Is George R.R. Martin is the Greatest Bad Writer of All Time (or the Worst Great One)?
I’m reposting this from 2012:
So I’ve been struggling my way through A Dance with Dragons, the latest 1000-page book in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series (the basis for the HBO series A Game of Thrones).
Why am I still reading it if it’s a struggle? Because I find this latest book, like the last one in the series, A Feast for Crows, to be a fascinating example of a terrifically talented author who has almost completely lost his way.
On one hand, there’s no denying that, on one level, Martin is simply a fantastic writer. He prose is tight and clear and evocative, and his characters are incredibly real. The structure of the individual chapters is often about as good as structure gets.
But on the other hand, he seems to have lost complete control of his overall story.
As I understand it, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, which are both massive 900+ page tomes, were originally intended to be a single volume in this series: Feast includes half of the characters’ stories, and Dance includes the other half (including those of the series’ most interesting and likeable characters, Tyrion, Jon, and Daenerys).
So Martin is spending more than 2000 pages on what what was supposed to be a single point in the story. And boy, does it show. Talk about the Never-Ending Story!
In recent interviews, Martin has mostly given up the ghost: he’s basically admitted outright that A Song of Ice and Fire isn’t about a “story” so much as it’s about “atmosphere.”
These words are like icicles through my heart. In my opinion, virtually all stories are about “story,” or at least they should be.
Yes, yes, of course, stories are all about the journey, not just the destination. But if there is no real destination, or if the destination is a blank to be filled in later (usually by the seat of the writer’s pants!), then, for me, the here and now loses a lot of meaning. I feel like I’m being jerked around. It’s angst for angst’s sake, not for any particular “point.”
Martin’s attitude, of course, is common in fantasy literature and paranormal series in general: they frequently seem to be mostly about atmosphere and world-building and beloved characters, not about narrative or story or satisfying “resolution” or a “point.”
In my opinion, there just aren’t that many stories that are so “epic” they actually require trilogies — or, worse, more than three books.
Usually, less really is more. (This, I think, is why cable TV’s 12-episode series arcs are so much more tight and satisfying that network TV’s often-meandering 24-episode series arcs.)
Still, if this is your thing, this is your thing. I just happen to disagree.
But I still find the case of George R. R. Martin to be fascinating. I honestly think he belongs in a very small pantheon of about five truly “great” fantasy authors. And the first three books in the Ice and Fire series are unqualified masterpieces, IMHO.
So how could someone who is such a great writer not see what a catastrophe the series has become?
He’s gone rogue, he’s lost “in country”: he’s fallen so in love with his world-building and his characters that he has also lost perspective.
Or maybe it’s a case of Black Swan-itis (named after the terrific Darren Aronofsky movie). With the first three books, he came as close as a human being can to “perfection.” Like Moses, he saw God. But like Moses, and like Natalie Portman in Black Swan, having seen such perfection, he’s forever ruined. There nowhere you can go from there but down. Like Moses, George R.R. Martin can’t cross the River Jordan.
In most cases, no one would care: most such self-indulgent writers are rejected by readers and audiences. But even lost in the infinite world of his own making, Martin is still a masterful writer (with a massive HBO-funded publicity campaign to boot!).
In short, a shitty, lost-in-the-weeds George R. R. Martin novel is still a lot more interesting than most of what I read these days.
(Oh, and the usual caveats apply: it feels stupid to critique a writer who is, I have no doubt, a far better writer than I. But hey, the whole point of a book is for it to be judged by its readers. I have as much as right to my opinion of Martin’s latest books as anyone!)
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