really, since psychology is always reductive ("your problem is simply that...") whereas fiction suggests possibilites and often leaves open gaps--the reader gains experiences; psychology merely posits theories and abstractions.
And, fortunately, this mode of thinking--honestly positing falsities in order to suggest realities, is not dead. One of the Nebula-award nominated short stories, "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story," begins:
"This is a story about a ray-gun. The ray-gun will not be explained except to say, "It shoots rays."
It's fantasy, but as the story develops it is also about psychology and ethics and literary criticism and love and heroism and who knows what else. But really, that was all in there from the beginning--after all, we were warned that this was a story about a ray-gun. | | |
| The Return of XKCDFor a while, I've read the webcomic xkcd. It manages to combine surreal randomness, technical science-based humor that's occasionally beyond my relatively well-educated generally interest, and just plain old-fashioned silliness. If the essence of humor is surprise, kxcd manages that by simply being utterly and bizarrely unpredictable.And today it outdid itself:
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(Content warning: xkcd can, occasionally, be rather crude. Caveat lector.) | | |
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