The problem with most Utopianists, as game designer Ken Levine points out, is that they don’t take into account the nature of humanity. Instead, they...moreThe problem with most Utopianists, as game designer Ken Levine points out, is that they don’t take into account the nature of humanity. Instead, they lay an ideal on top of humanity, and because it is a nice idea, just assume that it will just automatically smooth everything out. But, of course, the world has always been full of nice ideas, and despite that fact, greed, ignorance, brutality, and lust always end up getting in the way.
But then, the Utopianists were some of the first fantasists, authors who created and explored strange, false world of representational ideas, the world of Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, and Morris’ News From Nowhere--but alongside these were the satirists, those who created fantastical realms because of how effective such creations are when we want to mock the arbitrary traditions of our own world: Lucian’s Storia Vera, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, or Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In the end, De Mille’s fantastical world has too little to do with reality to make it really interesting.
The book starts off rather promisingly, giving us some amusing characters and then rushing full-bore into life-or-death adventure in a strange, new land--anyoine who has read Burrough's John Carter of Mars books or Haggard's Quatermain stuff will recognize it immediately: our hero must learn to survive amongst the unpredictable, alien culture. Of course, De Mille was the one who did it first, and there is something to be said for that.
Unfortunately, he can't keep up the pace, and by the midway point, we’re completely stagnated in goofy worldbuilding: the hero speaking at length to the natives about their world, then turning and speaking directly to the audience for a further chapter where he repeats everything. Then we break off to the frame story--a set of sailors reading this mysterious manuscript out loud--as they sit around theorizing what type of extinct creatures the narrator was describing, and whether the Antarctic race he encountered were the tenth tribe of the Jews or a race of Red Sea troglodytes, complete with a discussion of Hebrew phonemes.
Yet this culture isn’t particularly interesting, even though it sometimes gets close--the idea of a culture that idealizes the poor and downtrodden, that thinks fondly of death and sees wealth as an evil is not really all that odd. Eventually, De Mille has his narrators mention that it sounds like Buddhism or the Ascetic Christian tradition that sprung up from that Indian mystical influence. Unfortunately, De Mille doesn’t take cues form these cultures and add in details that make his little world unusual enough to be interesting, nor does the culture make much sense: the system which he describes seems to have no way of supporting itself as it is explained. Instead, like the Utopianists, he merely sets up a world that is the opposite of ours and never bothers to question how it might come about or why human beings would follow it, once it were established.
Of course, if it were just a bit of background info, lightly touched upon, the setting for an otherwise rip-snorting adventure, I might not mind so much, but since he spends chapter upon chapter trying to explain its nonsensical intricacies to us, its silliness and flaws cannot really be overlooked. Once again, I am reminded of my own person writing rule that it is better to imply than to explain, to show the world as it is through the action rather than sitting down and trying to explain it. The only thing that achieves is revealing to your audience all the holes in your ideas.
Then we head back to the frame story where the characters all talk about dumb and poorly-written the book is, and how it doesn't really make sense, though one gets the impression that De Mille is doing it in an attempt to be funny and clever. Then they start talking about the thematic meaning of the book, that even though the people in this culture have all the things we want, that we think will make us happy, they still aren't happy, and in fact they want all the stuff that we despise.
I suppose that would be a somewhat clever premise, but it isn't actually how the action or characters are set up. Since the culture is arbitrarily set up and (despite a lot of discussion on the subject) there's never any clear psychological reason for the characters to behave the way that they do, the satire falls rather flat. De Mille evokes Swift by name, talking about representational satires that reveal something about our world to us, but he simply isn't funny or clever enough to pull it off, and so it just becomes the same allegory over and over, occasionally interrupted by some very welcome action scenes. Indeed, the book described by the characters in the frame story sounds vastly more interesting than the one we actually get.
The lesson of Lucian, Swift, and Carroll is that the reader is less concerned with complex explanations about the author’s intentions than with story, character, action, wit, and insight. But then, their worlds were attempts to explore ideas through extended metaphors, whole nations and peoples that represented complex and unusual ideas--the truest definition of magic in literature being a metaphor, physically realized.
De Mille’s is just an example of contrarianism: he has taken the world as it is and turned it upon its head without much rhyme or reason to account for it, and as Quentin Crisp points out in his introduction to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series, being original is not the result of looking at what everyone else is doing and performing the opposite, but of finding a purpose that drives you, a philosophy that gives meaning and direction to what you write. De Mille possesses neither that purpose nor an exciting tale to tell in lieu of it, so I suppose that really does make this book the prototype of the modern fantasy tale.(less)
I just remembered that I read this, back when I was hugely into big, fat fantasy books. However, I don't think I can recall a single character, event,...moreI just remembered that I read this, back when I was hugely into big, fat fantasy books. However, I don't think I can recall a single character, event, or scene from the whole thing--which is particularly odd for me, since with every other book I've ever read, I at least remember the basic plot and a few choice moments. Clearly this one, beyond all others, was entirely unremarkable.
Read, write, and study books for long enough, and you'll eventually start to recognize how stories work. You'll find yourself saying things like "Oh,...moreRead, write, and study books for long enough, and you'll eventually start to recognize how stories work. You'll find yourself saying things like "Oh, this character's going to die soon because the author just resolved the ongoing tension they had with the hero" or "Ah, the mysterious stranger must actually be the orphan child of the Baron that people keep talking about". To people who don't know how to do it, it seems like a magic trick, but the only thing you need to do is pay attention to details and to ask yourself "where is this story going to go next?", and it becomes surprisingly obvious.
Anyone who has read one of those endless 'Cthulhu collections' which contain one story by Lovecraft, two by the editor, and the rest by nameless authors knows that horror stories are particularly prone to follow certain patterns. If the character finds a big, carven stone gate in a cave, you can bet he's going to go in there and discover some weird, ancient stuff. If the old farmer won't let him see the barn, you know there's something bad in there.
And at first, reading The House on the Borderland, one of the all-time classic works of supernatural horror, I thought I had things pinned down pretty well. We ease into a familiar old 'evil creatures' story for the first third, with our main character getting more and more weirded out by all the strange things happening around his old house. However, if you'd asked me to predict the rest of the book based on the beginning, I wouldn't have come anywhere close.
Suddenly we're wrapped up in time and dimensions, in a kind of grand metaphysical horror that seems to be completely removed from everything that happened before, and it's only at the end that it all finally comes back around and the reader is able to piece together just what has been going on.
Usually, early, influential works in a genre are fairly straightforward--often, they are fumbling, as the author tries to figure out what it is they are trying to say. Hodgson's story, on the other hand, is more wild, imaginative, and unfettered than any modern horror tale I've read. It really stretches the limits of the reader's comprehension, and leaves behind many intriguingly incomprehensible images.
It is sometimes a bit slow-going, and there is also the problem that some of the elements seem a bit silly. Of course, if you saw them in real life, in the flesh, they would be terrifying, but Hodgson isn't always able to bring home to the reader the pure weirdness of it, to shake us up enough that we are able to see it with fresh eyes. That's something every great horror author must be able to do in order to be effective, particularly in the early parts of the story, where seemingly normal but odd things are slowly building to a head. However, many of the ideas and images Hodgson gives us are perfectly unsettling on their own, without any need for an intermediary.
If I was ever concerned that the supernatural elements I put into my period horror stories are 'too strange for that era', I clearly need not worry. No one is going to out-weird Hodgson any time soon--nor, I think, do any other living writers provide much of a threat to his well-earned reputation.(less)
Dunsany is best known as one of the masters of fantasy, possessing one of the most complex, developed, and subtle voices in supernatural fiction, as h...moreDunsany is best known as one of the masters of fantasy, possessing one of the most complex, developed, and subtle voices in supernatural fiction, as he displayed to peerless effect in The King of Elfland's Daughter, one of the few fantasy books I've read where the magic actually felt magical, instead of just being a contrivance or allegory. And yet, so many times, when I discover these great authors, it takes me a long time before I read another of their books.
I'm not sure why I possess this habit--perhaps its that, once I've found something really good, I know it's there, waiting, and so I can get on the search for the next revelation and return to my cadre of Great Authors when I'm too tired of disappointment. Then of course, there are also those authors, like Leiber, who start out brilliantly and become rather disappointing, themselves, as time goes on.
So there is always a certain hesitancy when approaching a new work by a well-loved author, because few things are more unpleasant than to watch someone do something poorly when you know it is perfectly within their power to do well. Gladly, when I cracked this collection of tales fictionalizing Dunsany's experience in The Great War, I discovered that Dunsany's skill was to be felt in all its force.
Within, you will find his knack for creating odd little characters who feel real by virtue of their unrealness--that same gift that lent Peake and Gogol their brilliance. Likewise he demonstrates his fine sense of mood and rhythm, and of curious turns in his language, which never fails to remind me that he wrote all his stories longhand, with a quill pen. There is also a great variety of mood and theme, from stories of small life to unsettling, eerie tales to his meditations on the ancient, fey spirit of the land, and the crass stupidity of war.
Unfortunately, coming to the middle of the book, this variety of approaches begins to wane, and he gives us a number of stories which harp on the same themes over and over--namely, the foolishness of the Kaiser and the destruction of the ancient beauty of France. Some of these are quite powerful and affecting, but others rehash the same ideas over again, and it becomes rather dull. Its not that any individual story is weak, but it feels like we're looking at many drafts of the same idea, some stronger than others.
This was really the only reason that I dropped the rating down from five stars. Indeed, its one of the few examples I can think of where the removal of some stories would have improved the book. In any case, it did nothing to reduce my opinion of Dunsany, and I'll have to make a note to myself to visit his lovely works more often than has erstwhile been my habit.(less)
December 26th, 1913, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce disappeared into the Mexican desert, never to be seen again, and so it was that, in appropriately mysteri...moreDecember 26th, 1913, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce disappeared into the Mexican desert, never to be seen again, and so it was that, in appropriately mysterious manner, one of the premiere American horror authors passed on into the undying realm of night. Bierce was the preeminent innovator of supernatural stories between the death of Poe and the rise of Lovecraft, and to be quite honest, I prefer his approach to either of theirs.
While those authors tended toward dour, indulgent, overwrought prose, Bierce preferred a lighter touch, built upon precise, carefully-constructed prose and driven by a deeply morbid wit, somewhere between Nietzsche and Alexander Pope. What may be most interesting about his tales is that, despite their simplicity, they often require quite a bit of thought from the reader: when you reach the end, you know something terrible unnatural has occurred, but piecing together precisely what happened requires a moment of reflection, where the discrete details of the story come together to imply something much more grandly dark than the apparently simple story would seem to contain.
To me, the sheer mirthlessness of Poe and Lovecraft denies their stories a certain depth--they are not capturing the whole human experience, but concentrating obsessively on one particular part, as befits the natures of such odd, affected men--men who we imagine to be just as off-putting as the strange, damaged characters in their stories. Bierce's abberation if of a different sort, that of a deep cynic who turns to laugh at the world, at its every aspect, life and death, joy and horror. In missing this from their stories, other horror authors reject a large part of the palette with which horror and madness can be depicted.
Chambers dabbled effectively in this laughing tief, as well, but with more uneven results, as his horror career slowly transformed into a series of bland drawing-room romances. Dunsany, also, has a sense of wit, and of the humor of desperation, but none has so devotedly focused the breadth and depth of their talent on the subject as Bierce.
Some of the stories in this, the last of two such collections Bierce published, are similar, but there are also those inexplicable and masterful standouts which differ in their approach and the effect they achieve from any other horror author. In the end, there is no mistaking Bierce's handiwork, it is in every line: in every careful comma and semicolon, every aphoristic turn, touch of frontier Americana, vivid picture of awful war, and wryly bitter observation.(less)
I came across Hogg through his interactions with de Quincey, and so I grabbed his most notable work from Project Gutenberg, expecting another 'Opium E...moreI came across Hogg through his interactions with de Quincey, and so I grabbed his most notable work from Project Gutenberg, expecting another 'Opium Eater' about some clever reprobate's adventures through the Victorian. If you know anything about this book, then you can imagine my shock and wonder at discovering the story it actually contains.
It begins simply enough, as a witty picaresque set in Scotland and making some mockery of self-righteousness and Calvinist pre-destination in particular. But then the thing breaks off, it becomes suddenly clear that it is impossible for it to continue as it began, and we are split off into a second telling of the same events from a new point of view, a la Rashōmon. This second version is much darker and the prose becomes experimental, until we seem to be dealing with a crazed serial killer attended and impelled by a strange figure who may be the devil himself--if indeed he exists, at all.
The narrator is what we'd call a 'flat character', as despite his doubts and concerns, he remains static throughout and does not go through a great revelation about his state. This can be somewhat frustrating, as often, the only thing we desire of the character is for him to show the slightest bit of self-awareness, but the story is also a kind of satire of allegory, and those of us who recall The Pilgrim's Progress, Piers Plowman, and Everyman will see that Hogg's work provides a sort of parallel to Candide, and that the wooden characters are a fuel for mockery, and for deeper thought.
Yet I found Hogg's work much more interesting than Voltaire's, for as much as Voltaire turned the allegory on its head, in the end that's just an inverted allegory, relying on the same stereotypes for its message, but mocking instead of lauding them. Hogg, on the other hand, manages to make the whole thing conflicted, self-consuming, deluded, and mad. His treatment of Calvinist doctrine might be said to play rather straight, but all the other notions his story is concerned with intermingle and subvert beyond any straightforward interpretation.
But in the end, and for all that, I'm not sure what to say about it. As a piece of art, it is powerful and unusual, prefiguring existentialist and experimental literature, but for what it all means, I feel somewhat less qualified to say.(less)
It feels somewhat odd to finally arrive at something like an end to the grand saga of Hellboy--very like an end. Though there are certainly enough thr...moreIt feels somewhat odd to finally arrive at something like an end to the grand saga of Hellboy--very like an end. Though there are certainly enough threads open for Mignola to start up again with a new story where this one left off, for the first time, the main plot arc which began in the first issues of the series, so many years ago, has a conclusion. I'm not sitting here, idly wondering what happens in the next volume.
Of course, that may have a lot to do with me, who does not mind a dark, somewhat ambiguous ending. If there were never another story which continued Hellboy's main plotline, I would be happy with this ending. Others might feel differently, wanting all of their questions answered, desiring some convenient, 'happily ever after' prologue--ever looking for book XIII of the Aeneid.
But while I like the plot itself, I was not always happy with the treatment. Ever since Strange Places, the series has become increasingly complicated, and as a result Mignola has expressed more and more of the story in narrative explication and redundant summaries. I don't need an author to reveal everything to me, in fact I prefer that they don't, especially if it reduces the amount of time characters spend explaining the history of the world to each other.
I want a story primarily shown through actions: decisions the characters make, hardships to be overcome, solutions which take into account both the nature of the character and the situation they find themselves in. Mignola is capable of telling stories this way, and there is a lot of action and movement in this collection, but the pace gets gummed up by occasional spoon-feeding of plot points.
Mignola also does that thing where we get quotes of things people said in previous issues repeated over a different scene. This can be interesting if the new scene lends the quotes some different, subversive meaning we didn't really understand before, but I can't think of a comic writer outside of Alan Moore whose been able to do that--hell, even some of the ones inside Alan struggle with it, though how much of that is the result of the painful, aeons-long process of being digested, it's hard to quantify.
With all the complex backstories, references to old events and characters, melded mythologies, and stylistic allusions, there is a lot going on in this terminal volume. Really, plenty going on--enough so that the sudden introduction of a romance felt tacked-on. Not all stories need romances, nor do they all benefit from having one grafted on. There are stories that are busy enough, already--thank you very much. As Scriptshadow points out in his analysis of Aliens, sometimes all you need is the hint of a romance, because putting in a whole subplot would just break up the pacing of an otherwise perfect story.
I understand that Mignola wanted to give HB an emotional connection, someone for whom his choices have extra-personal repercussions, but he's been a loner for so long--a fundamentally introspective character--that I don't feel we really needed it. His personal struggles have always been there, and central to the story, and to his growth as a character, so I didn't feel adding in a romantic sub-plot made those internal conflicts any more important or dramatic.
He might also have wanted to stick one in because some people feel that a story can't be over unless the protagonist finds love by the end of it. I don't think it's useful for us to limit ourselves in this way. There are many experiences out there, and many stories to be made of them. Not all characters need storybook love to 'complete' them.
Once again, I was glad to see Fegredo's work on this title again--he's cemented himself as one of my favorite artists working today and I'm going to start picking up books just because he draws them, which is pretty rare for me, who usually selects by author. Perhaps the strength of his work is part of the reason I've found Corben's work on the series so disappointing, despite his great reputation.
At the beginning of the series, I found the main plot arc much less interesting and less inventive than the collections of unrelated stories. As things have gone on, I've reversed my position--partly because the plot has gotten stronger, partly because the collections have grown weaker and less idiomatic. Perhaps in working on this big, complex conclusion, Mignola was focusing less on the odd one-off story.
In any case, I was glad to see the series come to some kind of end. It is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent, unusual, and interesting series in comics today--at times it is as good as Sandman ever was, and it is certainly better than most current titles, especially fantasy titles, like the awful Fables. But unfortunately, I feel Mignola lost the thread somewhere in the middle of the series and never quite reached the potential I saw glimpses of throughout.
If he had been able to take the sparse, mysterious storytelling of the short pieces and meld it to the grand concept of the central story, it would have made for a true masterwork. He showed some signs of doing just this in Darkness Calls, which has excellent pacing and great tone, but in which Hellboy, himself, is a rather bland caricature of himself. While Hellboy returned to form in this volume, we lost the succinct, fey storytelling to long runs of exposition and convolution.
But for all that it did not coalesce into the dream I had of it, it is certainly a delightful book, full of twists and interesting characters, and it was well-worth the read.(less)
Normally I like the odd Hellboy collections more than the main plot--they have greater variety in theme, tone, and homage--but this isn't one of my fa...moreNormally I like the odd Hellboy collections more than the main plot--they have greater variety in theme, tone, and homage--but this isn't one of my favorites. The title story was rather simplistic, compared to other Hellboy shorts. No real surprises, no inexplicable, vivid monsters, just a straightforward country witch story. I appreciated that Mignola was riffing on the classic EC titles, but I didn't feel the imitation came off that well.
I know Corben is one of those artists with a great reputation, but I was not moved by his art in this story. Some of the panels had some really grotesque, well-textured caricatures, but many of the other depictions felt a bit flat, particularly the faces. I can appreciate when a form is distorted well, with a sense of volume to it, but there was something soft about the edges and lines here that weakened the characters, especially when the EC homage was making me nostalgic for Wally Wood's implacable inking.
Both Wood's and Mignola's art tends to be defined by those dark, inky spaces, the chiaroscuro separation of light and shadow which throws the grotesqueries into sharp relief, so I felt the more vague forms Corben used were a poor choice for either Hellboy or an EC allusion.
Fegredo's work is splendid as always, and it was nice to see Mignola return and do a bit of art, himself, though his contribution struck me as particularly unadorned. Whether this is because Mignola has taken a hiatus from art and is not in his top game, or whether I'm comparing him to Fegredo's masterful draughtsmanship, it's hard to say. Dysart's work was fairly strong, with good coloring, but again, I missed the crisp lines that defined most of the series.
In The Chapel of Moloch is a fun exploration of the old Lovecraftian notion of the artist whose minute senses bring him into accidental contact with the Other World, but again, it was a bit bland and predictable, particularly in comparison to some of the more imaginative and wondrous stories of other collections like The Chained Coffin. This is one of those rare times that I'm more interested in the overarching plot than in the eccentric asides, so I won't mind returning to it in the next collection.(less)
It's hard to overstate how impressed I continue to be with Fegredo's artwork as this series continues. He took in Mignola's style, refined it, and rec...moreIt's hard to overstate how impressed I continue to be with Fegredo's artwork as this series continues. He took in Mignola's style, refined it, and recreated something which perfectly captures that feel--which is somehow even more Mignola than the original. The fact that his work on other books explores completely different styles with equal effectiveness has left me with the strong impression that he is one of the most skilled artists working in the medium today.
I'm also glad that Mignola has been freed up to concentrate just on the writing, and all of the allusions, references, and loving homages to the great horror authors and tales of myth are delightful. There is here, in terms of depth, just as much in play as in Sandman.
Unfortunately, I am not always pleased by the pacing. Too much of what goes on is given to us as explanations, as exposition. I would really like to be able to see these stories and characters playing out before my eyes rather than be told the state of things. The moment we are introduced to the Arthurian mythos, the whole thing is explained to us in a few brief scenes. It would have been much more satisfying if it had been introduced, allowed to build, then turned on its ear as a climax. Subverting it at the same moment as its introduced doesn't give the reader much time to get into the story.
But then, much of it feels like it was thrown together from disparate parts instead of planned from the beginning. Previous characters are resurrected in new, odd roles, events are reinterpreted, and it sometimes felt a bit forced. I really liked the odd, scattered, brief tales we get of Hellboy exploring a grand, disconnected world, and so the idea that Mignola would try to simplify and streamline that into something small and digestible is not appealing. There's also a lot of redundancy of Hellboy recalling things people have said, rehashing of old scenes, and other such bits which made me feel like Mignola was striking me in the head with the plot.
It's not as bad as Strange Places, which is one long piece of overblown exposition sucking all the wind out of the series, but it's hardly ideal. I am glad that Mignola recovered from the dull storytelling of the Island, and from the doltish Hellboy of the movies, whose influence could be felt in the clanging dialogue of the previous volume.
It gives me hope for the future of the series. The complexity and drive of the plot is promising, and if Mignola can find a way to show more and tell less (which should be less of a chore with Fegredo as master-shower), the series could again reach the heights to which it sometimes magnificently rises.(less)
Perhaps it speaks more to the age I live in than that of the author, but I'm always surprised to find a reasonable, rational mind on the other end of...morePerhaps it speaks more to the age I live in than that of the author, but I'm always surprised to find a reasonable, rational mind on the other end of the pen. Though his work is full of prejudice and idealism, it is constantly shifting, so that now one side seems right, and now the other.
His use of hyperbole and oxymoron prefigures the great metaphysical poets, and like them, these are tools of rhetoric and satire. Every knight is 'undefeatable', every woman 'shames all others by her virtue', and it does not escape Ariosto that making all of them remarkable only makes more obvious the fact that none of them are.
Ariosto's style flies on wings, lilting here and there, darting, soaring. He makes extensive use of metafiction, both addressing the audience by means of a semi-fictionalized narrator and by philosophical explorations of the art of poetry itself, and the nature of the poet and his patron.
As with most epics, Ariosto's asides to the greatness of his patron are as jarring as any 30-second spot. His relationship to his various patrons was extremely difficult for him, as he was paid a mere pittance and constantly drawn away from his writing to deliver bad news to the pope (if you're thinking that's a bad job, Ariosto would agree--the See nearly had him killed).
This is likely the reason that these moments of praise fall to the same unbelievable hyperbole as the rest. His patrons could hardly be angry at him for constantly praising them, but his readers will surely be able to recognize that his greatest compliments are the most backhanded, and merely serve to throw into stark contrast the hypocrisy of man.
Since we will all be oblivious hypocrites at some point (for most of us, nearly all the time), the only useful defense is the humility to admit our flaws. Great men never have it so easy: they cannot accept their mistakes, but must instead be buried by them.
Though Ariosto often lands on the side of the Christians, his Muslims are mighty, honorable, well-spoken, and as reasonable in their faith. The only thing which seems to separate the two sides is their petty squabbling.
Likewise, he takes a surprisingly liberal view of sex and gender equality, with lady knights who are not only the match for any man, but who need no marriage to complete their characters. He even presents homosexuality amongst both sexes, though with a rather light hand.
His epic is not the stalwartly serious sort, like Homer, Virgil, or Dante. Ariosto is a humanist, and has none of the fetters of nationalism or religious idealism to hold him in place. His view of man is a contrary, shifting, absurd thing. The greatest achievements of man are great only in the eyes of man.
By showing both sides of a conflict, by supporting each in turn, Ariosto creates a space for the author to inhabit. He is not tied to some system of beliefs, but to observation, to recognition; not to the ostensible truth of humanity, but to our continuing story.
Ariosto took a great leap from Petrarch's self-awareness. While Petrarch constantly searched and argued in his poems, he found a sublime comfort in the grand unknown. Ariosto is the great iconoclast, not only asking why of the most obvious conflicts, but of the grandest assumptions. The grand mystery is only as sacred as it is profane.
Ariosto is also funny, surprising, and highly imaginative. Though his work is defined by its philosophical view, this view is developed slowly and carefully. It is never stated outright, but is rather the medium of the story: a thin, elegant skein which draws together all characters and conflicts.
The surface of the story itself is a light-hearted, impossible comedy. It is no more impossible than the grand heights of any other epic, but only seems so because it is not girt tightly with high-minded seriousness. Perhaps Ariosto's greatest gift is that he is doing essentially the same thing all other authors do, the same situations and characters, but he makes you laugh to see it.
To be able to look at life simply as it is and laugh is the only freedom we will ever know. It is all wisdom. For this gift, I hail fair Ariosto, the greatest of all epicists, all poets, all writers, all humanists, all men, and never to be surpassed.(less)
Perhaps it speaks more to the age I live in than that of the author, but I'm always surprised to find a reasonable, rational mind on the other end of...morePerhaps it speaks more to the age I live in than that of the author, but I'm always surprised to find a reasonable, rational mind on the other end of the pen. Though his work is full of prejudice and idealism, it is constantly shifting, so that now one side seems right, and now the other.
His use of hyperbole and oxymoron prefigures the great metaphysical poets, and like them, these are tools of rhetoric and satire. Every knight is 'undefeatable', every woman 'shames all others by her virtue', and it does not escape Ariosto that making all of them remarkable only makes more obvious the fact that none of them are.
Ariosto's style flies on wings, lilting here and there, darting, soaring. He makes extensive use of metafiction, both addressing the audience by means of a semi-fictionalized narrator and by philosophical explorations of the art of poetry itself, and the nature of the poet and his patron.
As with most epics, Ariosto's asides to the greatness of his patron are as jarring as any 30-second spot. His relationship to his various patrons was extremely difficult for him, as he was paid a mere pittance and constantly drawn away from his writing to deliver bad news to the pope (if you're thinking that's a bad job, Ariosto would agree--the See nearly had him killed).
This is likely the reason that these moments of praise fall to the same unbelievable hyperbole as the rest. His patrons could hardly be angry at him for constantly praising them, but his readers will surely be able to recognize that his greatest compliments are the most backhanded, and merely serve to throw into stark contrast the hypocrisy of man.
Since we will all be oblivious hypocrites at some point (for most of us, nearly all the time), the only useful defense is the humility to admit our flaws. Great men never have it so easy: they cannot accept their mistakes, but must instead be buried by them.
Though Ariosto often lands on the side of the Christians, his Muslims are mighty, honorable, well-spoken, and as reasonable in their faith. The only thing which seems to separate the two sides is their petty squabbling.
Likewise, he takes a surprisingly liberal view of sex and gender equality, with lady knights who are not only the match for any man, but who need no marriage to complete their characters. He even presents homosexuality amongst both sexes, though with a rather light hand.
His epic is not the stalwartly serious sort, like Homer, Virgil, or Dante. Ariosto is a humanist, and has none of the fetters of nationalism or religious idealism to hold him in place. His view of man is a contrary, shifting, absurd thing. The greatest achievements of man are great only in the eyes of man.
By showing both sides of a conflict, by supporting each in turn, Ariosto creates a space for the author to inhabit. He is not tied to some system of beliefs, but to observation, to recognition; not to the ostensible truth of humanity, but to our continuing story.
Ariosto took a great leap from Petrarch's self-awareness. While Petrarch constantly searched and argued in his poems, he found a sublime comfort in the grand unknown. Ariosto is the great iconoclast, not only asking why of the most obvious conflicts, but of the grandest assumptions. The grand mystery is only as sacred as it is profane.
Ariosto is also funny, surprising, and highly imaginative. Though his work is defined by its philosophical view, this view is developed slowly and carefully. It is never stated outright, but is rather the medium of the story: a thin, elegant skein which draws together all characters and conflicts.
The surface of the story itself is a light-hearted, impossible comedy. It is no more impossible than the grand heights of any other epic, but only seems so because it is not girt tightly with high-minded seriousness. Perhaps Ariosto's greatest gift is that he is doing essentially the same thing all other authors do, the same situations and characters, but he makes you laugh to see it.
To be able to look at life simply as it is and laugh is the only freedom we will ever know. It is all wisdom. For this gift, I hail fair Ariosto, the greatest of all epicists, all poets, all writers, all humanists, all men, and never to be surpassed.(less)
It wasn't until halfway through the first chapter that I suddenly thought 'hey, I thought Mignola was giving up art duties to concentrate fully on wri...moreIt wasn't until halfway through the first chapter that I suddenly thought 'hey, I thought Mignola was giving up art duties to concentrate fully on writing'. Yet the choppy line quality, intimidating mood, and bulky chiaroscuro of Mignola's style were all in full effect, despite the fact that they were the work of artist Duncan Fegredo.
The art in this volume is lush, gorgeous, and full of detail, yet completely true to the classic Hellboy style. Somehow, Fegredo took in Mignola's characteristic art, refined it, and recreated it with the hand of a master draughtsman. Yet I have always been impressed with Fegredo's sense of form and gesture, which he demonstrated so effectively in Milligan's great conceptual work, Enigma, though I did not know he was such a studied mimic.
I'm glad that Mignola decided to devote himself full-time to writing, having found an artist capable of keeping up the other end, because it has freed him up to write more in-depth, thoughtful stories without sacrificing his publishing schedule, and it also allows the dedicated artist to produce highly-detailed work.
I am usually less fond of the main plotline stories in the Hellboy series, since I find the briefer, unconnected story collections to be more experimental and rich, concentrating on tone and character instead of steady plot movement. Yet in this volume, Mignola has managed to advance the plot at the same time as he explores subtler aspects of his world.
His deep delving into Russian myth was interesting, since it is such a rich vein of unique stories and magics, and one rarely tapped by other authors. I'm glad that, like Gaiman, Mignola is not content to sit on his laurels, but keeps expanding his world and surprising us.
My only complaint is the characterization of Hellboy himself, who has always been flippant and sardonic, but since the Strange Places TPB, has increasingly become a dullard and spewer of quips. As Mignola explained in the introduction to that collection, he had just come off of working on the Del Toro film, which influenced his concept of the character and the world.
I find it extremely disappointing that the goofy, watered-down film version of Hellboy has ended up replacing the complex, conflicted character of the earlier comics. I'm glad that Mignola has moved on from the narrative exposition of Strange Places, but I hope the character will also soon escape the dulling effect of Del Toro's flashy, unsubtle film and return to what made the comic great.(less)
Strange to think that this was the series that inspired Martin and Wolfe in their fantasy endeavors. Going from their gritty, mirthless rehashes of st...moreStrange to think that this was the series that inspired Martin and Wolfe in their fantasy endeavors. Going from their gritty, mirthless rehashes of standard fantasy badassery to Vance's wild, ironic, flowery style was jarring--going directly from Anderson's grim, tragic Broken Sword to this was tonal whiplash.
At first I didn't know what to make of it: the lurid, purple prose, the silly characters, the story which jumped from idea to idea with abandon. I mistook it at once for the unbridled pulp style of early century genre authors like A. Merrit or Van Vogt, but soon it became clear that there was something more complex at work.
Vance is rushing from one idea to the next, heedless of contradiction or pace, but it is not merely an unbridled mind on a romp. It is a style recognizable to any scholar of Fairy Tales, or of the Thousand and One Nights, where absurd characters and situations are paraded before the reader as wry commentaries--subversions of social mores and preconceptions. Vance's characters are not psychological studies, not realistic, but archetypal and foolish, traipsing from one peril to the next and then back out again, in the vein of Lewis Carroll.
Yet Vance is not as wild as Carroll or Peake, not as unpredictable or insightful. He has some shining moments, but I did not find that they entirely excused the broken pacing and shallow characters. The tongue-in-cheek reversals were simply not constant enough to make the world suitably subversive.
Yet there still remains an original voice and vision here which has been very influential--though not always fruitfully. As someone who grew up in basements playing old Dungeons & Dragons modules (and even designed a parody of them), it became immediately clear to me where Gygax had taken his inspiration. From the endless series of strange wizards vying for power to the nonsensical dungeons where one might face a giant demon head, a talking crayfish, an Aztec vampire, and an evil chest one after the next, I was immediately stricken with an uncomfortable nostalgia.
Yet Gygax--like Wolfe and Martin--was unable to reproduce any of the wit or joy of Vance's creation, though whether they didn't recognize it or were merely incapable of recreating it I cannot say. In any case, I find it disappointing that so few authors have tried to mimick the sheer, ironic pleasure with which Vance comported himself. I know Pratchett tried to do something similar in his work, but sadly, I've never found his writing funny.
Then again, many fantasy authors are desperate to prove themselves 'mature authors in a mature genre', but as C.S. Lewis knew, the rejection of childlike mirth is the sign of adolescence, not adulthood.
Somewhat problematic in Vance's work, though not as bad as many later genre authors, is the secondary roles he gives to women. It seemed particularly glaring at first, since it opens with male wizards creating and chasing around beautiful, naive women, and the only strong woman is an aberrant creation who is easily talked down and made to change her mind. Yet the men are also often fools and simply swayed, as is the nature of a Fairy Tale, so there is some more equality there.
Beyond that, the descriptions of men versus women are often treated differently, with women being described physically and in terms of their beauty and while a man is rarely described as a physical presence at all. This is only Class I gender inequality, and nearly ubiquitous in genre writers, but a part of me hoped that Vance might let his unfettered exploration of concepts spill over and subvert the characterization of women, but it was not to be.
In many ways, Vance can be seen to represent a middle ground between the unhinged visions of Carroll and Peake and the more straightforward authors of the genre, but as it went on, I began to wish that Vance would distinguish his work more--either by making it more wild and hallucinogenic, or by making it more structured and purposeful. As it was, I felt he too often inhabited a middle ground which was easily muddied by imprecision.
Why is Hesse's concept of enlightenment indistinguishable from mental illness? First, in The Glass Bead Game, we get the depiction of a 'secular saint...moreWhy is Hesse's concept of enlightenment indistinguishable from mental illness? First, in The Glass Bead Game, we get the depiction of a 'secular saint', and the signs of his enlightenment are that he has stopped all his creative work, often sits lost in thought, making no sign he understands anyone speaking to him, and when he does respond, it is with a brief non-sequitur. He otherwise wanders the gardens day and night with a bland smile frozen to his face. Perhaps it's only me who looks at those symptoms and sees not enlightenment, but full-fledged dementia.
In this work, we get a picture of a secret organization of enlightened individuals who seem to be a collection of homeless vagrants that wander the countryside obsessed with certain mythical objects, and convinced that an ancient, powerful conspiracy is running the world. Once again, my brain keeps telling me that Hesse must be writing satire, since there is nothing that separates this vision of enlightenment from mental disorder.
The secret organization itself is the most interesting part of the narrative. It is a fantasy of magic, time travel, and Illuminist philosophy reminiscent of Italo Calvino's 'magical realism'. This odd vision of a world- and time-spanning sect of spiritual sorcerers was the most enjoyable and promising aspect of the book, so it was disappointing to me that it served only as a backdrop for a fairly bland story.
The narrative is also full of allusions to various historical and literary figures, events, mythologies, and philosophies, but I didn't feel that Hesse did enough to connect them together into something meaningful. As usual, his spiritual philosophy was only as powerful as its vagueness. I did like the notion of a narrative which created allusive meaning like a metaphysical poem--combining references with a central argument to create depth--but Hesse failed to resolve it into anything so insightful.
The weakest aspect of his presentation was the single-voiced, confessional style--something like a journal. Our narrator is constantly referencing interesting things that happened to him, but we don't actually get to experience them or understand them. Once again, vagueness is mistaken for profundity.
I would have been interested in seeing more of this journey, and the odd experiences that made it up, instead of them being merely name-dropped. I'm not saying Hesse should have made everything clear or provided some grand meaning--I think an in-depth description of these fantastical events would have helped deepen his conceptual world, and provide for the reader symbolic examples to help lead us along.
It's like those Lovecraft stories where the hero says 'the vision was too horrible to describe, its terror was beyond the meagre power of words to encapsulate it'--but then Lovecraft usually goes on to explain it, anyways--or at least he has an exciting, fast-paced story to make up for it. No such luck in Hesse.
Once again we have a central, masterful figure who knows all but reveals little--the notion of the great teacher who has the greatest of reputations, despite the fact that we never see him do anything to deserve it. Hesse helpfully tells us that people like him and feel comfortable around him, but I wish he had just made the reader feel that way about him instead of trying to convince us of the inner life of a flat character. If you cannot believably write the Master, then do not make him a character. As depicted, he could have easily been a charlatan as a guru.
Once again, I am reminded why I do not find bland spiritual wonderment enticing: the world is full of joy and wonder and mystery in infinite variations, so it always feels petty and false to me to try to encapsulate that in a vague symbolic experience, asking no questions and revealing nothing. I find it more enlightening to read an author with a hundred powerful and contradictory insights rather than a single, unified, featureless vision like this.(less)
"I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas." -Michael Moorcock
With this simple sentenc...more"I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas." -Michael Moorcock
With this simple sentence, Moorcock reveals something troubling and endemic to the fantasy genre: that not enough fantasy authors start out with fantastical ideas. There are a lot of big writers out there (with really big books) who don't have very big ideas. But perhaps that shouldn't surprise us, since their ur-inspiration, Tolkien, has a remarkably vast amount of skill sadly limited by a very small vision, while Moorcock is the opposite: a man with grandiose visions who is sometimes limited by his meager skill.
Certainly, Moorcock is capable of some pretty, frilly prose, and shows in this story, as in the tale which opens Elric's saga, that he is capable of providing a consistent tone and driving plot. But, at his core, he is still (at least through the early Elric stories), a pulp writer, and he admits as much in the introduction to 'Stealer of Souls', talking about how many of the stories were rushed, how some were written for money, that many disparate stories were combined to make saleable novels, and how most of these stories were explorations of ideas that he would only fully develop in later series.
I admit I appreciate this straightforward humility much more than the pretension of many in the genre, and as usual, it is the most humble author who tends to produce the best work--it is almost as if some level of restraint and self-awareness was vital to being a skilled writer. Though not all of his experiments work out so well, like Leiber, the earlier writing seems to have the most drive and vitality. While this dark, mythic vision of Ragnarok might be the conclusion of Elric's tragedy, it actually comprises some of the earliest stories.
Like the introductory story of the series, this one has a consistent arc of plot and tone, and is much more concerned with Elric's psychological struggles than some of the others, where he is more standoffish and archetypally mythic.
There is also an interesting crossover here between Elric's story and the historical myths that inspired him--namely the Song of Roland, and it is an interesting choice on Moorcock's part to create a literal connection to his inspirations instead of merely a symbolic, allusive one. It is another sign of his authorial inventiveness and boldness to delve suddenly into pastiche and give his mythic world a very real connection to his reader's reality.
Once again, I am struck by the fact that, reading the entirety of the original Elric tales, I have grossed about eight-hundred-fifty pages, and in that space, have gotten a character's life: his several loves, many companions met, befriended, lost, and mourned, empires destroyed, mythical realms explored, and a worldwide war begun, waged, and concluded. In many other fantasy series, I might still be waiting for the plot to actually pick up.
Already I have gotten a depth and breadth that exceeds many longer works, and that is despite the fact that several of the Elric stories are experiments that never quite concluded, and thus acted as filler. I know that Elric is not quite an 'Epic Fantasy' (though it does have some epic scope), but it seems to me that too few authors actually have enough ideas to actually fill a series the length of the average epic.
Moorcock does have a wealth of ideas, many of them promising and unusual, and it's unfortunate that Moorcock never quite explores them all, though he has said that for him, the Elric stories were just the opening forays for concepts he would develop more fully later, and so I look forward to reading those later books and seeing how his promising concepts play out when he has the opportunity to put more time and thought into them. One complaint I had with the stories was that the interesting magical cosmology of the world never seemed to manifest in the characters, who tended to be more mythical than psychologically complex, and if, in the future, Moorcock is able to rectify this, it would deepen his fantasy immensely.
The conclusion is impressive, and if all of the stories had the same drive, continuity of tone, and depth of psychology, it would be a much stronger series. As it stands, it is an interesting experiment, an exploration of fantastical concepts that, if not as focused as we might hope, at least present a unique, inspiring vision of what fantasy can be.
There is an unusual tonal conflict central to almost all of the Elric series between the complex, metaphysical, magical world and the rather straightf...moreThere is an unusual tonal conflict central to almost all of the Elric series between the complex, metaphysical, magical world and the rather straightforward, formulaic characters. Elric, himself shows some complexity and nuanced introspection in the very first story, but then the focus changes and we embark upon a sequence of adventures where a recognizable pattern emerges.
Again and again we see Elric battling against difficult odds, his terrible sword at first ably defending him, but soon its strength fails, and he is compelled to call upon pacts with spirits for aid, never certain whether they will obey or abandon him. Sometimes this is done well, and the summoned creature gives us an insight into how Moorcock's world works--and while it may temporarily solve Elric's problem, another conflict often develops from that solution.
When it is not done as well, it becomes predictable, a standard way to resolve story conflicts. Yet, I am reluctant to entirely condemn it, even then, since it is really no more repetitive than the fantasy hero who fights his way out of everything, or who calls upon some inner magical strength to inevitably overcome.
In addition, there is something mythic in the formulaic way that Moorcock constructs his stories and characters. It reminds me of how Howard always refers to Conan as 'panther-like', sometimes several times a story. At first this just looks redundant and sloppy, until one begins to think in terms of Homer or other classic epics, where the repetition of certain elements, particularly descriptions, becomes a character motif, like the epithet of a king.
Moorcock's stylistic formula extends beyond this convention, however. After the first book, I kept waiting for Elric's character to catch up with the complex metaphysics of his world, but he never does. It never quite extends down to the characters, because they are not created with the same philosophical outlook.
They are not, fundamentally, characters of existential realism and modern psychology, but mythic, archetypal figures, who develop friendships or rivalry insouciantly, who bear loves and hates that are ultimately facile. Like Beowulf or Roland, they are beholden to the plot, and their motivations, more often than not, are not willful, but received.
Which is why it is all the more unusual that the world, the cosmology, the many dimensions and realities, the magic, the gods, and the spirits tend to be so strikingly modern, owing more to quantum theories than to the great traditions. The characters cast their eyes back, while the world is halfway into an unknown future, which produces a rather strange effect. It is not that the characters are never existential, it is rather that, if they do have existential thoughts, they approach them like mythic archetypes would.
So, to some degree, I have stopped waiting for Elric to become a fully-fleshed, modern character, realizing that I only expected it because of the modern philosophy which underpins Moorcock's world. However, I am wary about declaring this experiment of his a total success. It is certainly interesting, unusual, and thought-provoking, but I am not sure that these two parts ever find a real common ground.
One definition of genius is 'the ability to take disparate ideas and synthesize them into a single, new idea', and while Moorcock sometimes approaches this, he never quite succeeds so fully that it satisfies, and so the core of the world and the characters are always strangely at odds.
More than this, the stories sometimes lack focus. They do not always have a central tone or idea that ties them together, even if there is a progression of plot, it can be somewhat arbitrary. Yet in this book, we get some of the most vibrant, cohesive tales in the entire series, reminiscent of the sort of focused excitement that make the Conan and Lankhmar stories so delightful.
These stories were almost enough to pull out a four-star rating, but it still felt rather patchwork, with some stories running too long, others feeling rushed, and rarely a strong enough central tone to tie them together into a larger arc. I have one more story to read before I try one of the much later Elric stories, and I am very curious to see whether Moorcock is able to tighten his ideas into a more streamlined conceptual whole, as he did in Gloriana.
In my last two reviews, I have talked about how Moorcock's fevered imagination keeps these books aloft, even when the plot seems to grow disconnected...moreIn my last two reviews, I have talked about how Moorcock's fevered imagination keeps these books aloft, even when the plot seems to grow disconnected from the series, or the characters grow repetitive, but he seems to be losing steam, for this book moves along apace, advancing the plot here and there, but not materially adding anything new to our understanding of the world or the characters.
Moorcock's shorter plot arcs lack the grand set pieces and focus which make Leiber's and Howard's works so delightful, and even if the brief episodes which make up the larger plot might be called 'short stories', they do not show the completeness or unity of idea of Conan or Lankhmar.
I keep longing for a return to form from Moorcock, wishing that he could combine those moments of lucid, pretty prose with his wild metaphysical magics and the brooding introspection which first defined Elric. But alas, it grows harder to look past his errors when he begins to repeat himself.
As usual, he has problems finding scenes which illustrate his characters, and so he ends up relying on exposition, or on the characters talking at length about their own thoughts and reactions, which always ends up feeling stilted and incomplete, especially when those traits are not always outwardly demonstrated.
the series itself begins to grow repetitive, as Elric is always followed by some bosom compatriot, who by the end will be betrayed, or killed, or lost, or all three. Likewise there are the female interests, who seem to traipse in and out of Elric's life to torment him, but who often have little character of their own.
The series focuses narrowly, sometimes unsparingly, upon Elric himself, but it feels as if much more could be done with his character if he had an equally strong supporting cast to play off of. When secondary characters are summarily introduced and dropped, it becomes harder for them to have any effect on Elric--and if they do produce some sudden effect upon him, it can feel rather overly convenient if the relationship has not yet been fully-developed.
One of the hallmarks of the Conan series is that in each story, Howard shows us very different sides of Conan: different humors, desires, fears, and outlooks. In the first three stories we get Conan young, aged, and full-grown, and each portrayal depicts a different sort of man.
Clearly, with Elric, we would not expect so drastic a shift, as we follow him from place to place in chronological order, but I do find myself disappointed that we don't tend to see other sides to Elric: he is always brooding, somewhat naive, and less callous than he imagines himself. I keep waiting to find something surprising in him, some aspect of depth before unexplored.
In short, I wait for the mad philosophical explorations which live in Moorcock's magic to reach Elric, to show up in him in some fundamental way, to change him or leave a trace on him, to become an exploration of his character, and more than that, of his possibility.
The series is always looking forward, always moving forward--sometimes too quickly, sometimes without a chance to build or pause or ponder--but always moving; and I have to ask myself: for what? Where are we going?
Certainly there are hints, there are moments of conflict and feeling for Elric, but rarely are they given time to emerge, rarely is the story constructed so as to reveal them naturally. If they are not constructed carefully, over time, then when they arrive, they will always be too early, or too late, and seem almost inconsequential in the face of the vast cosmic conflict which tends to make up the heart of the story.
Elric feels weak and unsure. He travels somewhere to reach something strange and magical which has piqued his interest. He battles an otherworldly thing, which he defeats, but he now feels drained. He wanders through a strange dimension and faces another thing, which is powerful and dangerous. He almost dies, but then he summons something and it saves him. the most recent of a series of doomed soldier friends saves him and makes an ironic quip (always ironic). Elric departs no richer than he arrived, and despondent at his failure.
I am still enjoying this series, and it shows a lot of promise, but at this point, the gap between what it is and what it could be is widening. Sure, it's still more interesting, original, and better-written than most of the fantasy out there, but I'm desperate for it to really find its groove. Moorcock has the tools, I just want to see him use them all at once.
Too few fantasy authors ask what 'magic' means, which is a problem, since, with a few notable exceptions, magic is what makes fantasy fantastical. Whe...moreToo few fantasy authors ask what 'magic' means, which is a problem, since, with a few notable exceptions, magic is what makes fantasy fantastical. When reading Moorcock, it becomes clear you have found an author who is very interested in exploring what 'magic' is, and who has made very deliberate decisions about what his magic means.
Magic is a conceptual space. It was created, inadvertently, as a representation of the inner reality of human thought, as opposed to the external reality of the physical world. Human beings saw the physical world around them and, in attempting to understand it, created a matching symbolic world in their heads.
They looked at a river, which moves and changes, floods, and pulls people under, and they imagined a River Spirit for it. They would have a string of bad luck, remember a person who had spoken ill of them, and imagined they were cursed. Magic mostly exists as a way for people to take inexplicable things and imagine how they might be controlled or personified, hence making them more 'human'. So magic is largely symbolic, because it is made up of ideas, of the meanings that we create to make sense of the world around us.
Thus, anyone who has studied the history of magic, from epic poems, myths, theology, and early sciences--like astrology and alchemy--can see that magic shifts and changes with time to match the changes in how people think. As a conceptual, metaphysical space, magic is made to fit our changing ideas and philosophies.
Because of this, magic is fundamentally different in different cultures and at different time periods, because of what the people in those places and times are capable of imagining. If you go back to the myths of the Ancient Greeks, you will not find teleportation, alternate realities, or time-travel, because these ideas are based on modern knowledge and theories.
When the gods move swiftly from one place to another, they must still pass the intervening space--however quickly--because dematerialization does not have a place in the ancient Greek worldview. We may get visions of the afterlife and spirits who take the form of men, but they not the concept of an alternate world which is like ours, and which contains an alternate 'you'.
In plotting my own fantastical stories, I have often struggled in deciding whether or not to include such modern concepts in my magic, fearing that my story would end up like so many others: with characters, politics, and magic feeling so thoroughly contemporary that barely anything fantastical remains. When an author makes magic a simple replacement for technology, a tool for resolving plot conflicts so the characters don't have to, structuring it with points and levels and 'schools' like a videogame, it ceases to feel magical.
What makes it magical is when it is unpredictable, unusual, and when, instead of solving all the characters' problems, it makes new problems. But until reading Moorcock, I had not considered that since magic is built from the geography of the human mind, it could be used to look forward as well as back through time.
A fantasy author who seeks to capture the feel of the past must research, and must make sure the psychology of his characters and his magic give the reader insight into a different place and time. Likewise, a fantasy author can take a cue from authors of Science Fiction (and Speculative Fiction) and show us a vision of the future of human thought, even if it is dressed in the trappings of an ancient myth. Apparently, the problem with dull genre fantasy authors is not that they are too modern in their thinking, but that they are not modern enough.
As I mentioned in my review of the first volume in the Elric series, Moorcock draws on many unusual concepts in crafting his world, so that his magic is equal parts quantum mechanics and myth. The result is something wholly unique: a mythology of modern scientific concepts which are just as strange, unpredictable, and awe-inspiring as any ancient god.
In the second volume of the series, he allows his imagination to fly away with the concept, abandoning for the moment the introspective political intrigue that marked the first plot arc, and diving headfirst into something much more unusual. Instead of slowly building to a climax, we are immediately thrust through time, across dimensions, into dream and myth and symbol, where ships of fate ferry a handful of different faces of the same man to a rendezvous with the end of the world, where selves must be combined, Shiva-like, to save a universe already lost from what may be a robot and his sister.
It is jarring to say the least for Moorcock to leave us with a certain expectation after the previous book and then to abscond on this daring vision of half-dreams. Though the structure is sometimes less than flowing, and the prose rises to moments of greater beauty than the first volume, what carries it all over is the pure, unbridled imagination.
It is a vision that has proven very influential over the past half-century of fantasy--though it is an influence which often goes unrecognized. From the man-doomed-to-live to the soul-stealing sword to the battle between the forces of law and chaos over an entire 'multiverse' of realities, one is bound to find echoes of him in most modern fantasy, though sadly, very few of authors have done as much with the concepts and Moorcock did, and most have just reused them thoughtlessly, failing to recognize what made them interesting in the first place.
Eventually, Moorcock gets us back on track toward the central plot, but each smaller story is its own unique arc, reminiscent of the technique used by Howard and Leiber of creating many brief stories which suggest a larger, more complex world in the gaps between them, though since Moorcock's stories have fewer gaps, there is not quite the same sense of scale.
I would have appreciated more story and less explanation, and more character and psychology, allowing the vastness of the many worlds to loom mysteriously. Moorcock is not foolish enough to make his world truly small by over-explanation, but I enjoy a story more when the setting serves the characters and the plot, and not vice versa, and Moorcock sometimes crosses that line.
But throughout he is surprising, as the ideas drive the story along at a clip. It sometimes feels as if Moorcock is worried that his story might not be different enough, that he needs to establish the incomprehensibly vast strangeness of his world quickly and fully, but that's the thing about the incomprehensibly vast: it can't really afford to be rushed.
There is little risk of Moorcock being like other writers because he has a thoughtful, well-considered direction for his world. He has asked himself what magic means, what purpose it serves, and what sort of tool it is for him, as an author, and he has a good answer. If magic represents the inner-workings of human thought, then why should it have any limits other than what we are capable of thinking?
I have spent a long time searching for a modern fantastical epic which is worth reading. It seems like there should be one, out there, somewhere. I ha...moreI have spent a long time searching for a modern fantastical epic which is worth reading. It seems like there should be one, out there, somewhere. I have so enjoyed the battlefields of Troy, the dank cavern of Grendel's dam, Dido's lament, Ovid's hundred wild-spun tales, perfidious Odysseus, the madness of Orlando, Satan's twisted rhetoric, and Gilgamesh's sea-voyage to the forgotten lands of death. And so I seek some modern author to reinvent these tales with some sense of scholarship, poetry, character, and adventure.
There are many great modern fantasies, but the epic subgenre lacks luster. In reading the offerings--Martin, Jordan, Goodkind, Paolini, even much-lauded Wolfe--I have found them all wanting. They are all flawed in the same ways: their protagonists are dull caricatures of some universal 'badass' ideal, plot conflicts are glossed-over with magic or convenient deaths, the magic itself is not a mysterious force but a familiar tool, and women are made secondary or worse (though the authors often talk about how women are strong and independent, the women never actually act that way).
But then, they are all acolytes of Old Tolkien, who is as stodgy, unromantic, and methodical as a fantasist can be (without being C.S. Lewis). Though I respect Tolkien's work as a well-researched literary exercise, it is hard to forgive him for making it acceptable to write fantasy which is so dull, aimless, and self-absorbed. It is unfortunate that so many people think that fantasy began with Tolkien, because that is a great falsehood, and anyone who believes it does not really know fantasy at all. It nearly died with him.
Yet there are many who do think he started it. They like to comment on reviews, especially reviews of their favorite books--especially negative reviews of their favorite books--which have, lamentably, become a specialty of mine. And often, they end up asking me "Well, what fantasy do you like?" There are many I could name, numerous favorites which have shocked and overawed me, which have shaken me to my core, which have shown me worlds and magic I dared not dream. But none of them are epics.
I could mention Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a powerfully self-possessed work and one of the only fantasies of the past twenty years that I consider worth reading--the other is China Mieville's Perdido Street Station--but these are a Victorian alternate history continuation of the British Fairy Tale tradition and a New Weird Urban Fantasy, respectively. I could mention Mervyn Peake's Titus books, which so powerfully inhabit my five-star rating that Mieville and Clarke must be relegated to four--but this is a work whose fantastical nature would probably not even be apparent to most fantasy enthusiasts.
Alas they are not good counter-examples. I can (and do) mention Robert E. Howard's Conan, and Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar series, but these are fast-paced adventure stories, and though their worlds may be vast, mysterious, and grand, the stories themselves lack the hyperopic arc at the heart of an epic work.
But there have been many suggestions, many readers who have come to my aid, and who have named authors I might look to next, in my quest: Guy Gavriel Kay, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Jeff VanderMeer, Michael De Larrabietti, John M. Harrison, Scott Lynch, Patricia McKillip, and John Crowley (Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss have been both suggested and sneered at). It is my hope that, somewhere amongst them, I will find the exemplary epic fantasy I am looking for--but I haven't found it in Moorcock.
Moorecock is good, he has scope, depth, complexity, and long, twisting plots, but at their core, his stories are modern, metaphysical, and subversive. They are light and lilting, ironical and wry--too quick and twisting to be 'epic'. The characters are introspective and self-aware, and it is clear that it is they, and not the world, who will be at the forefront.
It is all so thoroughly modern, so reinvented, full of sprightly ideas and metaphysical brooding. But it is decidedly not modern in the accidental, self-defeating ways of all those pretenders to the 'epic' title. The characters are not merely the male-fantasy counterpart of a bodice ripper, with modern, familiar minds dressed thinly in Medieval costume. The world is not simply our world with an overlay of castles--dragons for jet fighters, spells for guns, with modern politics and sensibilities.
No, Moorcock's world and characters are alien and fantastical, but Moorcock does not achieve this by ripping them whole-cloth from history, but by extrapolating them from modern philosophical ideas. Fantasy stories have always been full of dreamscapes, of impossible places for the reader to inhabit. These places draw us in, somehow we recognize them, like our own dreams, because of what they represent.
Anthropomorphism is the human tendency to see people where there are none: to see smiling faces in wood grain, to assign complex emotional motivations to cats, and to curse at the storm that breaks our window. The 'Other World' of British Fairy Tales is based on the latter: the assigning of our luck--good and bad--to capricious spirits. The world of fairy has rules (as do storms), but those rules are mostly a mystery to man.
But Moorcock's world personifies the ideas of Kant and Nietzsche: his 'Other Worlds' (called 'Planes') are those of the human mind: they are places of morality, like heaven and hell, except he has updated the concept to existential morality. There is Chaos, and there is Law; Chaos is the selfish urge, Law the communal urge, and he arrays his magic, spirits, and dreamscapes along this axis.
Like Milton, he has infused his epic with the latest thoughts and notions, updating it for the modern age. Also like Milton, Moorcock's influence has been felt, far and wide, despite the fact that most people do not recognize it.
The Dungeons & Dragons game prominently used his Law/Chaos dichotomy, among other concepts, and his 'Wheel of Psychic Planes' is an influence on their most audacious and unusual publication, the philosophical 'Steampunk' setting, Planescape. And many of these tropes have filtered down into the grab-bag common to the modern voice of fantasy stories.
Reading Elric, one will invariably be reminded of a dozen other books and games, as Elric drinks endless potions to maintain his strength and vitality, slaying twisted demons on a plane of fire in search of a rune-sword, dressed in ornate black armor and a dragon-helm. Indeed, the central mythology (and much of the plot) of the Elder Scrolls games--in particular Oblivion--owe a vast debt to Elric and his world, and not simply for the land of 'Elwher'.
Clearly, Moorcock's odd vision has been transcribed onto the imaginations of fantasists, but as with those who were inspired by Tolkien, most of his followers have failed to recreate the weight of the original message. Except for a few outliers, like Planescape and Perdido Street Station, most authors have copied the outward appearance of Moorcock's alien world, but were not skilled or knowledgeable enough to take the substance along with the form--the existential ideas, the vital core of his dreamscapes, are most often missing, or at best, faded.
But while the ideas and the overall vision are strong--even compared to the ubiquitous attempts to recreate them--there are a number of flaws in Moorcock's presentation. The first and most damaging is a weakness in the voice. Moorcock has a lot to say, but must sometimes resort to explaining his ideas to us. He is not always able to deliver his world and characters through interactions, hints, tone, and actions. He is hardly an inexperienced enough author to explain to us that which is already self-evident, but it is a weakness in his delivery which sometimes takes us out of the flow of the story, so that we must step back from the world and listen to Moorcock talk about it, though he does do his best to veil it with Elric's thoughts.
Secondly, it can be difficult to get a strong impression of his characters, they are often difficult to sympathize with or to predict. It isn't that they aren't vivid and active, but that their actions are often based around ideas and concepts--the things Moorcock built his world on--which can create a sense of a top-down world, where the characters are there to fulfill a purpose, to explore various notions and philosophies.
The book is certainly not an allegory--there are no easy one-to-one correlations to be made between characters and ideas, but the world does not revolve around personalities--except, perhaps, for Elric's, but his thoughts and motivations are often the most difficult to reconcile. The personalities of all the other characters are, more or less, wholly dependent on him.
To some degree, the characters seem to operate on much older fantasy rules: their capricious yet repetitive acts becoming motifs for the larger ideas in the story, not unlike Tolkien's fantasy forefather, E.R. Eddison, whose characters seem half-mad with heroism for its own sake (another candidate for my favorite epic, if I didn't think his beautiful, deliberate archaism might prove too remote for many readers).
Part of the reason for this is that Elric's personality and world were created as an exercise, and with an explicit purpose: to portray the anti-Conan. He is sickly, weak, pale, effeminate, sorcerous, erudite, cruel, reluctant, intellectual, and hardly promiscuous. Conan becomes king by his own hand, while Elric begins as emperor and we witness the hardships of his downfall.
But this contrariness, while coloring the story, is hardly its center. Moorcock uses it as a springboard--an inspiration to drive him to something greater. It is one more example of the fact that genius is at its best when it has a lofty challenge before it. Moorcock is not interested in making a parody, but in exploring a little-trodden path, operating on the notion that if you start with something familiar and begin to move away from it, you are bound to end up somewhere else.
I must also mention an unbelievable incident involving a group of blind soldiers, which put dire strain to credulity. A bit of creative myth or capricious magic could have saved it, but as it stands in the book, it makes little sense.
But despite the subtle weaknesses in voice and characterization, Moorcock's idiomatic adventure story is eminently enjoyable. There are few fantasy books I could name which suggest such a playful intellect as this, and though it is not as wildly imaginative as his Gloriana, this philosophical exploration disguised as a pulp adventure is a delightful read that never gets bogged-down in indulging its own thoughtfulness.
Loading...
