Trigun and Japanese Narrative Structure: A Response to ThatAnimeSnob

This post is mostly in response to ThatAnimeSnob's assessment of Trigun in his review in specific and his remarks on it that surface in his studio evaluation (Madhouse), and his annual evaluation for 1998.

In his annual evaluation, ThatAnimeSnob describes Trigun as follows:

It is quite good in terms of action and characterization but it keeps jumping from comedy to tragedy way too fast and kills the mood.  Not bad overall but it surely lacks focus on what it wants to be.

His review over at AniDB is much more descriptive of what his issues are:

-The first part is episodes 1 to 11.  These are mostly aimless comedy, where the lead character is goofing around and saves random people in random areas.  It is very light and makes you think that the entire show is nothing but silly storyless adventure.
-The second part is episodes 12 to 16, where the story is now entering an on-going and more serious phase.  You are given some insight to the hero's past and he faces far more fearful and inhuman opponents.  Now you think the show ill be hereon an average to good action/comedy/drama.
-The third part is the rest of the show (17 to 26), where the comedy portion almost disappears, violence, death and tragedy are increased tenfold.  This part reveals the hero's tragic past and how he tries to make up for all the damage he and his brother caused to the world.  The catch is, unlike the beginning of the show where nothing seems hard to accomplish when he is fighting seriously, over here he hardly manages to achieve half of what he intends to do.

The mood of the show changes almost 180 degrees from beginning to end, turning from a silly comedy to some serious tragedy.  That is perceived as a bold and well received element that makes the whole deal far more memorable and interesting.  If it was tragic or comedy all the way, the effect on you would be halved

That is still not enough for me to give a 10 to the story.  As much as I liked the mood swings, I found many scenes where the storyboard was messy and chaotic.  The plot seems to move any way the animators felt like it and the action scenes lack realism almost entirely, which in effect ruins a big part of its attempt to be serious.  The major showdowns are also a major problem as they all seem to end fast and almost effortless or way too simplistic.  The conclusion is like that as well so it may feel lukewarm in comparison to what was building up along the way so far.

Many of these are absolutely legitimate criticisms and I will not dispute that there are issues with tone and pacing.  Some of this can simply boiled down to aesthetics--Japanese audiences tend to find American (in particular) and Western (in general) stories to either be all comedy or all drama and they find that approach dry and less interesting as a heavy mixture complete with stark jumps between mood.  While that explains why a great deal of anime characteristically employs the jarring tonal transitions from tragic drama to comic relief, this is entirely a matter of taste and as a Westerner myself I admit that I find these shifts in tone to damage the overall dramatic tension in a story.

However, there are a few aspects of ThatAnimeSnob's review that I feel must be addressed because they are reflective of common East Asian storytelling techniques that are virtually unknown or misunderstood in the West.  Trigun, in particular, is a prime example of how Japanese narratives often follow a jo-ha-kyu (序破急), a technique whose roots are employed in Noh theater and discussed at length by the 14th/15th century playwright Zeami Motokiyo much as Aristotle discussed ancient Greek dramatic structure.

NOTE:  This post will focus on jo-ha-kyu as a pacing structure for Japanese narratives.  It will not concern kishotenketsu (起承転結) although it deserves some mention because, as will be discussed below, it is overlaid upon jo-ha-kyu much like Freytag's pyramid can be superimposed upon the three-act model.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:  This response is not a rebuttal or a criticism of ThatAnimeSnob's assessment of Trigun.  While I do think Trigun scored a bit lower than I feel it deserved, de gustibus non est disputandem.  The purpose of this post is to point out how Trigun exemplifies a narrative structure and dramatic pattern that is endemic to Japanese storytelling and how that structure is both unfamiliar and aesthetically difficult to process for many Western (especially North American) audiences.

WESTERN DRAMA
The average reader may be aware that Western drama has its roots in classical Athenian theater, much of which survives in the preserved tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschuylus and the comedies of Aristophanes (mostly dating from the 4th century B.C.) and (as mentioned above) the analysis and critique of drama preserved by Aristotle's Poetics (unfortunately, only the portion on tragedy survives--his analysis on comedy is lost).

These roots are then filtered through Shakespeare in the Anglophonic world.  Shakespeare reshaped drama in the English milieu and is the most immediate foundation for theater and film that exists in North America, the United Kingdom, and the British Commonwealth.  In the 19th century, much of Western dramatic structure was systematically analyzed by Gustav Freytag as is demonstrated by the pyramid structure of Western storytelling.

Most American schoolchildren are taught the basic components of storytelling and elementary critical theory in Language Arts classes in elementary school.  Therefore, Freytag's pyramid, with it's exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution elements, should be familiar to any North American (at least).  Most Anglophonic stories utilize this method and further refine it, through Shakespeare's influence, into a discernible three-act structure as seen below:

The three-act structure is extremely apparent in basic Anglophonic storytelling, from Beowulf to The Matrix.  Indeed, it is a nigh-universal base structure as well.  An easy example of the three-act structure in action is the original Star Wars film.  The first act generally establishes the characters, their motivations, and the conflict.  The second act introduces complications, providing minor victories and setbacks to further motivate the protagonist or to increase dramatic tension and intensify conflict (both internally and externally).  The final act sees the protagonist complete a transformation that enables him to overcome whatever challenges are set before him or (in the case of tragedy) to succumb to misfortune through the presence of some sort of tragic flaw.

This structure can be combined with the pyramid to illustrate the manner in which Anglo-American stories are constructed in a general sense.

This combination of Freytag's pyramid with the three-act structure illustrates how the elements of the first two acts combine to create the rising action that climaxes and resolves in act three.  The key to understand the difference between Western structure and jo-ha-kyu lies in understanding when the conflict is introduced.  The basic structure of the first act in a Noh play and in Western drama (be it tragedy or comedy) is the beginning of the divergence between storytelling technique.

JO-HA-KYU
Jo-ha-kyu is commonly translated as "beginning, break, rapid."  It traditionally consists of a five-movement structure (as opposed to three acts) and is based on a very different pacing aesthetic from the Western three-act model.  The essence of jo-ha-kyu is establishing a slow, peaceful pace broken by the jarring and sudden surge in dramatic tension that climaxes extremely rapidly before resolving even more abruptly.  The first movement establishes the protagonist and his overall situation, which is usually somewhat favorable to the protagonist.  This movement takes up a great deal of time and establishes a very light tone that is often optimistic and reflective of a certain status quo.  The break occurs during the second movement, in which the conflict is usually introduced--at this point, the pacing of the story increases suddenly and surges towards the climax in the third movement (the break), where the story pivots and begins to resolve equally as rapidly.  The overall effect is to see how the conflict disrupts and destroys the status-quo before it resolves and a new status-quo is established at the end.  The drama is enhanced by the sense of absolute disruption.

A good literary example of this is in Natsume Soseki's novel Sorekara.  The beginning establishes Daisuke as the protagonist, who generally floats through life on a stipend from his wealthy family.  Complications arise when they urge him to marry and his close friend, Hiraoka, returns home with a wife (Michiyo) and a mountain of debt.  Despite these complications, however, the dramatic tension does not increase for much of the book, establishing Daisuke's life as a somewhat carefree existence in which these complications have very little real effect on him.  The story accelerates once Daisuke falls in love with Michiyo and the real conflict is introduced.  The status quo is completely destroyed by Daisuke's love affair with Michiyo.  From that point on, the book resolves extremely rapidly.

Final Fantasy VI also displays jo-ha-kyu as a narrative method.  The climactic pivot of the game's story occurs not at the end but when Kefka moves the goddess statues out of alignment on the floating continent and creates the World of Ruin--from this point on the status quo is destroyed and the conflict must be resolved in a new context.

JO-HA-KYU AND A BREAKDOWN OF TRIGUN
Trigun also demonstrates jo-ha-kyu in application as a Japanese literary technique.  What ThatAnimeSnob does naturally is to observe that there is a definite structure to the show's composition.  He identifies Episodes 1 through 11 as effectively stable, episodic, and comedic.  Episodes 12 through 16 introduces an actual conflict that supersedes the previous structure and results in the transition of tone from lighthearted to intensely serious.  Episodes 17 through 26 resolve the conflict but not in as dramatic or climactic a fashion as ThatAnimeSnob would have preferred.

What is interesting is that he unintentionally delineates the pacing consistency that jo-ha-kyu exemplifies.  It is unintentional (I assume) because I do not expect ThatAnimeSnob to be aware of jo-ha-kyu as a Japanese aesthetic concept because in the West it is particularly obscure.  It is a testament to ThatAnimeSnob's skill as a critical thinker that he unintentionally and indirectly explained jo-ha-kyu in his review of Trigun.

Beginning
The first episodes introduce the viewer to the base elements of the story--the characters Milly, Meryl, and Vash, as well as their motivations; the planet of Gunsmoke is established primarily through visual cues; the general comedic tone of the status quo is firmly founded.  The premise is laid forth--It is preferable to run away than commit acts of violence; nonlethal violence should only be applied as a last resort.  This is translated into the theme--love and peace can conquer all.

There are overarching conflicts through these episodes but they are low-key compared to the later conflicts.  First, there is the conflict that Meryl Strife & Milly Thompson have with Vash.  Milly and Meryl want Vash to stop destroying stuff because it is costing their insurance company a fortune but Vash is not actually responsible for any of the destruction we witness on screen.  The destruction is mostly generated by the other conflicts in the story--criminals Vash will usually foil or bounty hunters trying to capture him.

The first eleven episodes establish how Vash is never really challenged.  If he cannot escape he can draw upon his superhuman skills as a gunslinger to resolve conflicts through nonlethal force.  The result is usually Vash looking sublimely awesome and utterly defeating his opponents.  Love and peace are reinforced as theme: if everybody would just stop fighting and get along, none of these problems would happen.  This is the status quo.

Break
Things start to shift between episodes 11 and 12.  This is when the status quo begins to break down and the antagonists begin to seriously challenge Vash's adherence to his principles.  Suddenly, "Love & Peace" may not be enough.  In Episode 12, Vash almost murders Monev the Gale to avenge the dead and stop Monev.  This is the first time that simply running away or using nonlethal force are not enough--if he had killed Monev at the outset, innocent lives would not have been lost.

The narrative is now turning in a new direction with this introduction of Legato and his followers.  Vash's scars are revealed and the tone of the story shifts as the pacing increases and the stakes gradually become clear.  Vash's own inner conflicts gradually surface during this period of the narrative.  The premise and theme are called into question and Vash has to not only face his past but also decide at what point the price of his principles is too great.

This peaks with the break section, the highest climactic point of the story in the third movement.  Episode 16 is possibly Vash's lowest point and the key moment in the jo-ha-kyu pattern.  It is here in Episode 16, specifically the moment Vash loses control and blows a hole in the Fifth Moon, that the ha (break) takes place.  The auspicious and optimistic tone of the first ten episodes is eradicated entirely as the new mood and atmosphere takes over.

What he have seen, then, is how the introduction of the core, real, actual conflict has utterly annihilated the tone and pace of the beginning portion.  Jo-ha-kyu often generates drama by showing how the conflict can destroy stability and introduce chaos.  Considering that Japanese society has been heavily influenced by Confucianism, it should be apparent that this is a characteristically East Asian approach to conflict in general.

Rapid
Typical to the Japanese narrative structure, there's a brief pause (Episode 17) before the fourth and fifth movements accelerate toward a conclusion.  The old status quo is gone.  Vash is now working through his internal conflicts regarding his pacifistic principles and the reality that conflict with Knives will result in lethal force.  The fact that the conclusion of the story is not as climactic as would be typical of a Western narrative is due to the nature of jo-ha-kyu, wherein the climax is usually the breaking-point of the tale, where the narrative decisively pivots from one tone to another and the status quo is utterly disrupted.  The fourth and fifth movements of the tale are where the protagonist takes steps to resolve the disruption caused by the break in the third movement.  While there are still peaks in dramatic tension, they are not as strong or as pronounced as those in the third movement where the break takes place.  Thus, the climax, where the dramatic tension of the tale is at its highest, is not in the latter two movements but in the third.  What carries the audience through the story is the acceleration toward the conclusion--the feeling of rapid, organic movement with spikes of dramatic tension that act as a rapid succession of aftershocks on the heels of the main earthquake.

IN CONCLUSION...
If viewed and analyzed from the standpoint of jo-ha-kyu, Trigun holds up aesthetically well.  However, jo-ha-kyu is culturally specific to the Japanese.  For those raised in the Japanese context, their familiarity with it as a narrative model will not feel quite so jarring as it may to Westerners.  Numerous texts throughout Japanese literature and popular culture (such as video games, anime, novels, and manga) illustrate the application of jo-ha-kyu.  Final Fantasy VI and Natsume's Sorekara are provided as examples above of this model in media other than anime.

De gustibus non est disputandem.  It is entirely possible and acceptable for ThatAnimeSnob to find jo-ha-kyu tedious and uninteresting a narrative model.  I'm not going to fault him for his assessment of Trigun--this post's purpose was not to correct ThatAnimeSnob or to defend Trigun's flaws but instead to provide perspective that can shed light on why Trigun's plot structure seems so disjointed.  If this perspective alters opinions so that viewers can appreciate Trigun's narrative, I feel that I will have accomplished something.  If viewers such as ThatAnimeSnob do not alter their opinions in the slightest in spite of this post, then at least I would have spent a few hours relaxing with a cup of coffee at a coffee shop, thinking about stuff I enjoy and putting it to print.

It should also be pointed out that an understanding of jo-ha-kyu should not lead to an automatic perception of all anime (or manga) as literary masterpieces.  Neither a thorough grasp and appreciation for jo-ha-kyu or kishotenketsu can redeem such trainwrecks as Mirai Nikki or Clannad, despite the tremendous amount of praise and hype heaped upon them by what ThatAnimeSnob deems to be "tasteless casuals."

Twin Post: D-Day and Ray Bradbury

Two things have really converged today that make being a blogger a bit interesting.  The first is that on June 5, Ray Bradbury passed away.  The other thing is that today, June 6, is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy during the Second World War.  Both topics are likely being blogged about all over the internet, but I thought it would be remiss of me to not say at least something.  I've avoided doing this before because everybody is doing it, but this time I figured I'd hop on the bandwagon.

Ray Bradbury
The passing of this giant of science-fiction is honestly quite sad, especially since he was prescient enough to foresee the cultural decline of American society into kitsch and the waning of literary awareness.  I read Fahrenheit 451 back in high school and it struck me how much Bradbury predicted how cultural and moral relativism would generate a malaise of meaninglessness and censorship of literary works (much of which comes out in the "Coda" of the book).  I was reminded of this when I discovered that new editions of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn were being published with heavy editing in order to make the work less "offensive."

I've read only a few of his short stories, but I especially remember "All Summer in a Day," dealing with school bullying on a colonized Venus (before we knew about the pressure-cooker atmosphere) because she's the only student to have ever seen the sunlight (since Venus is shrouded in clouds and constant rain).  This makes her "different" and the other children reveal the base, cruel, evil selfishness of human nature--only to discover deep shame and guilt for their actions at the end.  Sadly, what's done is done and they can never undo their behavior.  It's a great story about human nature and was quite moving for me to read as a child who suffered from bullying and ostracism.  Although I was far more angry and missed the real point of the story--that you cannot undo evil--and focused more on the poor girl who ends up being tortured by her peers.

Bradbury is one of those writers who has proven that science-fiction can, indeed, be literature.  He was most prolific during the height of science-fiction writing, during the middle of the 20th century.  That was when the likes of Bradbury, Clarke, and Asimov rubbed shoulders with Heinlein, Sturgeon, Hubbard, and Ellison and others.  They wrote in a world before Star Wars radically altered our perceptions of science-fiction (for good or for ill).

D-Day
On June 5, 1944, as we all should know from school, the Allied invasion of Europe began with paratroop drops and an amphibious landing in Normandy, France.  This was the turning-point in the war against Nazi Germany.  Although Hitler had been steadily losing ground in North Africa and Italy, it wasn't until the French front was opened that the Nazi war machine really began to fall apart.

We've all seen the opening shots of Saving Private Ryan.  Hopefully, we also watched the chronicle of Easy Company in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.  Some of us fancy ourselves to have survived the horrors of the war through playing Call of Duty 2 or Medal of Honor: Frontline.  The experience of war can be horrific and harrowing.  Many of our grandparents and great-grandparents (has it been so long?) are still haunted by the memories of those days, when they stormed the beaches, killed and died.

The Normandy landings would see at least 12,000 Allied soldiers dead.  By the conclusion of Operation Overlord, the Allies would have suffered over 225,000 dead and wounded, while the German casualties approach 450,000 by some estimates.  The immense human suffering and destruction of lives brought about by World War II should not be easily forgotten--nor should the lives and deaths of the men who fought against Nazi Germany.

Since I had the pleasure of reading Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad, I have wanted to read some of his other books.  Considering how excellent Stalingrad was, I figured I'd plug his D-Day book, especially since I intend to get around to it within the next year or so.


Interesting note:  I find it interesting that nearly 160,000 men stormed the beaches at Normandy in June of 1944, while (considering my last post) almost the same number of men marched ashore at Busan in May of 1592 to begin the samurai invasion of Korea.

Book Review -- HARRY POTTER SERIES by J.K. Rowling

It took about three months' worth of reading, between classes and settling in after my return from Korea, to finish the Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling. Unfortunately, I never got around to buying the British versions when I was in Korea, and especially regret not having done so. While in Korea, I sat in a bookstore for a few minutes doing side-by-side comparisons of the two texts and finding that Scholastic had heavily edited the American versions (more about this later).

J.K. Rowling's story of rags-to-riches is quite well known. Published on June 30, 1997, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone had sold up to 300,000 copies in the UK by March, 1999. It was an instant success as a children's novel and was rapidly acquired by Scholastic Corporation, who strong-armed Rowling into changing the name to Sorcerer's Stone because they thought American children wouldn't want to read a book with the word "philosopher" in the title (more on this later). We all know how the tale grew to become a phenomenon complete with films and accompanying books about Harry Potter's world. Rowling has become an incredibly rich billionaire.

The story is incredibly well-known so there's no reason to discuss it. Essentially, Rowling's story is not at all original but that is not a criticism. It's long been mused that between Shakespeare, the Bible, and Homer, every possible story has already been told. However, Harry Potter achieves an incredible resonance with it's readers. Rowling was able to take Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays, an 1857 novel about a private boarding school in England, add such fantasy elements as magic and antiquity, and marry it to the Campbellian heroic journey.

Her brilliance in such a combination cannot be understated. Tom Brown's Schooldays had been extremely successful and spawned an entire genre of schoolboy stories during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its great appeal was due to the interest of poor boys who couldn't afford to attend boarding schools and their curiosity of what such a life is like. It also appealed to former such academy students reminiscing about their times there. Such a setting made it easy for Rowling to incorporate the elements of a typical bildungsroman. To increase the appeal and make the story much more dynamic than the typical school novel, Rowling added the idea that the school in her story (Hogwarts) specifically existed to educate children and adolescents who displayed innate magical talents and prepare them to live in a hidden society of wizards and witches. The Campbellian monomyth provided a tremendous cultural resonance to her stories.

The influence of the monomyth cannot be understated. Written well, a story that incorporates the monomyth can evoke a powerful emotional response in the reader. Written poorly, such a story devolves into formula and cliche, much like Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara.

Rowling's prose evolves as her protagonist and audience age. In the first two books, her writing style isn't very impressive. Indeed, if she had stopped at Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I'd not have any qualms agreeing with Harold Bloom's assessment of the books (more on that later). At several points, she felt the need to recap previous events, concepts, and setting material in the form of tedious info-dumps as the series progressed. This is jarring to her narrative rhythm and honestly unnecessary. To her credit, Rowling reduces these to a few stray sentences in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and virtually does away with them altogether in The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows. She never achieves a poetic or moving style of prose but I feel that had she attempted as much, her work would have been tastelessly turgid instead of straightforward and event-driven.

The characterization of Harry Potter and his friends is incredible. Rowling's characters feel like real people (with a few exceptions). The character dynamics between Hermione, Ron, and Harry are incredible. Many of the characters are spectacularly well-developed and fully realized on the page. Through their dialogue they take life and express their personalities. Very few of the major characters feel flat (and those that do are mostly villains, which does, admittedly, weaken her narrative, but I digress...) and their interactions are excellently enjoyable. It is difficult not to feel amusement and affection for Fred and George Weasley, for example.

Equally well-realized is the wizarding world, complete with its own lore, legends, entertainment, music, and culture. Rowling's world grows as the books progress and she reveals more and more of the land of enchantment which comes to be just as imaginative and dynamic as Carol's Wonderland or Baum's Oz and despite Bloom's criticisms (see below), much more self-sustaining. What irked me, however, was the complete independence the wizarding world experienced from the Muggle world in contrast to how events in the wizarding world would effect the Muggle world (Sirius Black's escape and the return of Voldemort, for example). Also, I found the helplessness of the Muggle world in the face of wizardly conflicts a plot hole (especially since the wizards went into hiding in the 17th century because of Muggle persecutions against magic-users). Rowling does a lot of wand-waving (heh, heh) to separate the Muggle and wizard worlds so much, often resorting (quite literally) to "a wizard did it" to deal with any potential for the isolation of the wizarding world being breached by the Muggle one.

Harold Bloom's infamous criticisms of Rowling's achievement are well known and discussed throughout the blogosphere. Just google "Harry Potter and Harold Bloom" and you'll be hit with a plethora of blog entries and magazine articles on Bloom's scathing criticism.

Bloom's primary points of contention?

• The books are bereft of imaginative vision.
• Rowling's setting and the action therein have nothing to do with reality, which he sees as completely contradictory to the "realism" of Tom Brown's Schooldays.
  
• Rowling's dichotomy of wizard vs. Muggle is offensive, especially when the Muggles are abusive, dull, and close-minded.
  
• Sex and sexuality is all but nonexistent.

However, Bloom's conclusion is quite revealing.

And yet I feel a discomfort with the Harry Potter mania, and I hope that my discontent is not merely a highbrow snobbery, or a nostalgia for a more literate fantasy to beguile (shall we say) intelligent children of all ages. Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong? yes, they have been, and will continue to be for as long as they persevere with Potter.

A vast concourse of inadequate works, for adults and for children, crams the dustbins of the ages. At a time when public judgment is no better and no worse than what is proclaimed by the ideological cheerleaders who have so destroyed humanistic study, anything goes.

The review was published in July, 2000, in The Wall Street Journal, almost at the same time as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire hit American bookstores and Harry had to deal with death and sexuality for the first time. Indeed, Bloom should have waited until the series was complete before he leveled his infamous criticisms against it. It does read as highbrow snobbery, as he frequently compares the novels to The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz as exemplars of imaginative children's literature.

Rowling's writing style and imagination matures as her protagonist--something that Bloom misses. Bloom characterizes himself as a guardian of the great books of the past. Indeed, I agree that the Western canon needs defending in this post-modern era and that many of the books Bloom holds in highest esteem deserve to be read and appreciated, I still feel that his attack on Rowling is endemic of the ivory-tower isolation of the academics from the masses and is a result of intellectual elitism.

The evidence is written all across the last novel. Harry Potter is faced with the realities of Dumbledore, his late guide and adviser, as a human with human failings and frailties of the heart. Harry is faced with making extremely difficult choices that result in the survival or demise of friends, teachers, and students. There is moral ambiguity in his decisions and although he inevitably triumphs, Rowling wisely glosses over the reconstruction and gives us a small glimpse into the lives of the characters and their children decades hence. The brevity of the epilogue leaves the aftermath vague and ambiguous, leading the reader to ask, "Was it worth it? Did everything go back to normal? How could it after such tragic events?" (The weakness of omitting the aftermath means we never see how many of the characters cope with loss and tragedy. It is impossible that the characters have all been able to return to their normal lives and I would have very much like to have seen how George Weasley dealt with his very tragic loss).

Similarly, the wizard attitude toward Muggles is never described as correct throughout her novels. With the exception of the Dursleys, Muggles are rarely encountered in the novels but it is evident that the Dursleys are not to be considered the model on which one should judge. The visceral reaction of the reader to the wizards' and witches' patronizing and (oftentimes inadvertent) bigotry toward Muggles (indeed, even the name sounds pejorative) should evoke a certain distaste in the reader. This is never a situation that Rowling addresses and is, necessarily, left up to the reader to wrestle. Though I do not believe Rowling did this purposely, that she did it is still a strength and not a narrative weakness. Indeed, she even intensifies this question through the revelations of Albus Dumbledore's friendship with Grindelwald.

The greatest weakness is the unsympathetic character of Voldemort. Although Rowling describes the difficulties and rejections he experienced as a child, Tom Riddle's development into an irredeemable villain is rather one-note. His inability to love is not only his greatest weakness as a villain, it's also his greatest weakness as a character. Voldemort is less human than Darth Vader, who despite being more machine than man still rescued his son from death. Despite being a common trope in fantasy, the monolithic villain that is so evil as to be inhuman and incapable of love or compassion is not nearly as interesting as a villain that has purposely rejected, submerged, and killed those emotions deliberately due to some pain or suffering in his past. Voldemort is not a tragic villain, he's simply a villain. Similarly, nearly every Slytherin character is petty, scheming, and hateful (I was very disappointed that no Slytherin characters besides Slughorn opted to fight Voldemort and the Death Eaters during the Battle of Hogwarts).

Another weakness in the narrative is the over-morality of the good guys. They never resort to use of the Killing Curse and never deliberately kill any of their opponents. Since such an action will result in breaking a person's soul apart, it is considered highly reprehensible. However, since the wizard community of Britain finds itself in a civil war, the prolific use of the Killing Curse by the forces of evil results in a growing disparity between them and the forces of good as the latter's numbers are reduced through attrition. Ultimately, Voldemort's hate and villainy are self-defeating and Harry triumphs without actually killing Voldemort. While there are many other examples of Harry struggling with pain and suffering, there is never a point where he is forced to kill in order to survive. He never experiences the pain and suffering that Simon experiences in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn as he is forced to fight and kill in order to save the people and ideals that he loves. Though in the setting the good characters are spared such existential suffering and dilemmas that typical war veterans have to wrestle with due to their exemplary conduct (not descending to the use of the Killing Curse), it doesn't make for a complex, compelling, and interesting narrative.

In the end, the books are still for children. Rowling skirts such issues as good guys killing or sex and sexuality in order to keep the books "suitable" for her audience. I don't begrudge her decision. She includes a great many other complex issues and ideas in her books that young readers must consider. By the later volumes, she refuses to "write down" to her audience. Through excellent characterization and a well-paced narrative progression, she keeps her readers' attention.

Rowling has definitely accomplished something. Are these books classics of literature? Bloom says no. I say yes. The Harry Potter series is not simply a flash-in-the-pan. Discerning readers who find the Twilight series to be utter garbage still consider the Harry Potter Series to be a fantastic work of epic fiction and adventure. I've read many works of literature, like Bloom, but unlike Bloom I believe that Rowling overcomes her shortcomings as a writer and the weaknesses of many of her narrative choices to write an increasingly complex and dynamic story. No, it is not the equal of Don Quixote, Hamlet, or even The Lord of the Rings. It's rife with flaws, plot holes, inconsistencies, and characterization issues (specifically among the villains of the story). Yet Rowling's achievement is still worthwhile and I'd argue that it is just as worth reading as The Wizard of Oz.

As a final note, I'd like to discuss Scholastic Corporation's editing choices in "translating" the British dialect to standard American idiom. This is quite galling and struck me as very disparaging toward American children. Granted, many of the terms would be a bit confusing, but instead of a translation, incorporating a short glossary at the back might have been a bit more respectful to the intelligences of the readers. Similarly, the opinion that American children would find a novel with "philosopher" in its title unappealing (as opposed to British children, who had no such problems) displays the innately low opinion that Scholastic Corporation has of American schoolchildren. Considering that Scholastic is a corporation that produces schoolbooks (indeed, its very name is, in this case, ironic), this begs a great many questions about American education and the people and companies we allow to teach our children.

The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
Style A
Substance B
Overall B+

Fantasy: 1977 to 2011. Wrapping It All Up

This project grew out of a response to Tom Simon's review of fantasy in 1977 and his lamentations regarding the trends that 1977's publications foreshadowed. I broke down Simon's issues with mainstream fantasy thusly:

To distill from the above, it seems an over-arching adherence to Tolkien as the defining figure of the genre seems to be crippling it. In addition, attempts to break away from his influence often falter with both editors and audiences. Dabbling in the mythologies and philosophies of non-Western cultures can be interesting, but it must also be coherent--when its not you get confused and pointless sagas that go nowhere like Hancock's Circle of Light.

Each series Simon reviewed displayed problems that he had with the growth of these trends:

Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara represents imitation of Tolkien's work, debasing it into a set formula, without any of the thematic impact, narrative content, or unique characterization. This application the formula tends to be inept and riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies.

Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever represents how doing something different (and indeed, philosophical) with the genre will lack the mass-audience appeal of more imitative work and how a work is hindered by the demands of publishers for a follow-up trilogy.

Niel Hancock's The Circle of Light illustrates meandering plots without any meaningful pay-offs or resolutions. It also demonstrates how many later authors would clumsily employ different philosophies and religions as narrative gimmicks.

Finally, by analyzing The Silmarillion, Simon appeals to authors to blaze new trails and not get caught up in world-building to such a catastrophic level where the writer cannot escape it and becomes imaginatively bankrupt.

My own analysis of the 1980s and 1990s in fantasy seemed to uphold Simon's conclusions. I isolated a number of tropes Tolkien had established in fantasy, many of which were drawn from typical medieval and renaissance romances. To reiterate, they include:

The pastoral, bucolic countryman drawn into events beyond his initial ken.

The reluctant king in disguise or exile (or perhaps his kingdom is fallen).


The wise, sagelike wizard guide.

Dark lords, evil gods, or some other source of world-threatening power.

Ancient races (elves, dwarves, etc.) that predate humans and live a fey-like existence quite removed from the mundane realities of humankind.

Epic battles and wars.


A journey into darkness.

Evil lands or kingdoms.

The chivalric ideal.

Orcs, goblins, or some other sort of twisted creature that follows the dark lord/god.

Gigantic, formidable monsters.

Demonic, ghostly, or otherwise terrifying agents of the dark lord.

Copious worldbuilding, history, backstory, languages, and myth.

Infodump chapters where the peasant/country bumpkin hero is described the history and backstory.

The successful authors, primarily Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind and David Eddings, exhibit many of the flaws that Simon identified in his examination of 1977's releases. That many of these authors were released by Del Rey or Tor Books should not go unnoticed. The growing influence of the publisher on the author (especially the cynical del Reys themselves) had a profound effect on the proliferation of doorstops and simplistic narratives. Some overly-slavish imitations, such as Dennis McKiernan's The Iron Tower Trilogy never garnered the audience of the more successful authors. Nevertheless, many authors who started strong, such as Raymond E. Feist, Glen Cook, and L.E. Modesitt, Jr., with imaginative worlds and interesting thematic elements, failed to maintain their uniqueness and strength in the long run. Feist, in particular, reached a high-water mark with A Darkness at Sethanon, but subsequent novels became more derivative and self-referential, with more repetitive conflicts ("bigger and badder" do not always equal better) and less-and-less payoff. Other authors, such as Tad Williams, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and C.S. Friedman, wrote unique, focused, imaginative series of finite length that didn't approach the mass-market appeal of other works.

It wasn't until George R.R. Martin and Steven Erikson debuted that mainstream fantasy received a much-needed shot-in-the-arm. Yet in the first decade of the 21st century, following Martin (in particular) came a bevvy of authors without the skill at crafting a coherent narrative that wrote in stark contrast to Tolkien. Indeed, they often seemed to blame Tolkien for the mire in which fantasy found itself. These writers were R. Scott Bakker, Joe Abercrombie, Stan Nicholls, and Richard Morgan. Many of them drew influence from pre-1977 writer Michael Moorcock and likewise fueled their writing with fumes of stark dislike for "Tolkien's politics."

This new generation of authors exhibited two distinctive and new traits.

1. Similar to Martin (and Tad Williams before), they sought to depict medieval warfare as brutal, bloody, savage, and destructive. They also described the effect of war on the populace--famine, rapine, pillaging, disease, and other features of the medieval chevauchée.
   
2. They also featured a lot of narrative elements subversive to Tolkien, such as morally ambiguous heroes, political intrigue, sympathetic villains, and a distinction between good and evil that is blurry at best (and often nonexistent). They were often driven by a polemic desire to protest Tolkien's politics and overthrow his influence over modern fantasy.
   

Unfortunately, these writers seem to focus mostly on these elements and not on cohesive plotting, believable characters, or effective dialogue. In effect, these elements are not included in order to advance the story or develop the characters. They are included for the express purpose of rebelling against Tolkien. This is the greatest irony of all: they are basically doing the same thing as Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara, but in the opposite direction and displaying all of the narrative and characterizing problems that Tom Simon identifies in his analysis of Sword. The authors do not realize that they, in truth, are just as derivative of Tolkien as his imitators. As a result, they fail to achieve any real literary merit, relegating themselves to cheap, adolescent grindhouse versions of fantasy.

Those authors who do employ these political and graphic elements successfully make these elements vehicles for plot and character development as any writer (fantasy or not) should. Therefore, I must insist that the weaknesses and errors that Simon identified (and to which I have added) are not unique to fantasy. Those who are successful at incorporating those two new traits (politics and graphic violence/sex) have done so in a manner that makes these elements meaningful to both the plot and the characters, therefore making them meaningful to the audience beyond providing "edginess," "topical relevance," and "realism." Those successful are Martin, Bakker, and Williams in particular--they were not revolting against Tolkien or attempting to push some sort of agenda but instead presenting worlds, characters, and situations designed to provoke questions for the reader to answer. If one were to remove the sex and violence from Martin or Bakker, the narrative would become weaker. If one were to remove it from Abercrombie, Morgan, or Nicholls, would it instead become apparent that the narrative was already weak?

Conclusion
So, is fantasy in as dire straits and as deep a mire in 2011 as it was in 1977?

Yes and no.

Yes because the issues which crept into fantasy haven't really disappeared. They've just changed their styles. The core problems are still present.

Reduction of Tolkien's narrative into a formula without any of the thematic impact, narrative content, or unique characterization, the application of which tends to be inept and riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies.

Lack the mass-audience appeal of less imitative work.

Demands of publishers for larger publications and follow-up material have contributed to doorstop fantasy series.


Meandering plots without any meaningful pay-offs or resolutions.

Clumsy and often dishonest application of different philosophies and religions as narrative gimmicks.

A tendency to get caught up in world-building to such a catastrophic level where the writer cannot escape it and becomes imaginatively bankrupt.

Add to this my own observations from the 2000s:

Hyperbolic and overly didactic political polemicism, especially anti-Tolkien polemicism, that is inherently and ironically trapped in Tolkien's legacy as much as Brooks' The Sword of Shannara. Spoon-fed lessons are a major factor, here.


A reliance upon gratuitous sex and graphic violence (often combined) in order to further divorce one's writing from Tolkien and earlier writings without these elements contributing to character or plot development.

What does this boil down to? Basically, bad writing. Fantasy publication since 1977 (and likely, publication in general) provides ample evidence that Sturgeon's Law is in full effect. The problem is that readers aren't reading the good stuff and are becoming convinced the bad stuff is actually good. This is why such writers as Robert Jordan are dangerous to young readers and aspiring authors alike.

I may be tempted to make the argument that all of modern literature is exhibiting these issues. There are more people writing and getting published than ever before and their material is becoming more uniform and less varied and prolific. However, I won't make such a broad and sweeping claim because I don't have much access to the dregs of the past and am keenly aware of the proliferation of penny-dreadfuls in the Victorian era.

What is unique to fantasy is that the genre seems to be tragically hidebound to certain styles and both audience and publishers are woefully ignorant of the finer points of style, taste, and literary substance. The fact is that most fantasy readers are ignorant of literature outside of the genre. Such knowledge might have a profound impact on their taste. Indeed, most readers would likely prefer to read through all 15,000 pages of The Wheel of Time than The Count of Monte Cristo, Les Misérables, Moby-Dick, and The Grapes of Wrath (totaling around 3,000 pages--less than one fifth the length). This, I find, both sad and disappointing.

In the end, the blame must be laid at two sets of feet--the publishers and the readers. The publishers are at fault because instead of being motivated to publish literature they are instead motivated by profit in only the most cynical manner (as exemplified by the del Reys). The readers are at fault by being so hidebound and ignorant of literature that they are bereft of any and all taste, motivated by a desire to either see Middle-earth last forever or be violently overthrown.

There is hope for fantasy provided good writers enter the genre. That is why I continually referred to Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Steven Erikson, and R. Scott Bakker as symbols of hope for mainstream epic fantasy. Williams unfortunately flew beneath the mainstream radar. Bakker's narrative is carried by extremely abstract philosophical, ethical, and psychological content (which makes sense, the man was a Ph.D. student in philosophy before he turned to writing and it shows in his work). This renders The Second Apocalypse a bit out-of-reach intellectually for most readers that cannot get past the surface elements of his novels.

Yet these writers are still going. And they're likely to inspire further writers to take on the genre and use it as a playground for their imaginations. Lets just hope that these future writers are far more literary and capable of good writing.

Fantasy: 1999 to 2011. Disillusionment and Nihilism.

My final segment of my brief history of post-1977 mainstream epic fantasy closes with the past decade of development in the genre and a bit of musing regarding the direction it's taking. To recap, I first began this as a response to Tom Simon's discussion regarding trends that arose in 1977 which came to plague mainstream fantasy. When I examined the 1980s, I noticed that the most popular writers were derivative of Tolkien and/or medieval romance. While analyzing the 1990s I found that those writers continued but were joined by didactic polemicists and gimmicky weak narratives; doorstop fantasies that meandered with little or no payoff were actually the biggest bestsellers.

I am still questing to see if Simon is correct in his assessment that mainstream fantasy has become so mired in formula and convention, bereft of little true creativity or writing skill.

This segment is particularly difficult to write because it was during this time that I finished college, went to graduate school, and then left for Korea. My tastes in reading were necessarily shifted by my studies, gravitating strongly toward more canon literary works, historical inquiries, and books of philosophy. Therefore, I drifted from fantasy for about seven or eight years, only returning to the genre lately and finding it very different from when I left it back around 2001.

During this time, most of what I read was drawn from Gygax's & Arneson's Appendix N from the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. I was more than pleased by the Del Rey releases of Robert E. Howard's short stories in trade paperback format (including his Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, and Conan yarns). I started reading Moorcock's Elric books, Zelazny's Amber novels, Vance's Dying Earth, and Leiber's Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser tales. I also dove into more SF with Kurt Vonnegut, Dan Simmons, Frederick Pohl, and H.G. Wells. I periodically pulled a few works from the shelves of the fantasy section, such as John Marco's The Eyes of God but overall, I wasn't really inspired to continue. Oh, I certainly enjoyed what I read. Yet there was something missing.

In the following, I cannot speak from firsthand experience reading these authors. I must admit a distinct bias which will, no doubt, color my assessment. I'm drawing much of my information from reviews found on blogs and amazon.com reviews. The uniting trend I've recognized, however, is that all of the negative reviews had very specific criticisms of writing and narrative style, weak characterization, and an overattachment to gore, violence, sex, and rape; all of the positive reviews were very vague, used adjectives like "enjoyable" and "exciting," and tended to compare the work to other authors the audience "may have liked."

Stan Nicholls
Nicholl's first Orc novels, Bodyguard of Lightning and Legion of Thunder were released amidst a small fanfare touting his subversive decision to write a novel from the perspective of the "bad guy cannon fodder" of fantasy. This wasn't a bad decision. However, Nicholls certainly had issues with taste. A lot of the criticism of Nicholls' novels focus on how he fails to actually detail and describe a different race; ultimately, they are humans with different skin--stereotypical noble barbarians. The over-fetishization of violence, rape, dismemberment, and gore do not make up for the lack of character depth and believable worldbuilding.

Joe Abercrombie
Abercrombie debuted with The Blade Itself in 2006, the first novel in his The First Law trilogy (followed by Before They Are Hanged in '07 and Last Argument of Kings in '08). According to one amazon.com reviewer, the trilogy is "Conan the Barbarian meets the anti-Lord of the Rings...and its not a compliment." While dialogue may be a strength, Abercrombie seems to lack the panache for character and plot development. His hard-boiled prose is apparently quite fitting and has garnered a great deal of complements on the internet, although the proliferation of modern swears and parlance in his character dialogue has been labeled as "distracting." Nobody gets what they deserve and almost none of the characters can be characterized as "good." This is not a problem, so much, except that all of the characters are basically evil. They might be sympathetic to some, but many who have not rejected the moral ambiguities of Martin's novels have rejected the amorality of Abercrombie's.

However, it appears that the most negative reaction to Abercrombie has come from his 2011 release, The Heroes, in which the eponymous characters are anything but. As one reviewer opined, The Heroes descends into being "a 500 page vignette on the folly and nihilism of war, brutally told."

Richard Morgan
With 2008's The Steel Remains and the forthcoming The Cold Commands (Oct. 2011), Richard Morgan has thrown down his own gauntlet against the perceived weaknesses of Tolkienesque fantasy.

A slow moving novel that attempts to challenge contemporary fantasy tropes with in-your-face assaults on the hero archetype. But given the lack of plot progression, the book seems to be a pretense for forcing readers of basic fantasy to digest homo-erotica as a statement, not in pursuit of a larger plot point. Yeah, we get it, good literature is hard to read - and in western culture gay sex scenes are challenging to many readers. But challenging literature is not necessarily good literature, and that's a logical fallacy Richard Morgan embraces in this novel. --amazon.com review for The Steel Remains by Oria S. Bjorklund

Another reviewer states that "if graphic rape is your thing, this book is for you." Brian from The Silver Key had a decent amount to say about Morgan's debut fantasy novel. The overall trend in the negative criticism of his work is that the writing style is weak and at times overly technical, eliminating suspension of disbelief. Like Abercrombie and Nicholls, the emphasis is on being "edgy" and "dark, gritty, and violent." One positive reviewer said of Morgan's writing that "this isn't Disney." What the hell that is supposed to mean, I'm not sure (maybe the reviewer seems to think that Tolkienesque fantasy is Disney, I don't know).

Morgan (as one will read below) is highly critical of Tolkien. Just read "The Real Fantastic Stuff."

China Miéville
Although technically a writer of the New Weird, a movement that seeks to move fantasy back to its SF and horror roots of the early 20th century, China Miéville is yet another anti-Tolkien author who is deeply critical of what he sees as Tolkien's politics in The Lord of the Rings. Miéville is a socialist and a Marxist and infuses his work with such themes as class struggle and industrialization, often setting his writing in parallel worlds full of magic and more modern/postmodern thematic elements.

I can't really comment much on China Miéville because I actually want to read him. Out of the current list, Miéville has the most awards and honors heaped upon his novels, suggesting that there is really some substance to his work. I'm purposely avoiding reviews of him in order to make up my own mind. But since he's one of the most active and heavily recognized writers in the SF/fantasy genre he deserves mention.

REMINDER: I've read none of these authors. I have seen how they've spawned a degree of backlash amongst a more conservative readership. Just read my "Realism and Nihilism in Contemporary Fantasy" and check out all of the blogs and articles I link throughout the post. Therefore, yes, I do carry a bias. If I ever attempt to read these authors, I will comment on them much more directly and where necessary redact any statements that might be erroneous.

R. Scott Bakker
Some might argue that they have read nothing more nihilistic, violent, or graphically sexual than R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor. I would disagree. The only nihilism there is what the reader imposes upon the text and Bakker's work most certainly transcends genre. Yes, his work is graphically violent and sexually explicit. Yet Bakker draws from not only literary influences within the SF, fantasy, and horror genres but from Freud, Plato, Gnosticism, Nietzsche, Jung, and countless other writers and sources of philosophy, religion, and psychology. He combines everything into a grandiose thought-experiment whose thematic narrative is not didactic or polemic but instead allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

To be fair, Bakker's story is only one-half to two-thirds finished (he has five books thus far in his Second Apocalypse saga with two or three novels forthcoming). Thus far, Bakker is very deeply interested in the concept of damnation and the power of collective consciousness upon the Outside (and/or the hereafter), psychological determinism and whether or not we can truly control our conscious selves or are ruled by a subconscious, and the nature of knowledge and truth. Bakker reveals how his characters may believe they are acting out of a sense of justice or honor and strive for what they believe to be good but in reality are acting on subconscious motivations shaped by their upbringing, culture, religion, experience, and a myriad of other external stimuli. These revelations have thought-provoking implications for the reader and strike at the very heart of the human experience. This, in my opinion, catapults him far above many of his contemporaries into the realm of true literature.

Current Trends in Mainstream Fantasy?
What we see are two developing trends. The first is an increase in "adult" themes, such as sex and sexuality, violence and gore, and the gritty realities of medieval life and warfare (rape, pillaging, the chevauchée, religious and noble hypocrisy, class dominance, female repression, tyranny, widespread poverty and disease, etc.). These things are remarkably absent in not only Tolkien but also Eddings, Jordan (with the exception of sex/female repression), Brooks, Feist, etc. This growth of "hardcore" themes gives the new books an "edgy" feel.

The other trend is wholly political. Many of these writers are approaching fantasy from different postmodern perspectives (gender perspectives/feminism, Marxism/class struggle, industrialization, liberalism, atheism/alternative religions, etc.). We saw the dawn of many of these in the 1990s--for example, Philip Pullman published His Dark Materials during that time, which was keenly critical of the Catholic Church in specific and religion in general.

I've discussed a great deal about these trends in "Realism and Nihilism in Contemporary Fantasy." However, for the sake of argument, I'll repeat a few of my ideas below.

To me, it appears that mainstream fantasy has gone where comic books went in the early 1990s. With the relaxation of the Comic Book Code, grittier, more violent and sexually charged comics found release. In some regards, this was a good thing. Alan Moore's The Watchmen and From Hell, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and Frank Miller's Sin City, 300, and The Dark Knight Returns all dealt with mature themes and challenged the readers' preconceptions regarding the literary role comics could play. (All of this had been made possible by Art Spiegelman's Maus in the 1970s). However, the drawback was a descent into worship of amoral anti-heroes (cf. Rob Liefeld's Bloodwulf mini-series and Supreme), often featuring copious amounts of gore and sex. The end result was comics became less "adult" and more "adolescent."

I see a similar trend in fantasy. The growth of more "edgy," "realistic," and "hardcore" narratives is equally puerile, mostly due to the lack of authorial skill in characterization and narrative structure. Authors have found fantasy childish and are attempting to force it into maturity through writing more "adult" stories without the skills in telling a coherent story with well-defined characters.

C.S. Lewis responded (well, I think) to the concept of "adult" themes in literature:

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adults themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence…. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. --from "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," On Stories

Indeed, this speaks directly to just how adolescent and undeveloped a proliferation of gratuitous sex, violence, and gore in both comic books and fantasy fiction is.

"Battles and bloodshed occur and occur often, but do not take the story to a higher level each time. There is no build-up. Main characters die, but only because [the author] wants to play with the reader, that is, rather than eliminating them in the natural flow of things or to add an element of drama." --amazon.com review of The Blade Itself by Han Jie

This is a common criticism I see repeated in many reviews for Morgan, Abercrombie, and Nicholls. The violence and sex in many of these books exist simply for the element of subversion and shock.

The second trend I've noticed is primarily political in nature. Miéville, and Morgan, specifically, have openly criticized Tolkien's writing. Abercrombie admitted to finding the following more compelling than Tolkien's original material:

Endless scenes of torture, treachery and bloodshed drenched in scatology and profanity concluded with a resolution worthy of M. Night Shyamalan at his worst, one that did its best to hurt, disappoint, and dishearten any lover of myths and their timeless truths. Think of a Lord of the Rings where, after stringing you along for thousands of pages, all of the hobbits end up dying of cancer contracted by their proximity to the Ring, Aragorn is revealed to be a buffoonish puppet-king of no honor and false might, and Gandalf no sooner celebrates the defeat of Sauron than he executes a long-held plot to become the new Dark Lord of Middle-earth, and you have some idea of what to expect should you descend into Abercrombie’s jaded literary sewer. --Leo Grin, "The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists."

Granted, I may be coming down a bit hard on Abercrombie but the trend is there and is being applauded by more than the likes of Michael Moorcock.

I'm not really interested in reading much of this newer stuff. If I wanted to, I'd read a history book about actual events. I don't read fantasy for the historical realism, I read it for the story. If the story is lacking, then it follows that no matter how subversive, postmodern, or politically topical the novel may be, I will find myself disinterested at best and angry/insulted at worst. Many of these authors aren't interested in challenging their audience and asking provocative questions--instead they take a moral stance and spoon-feed all of the meaning to the reader. Much of that meaning is highly agenda-driven and deliberately destructive of previous fantasy. Many authors have stated a heavy dislike for Tolkien.

it would be a foolish writer in the fantasy field who failed to acknowledge the man’s overwhelming significance in the canon. And it would be a poor and superficial reader of Tolkien who failed to acknowledge that in amongst all the overwrought prose, the nauseous paeans to class-bound rural England, and the endless bloody elven singing that infests The Lord of the Rings, you can sometimes discern the traces of a bleak underlying human landscape which is completely at odds with the epic fantasy narrative for which the book is better known. --Richard Morgan, "The Real Fantastic Stuff"

Morgan goes on to say in his Comments section:

The Gorbag passage I quoted is, I think, an example of Tolkien’s Authorial Talent shouldering his Priggish Metaphysical Concerns out of the driving seat for a while (you can see a similar dynamic in Milton’s handling of Satan), but, as I lamented in the article, it doesn’t last long, AT gets booted into the back seat again and PMC is back in charge. I think you can see similar examples of that struggle littered throughout the book, but the result is always the same. This is the retreat from the lessons of the twentieth century that I was talking about in the essay and it’s how we end up with a book written by a man who’s witnessed the slaughter of the Somme, in which massive frontal assault against suicidal odds is still seen as a Noble Thing. That’s the failure I’m talking about.
Here are a few things, off the top of my head, that might (IMHO) have thickened the mix to more adult proportions:
Denethor retains most of his disagreeable characteristics but is a handy motherfucker with a battle axe and repels with great gusto a couple of assaults on the gates of Minas Tirith, while still raging at Gandalf for interfering.
Theoden rides to Minas Tirith not because it’s The Right Thing to Do, but because he reckons there’s a chance he can lay his hands on Gondor’s levers of power in the aftermath (and Gandalf sells him that idea to get him into the saddle)
Faramir dies, Boromir lives (with his guilt unassuaged or not, I can see excellent dramatic potential either way)
The hardiest fighters at the siege of Minas Tirith are a company of renegade orcs who’ve changed sides and have the most to lose if the city falls since they’ll be tortured to death as traitors
The most terrifying asset in Sauron’s forces is a mercenary army of elves out of Mirkwood. Disgusted by the failings of men, they have thrown in their lot with the enemy on condition they will not be deployed to fight their own kind. The Nazgul hate them and don’t trust them, and those feelings are mutual. At Helm’s Deep the mercenaries come face to face with brother elves and Sauron’s broken promise……
An orc family provide Frodo and Sam with shelter as they cross the wastes – the family are starving and miserable, and just want the war over and their husband and father back from the front.
And so on…….

Such criticism of Tolkien completely misses Tolkien's point. Including these elements would have catastrophically undone the entire purpose of The Lord of the Rings. The narrative would have been too divided, cheapened, and unraveled. Those like Abercrombie and Morgan might see this as a Good Thing, but I don't. Why?

Literary Taste. George R.R. Martin and R. Scott Bakker can do these things in their narrative because these elements have a place in their storytelling. In The Lord of the Rings, such developments would have simply weakened the story, pacing, characterization, narrative flow, etc. Tolkien wasn't incapable of writing those elements into a story, as his Children of Húrin demonstrates. For this particular story, however, Tolkien didn't want to include those elements and his novel is better off because of it.

Literary taste demands the reader ask the question, "What purpose do these elements serve? Do they advance the story or characters? Do they increase the dramatic tension of the tale?" If the answer to the last two questions is "no," then the answer to the first will likely be unsatisfying. The purpose will be to "be edgy/hardcore/adult/realistic" and therefore be intrinsically flawed. All elements in any work of literature should be subservient to the overall narrative. If they are not, then the author is doing something wrong.

So how about the authors who have included these themes and done it right?

THE SUCCESSES
Frankly, it is my opinion that George R.R. Martin, R. Scott Bakker, and Tad Williams incorporate many of these "adult" and political themes far more successfully than many of their contemporaries. I've discussed Williams' work at length so there shouldn't be much more to say about him. Williams is not concerned with "updating" or "dethroning" Tolkien. His work is not a criticism of Tolkien or of anything at all. Despite all of the subversive elements he included in his tale, he still maintains a mythical and fantastic flavor of the sort that Tolkien achieved. Similarly, George R.R. Martin's novels do not seek to overthrow The Lord of the Rings. Martin is a great lover of Tolkien and once opined that when he dies instead of heaven he'd prefer to go to Middle-earth. R. Scott Bakker has openly admitted that the Mines of Moria inspired Cil-Aujas and the confrontation with Smaug influenced his climax to The White-Luck Warrior.

These authors have not written their works to criticize Tolkien. They're written their books to tell their own stories and wrestle with their own issues. Tolkien serves them simply as a source of inspiration as to what fantasy can accomplish. Martin, Williams, and Bakker do not descend to the adolescent levels that many of the other authors do. Bakker comes close but his voice is so matter-of-fact that he dodges both the "prude" and "pornography" bullets that many authors fail to do. Indeed, since sex is a part of life and the human experience, it forms an integral part of his characters' psyches and is therefore quite important in the development of his narrative and his exploration of the conscious and subconscious drives that direct people's behaviors. I am under the impression that Bakker is not writing to an audience that will be thrilled or shocked by sex and violence but assumes that his readers are mature enough to take his descriptions in stride. Indeed, it would be impossible to delve to such a primeval, Freudian level into his characters' psyches if he didn't write these things.

NOTE: I don't include Erickson and Esslemont as successes in this regard because they're pursuing a far different sort of tale--something drawn more from Gygax's & Arneson's Appendix N than from Tolkien. Yes, many of these political, sexual, and violent themes emerge in their works. Nevertheless, these themes are much more subdued in their Malazan novels. There isn't as much subversion in the Malazan world so much as an exploration of the infinite possibilities of the imagination through fantasy.

In other words, for Martin, Bakker, and Williams, sex and violence occur in the story in order to advance the plot. One of the major criticisms I've repeatedly come across regarding Abercrombie, Morgan, and Nicholls is the violence and sex in their books does nothing to advance the story or develop the characters.

To write something realistically in order to give definition and meaning to a story is one thing. To write realistically for the purpose of being realistic or "edgy" is another.

"Nobody writes realistic realism, and if they did, no one would read it. The writers that think they write it just give their own ideas about things they think they see. The sort of man who could write realism is the fellow who never reads or writes anything." --Robert E. Howard

Too often, writers are writing in order to be edgy.

So, what does this mean for fantasy? What about the trends that Tom Simon discussed in his essay?

I'll round that off with my final conclusion in a forthcoming post.

Retrospective: Tad Williams' MEMORY, SORROW, AND THORN

I'm taking a break from my series on the late history of fantasy and its so-called degradation to discuss one of the seminal fantasy works from the late 20th century--Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. This isn't a review so much as an analysis and explanation as to why I believe the series is such a powerful piece of literature and why, unlike Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, David Eddings, Terry Brooks, et. al., Tad Williams is a true successor to Tolkien.

Other authors and blogs have spent copious gigabytes describing why Tolkien is (or isn't) a major landmark writer in fantasy and how his works are integral to the literary canon of the 20th century. Tad Williams, by-and-large, gets ignored by the fantasy-reading public and the elitist English professor alike and this is a damn big shame. So, instead of reviewing Williams' novels or only describing how they fit into the overall historical schema of mainstream epic fantasy's evolution, I'm going to do some analysis and explain what Williams got right. Thus, it seems fair to warn the reader that THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD! You've been warned, dear reader.

The Beginning
In 1988, DAW Books published The Dragonbone Chair, a novel nearly 700-pages in length with an entirely uninspired-looking map (more highly detailed maps would be found throughout the text itself), an appendix that glossed people, places, and things in Osten Ard, and a translation guide for phrases in different languages. Most readers never got past the first 200 pages of exposition in the novel, arguing that "nothing happens" (which puzzles me, because much of books 6 through 9 of The Wheel of Time feature gratuitous amounts of nothing happening until the last 150 pages and people love Robert Jordan).

So, am I just insane or is there something here the average reader missed?

Well, the first 200 pages of The Dragonbone Chair are exposition. Williams is carefully, subtly establishing a typical medieval setting, its political situation, its characters and their feuds, loyalties, goals, and relationships. He's also instilling the reader with a sense of status quo--the world works like such, magic and faeries are just stories and reality is just mundane. Then, when the reader is about a quarter of the way through the book, all of the readers assumptions are destroyed, the status quo is irrevocably overturned, and all hell seems to break loose. This happens so rapidly as to shock the reader. After 200 pages, the reader's become subtly invested in the world, the characters, and come to feel that he/she can predict where things are going when Williams turns the tables and tells us to take nothing for granted.

The Cliche
Williams draws from medieval romance, just as David Eddings had done. However, Williams does it in a way that preserves the sense of wonder and mystery about his setting in a very Tolkienesque manner. In other words, Williams not only mimics Tolkien's style but also his atmosphere. Osten Ard is a layered setting--there's the mundane world of humans but underneath it lies the innate magic and mystery of the setting and its more subtle inhabitants. Now, Osten Ard does not feel like Middle-earth but more like the magical medieval England that never was, the one that knew King Arthur, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table.

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn centers around an epic quest in search of powerful McGuffins (in the form of three legendary swords) that the characters hope will save them from the Storm King. Knighthood (and boys who daydream of becoming knights) plays a powerful role--righteous behavior, faith, and bravery are cherished by many of the noble characters in the series; the heroes ultimately strive for something greater than themselves, even though most of the time they're concerned with mere survival. The good guys are guided by Nisses' Du Svardenvyrd (the Weird of the Swords), a book of prophecy. One particular character happens to be descended from kings and rightfully deserves the crown, although he doesn't necessarily know it (or even want the crown). A rebellious princess seeks to escape the prison of palace life and ends up embroiled in events beyond her knowledge and maturity to handle. The faerie races feature heavily in this book, although somewhat subtly, as Williams seems to understand that familiarity breeds contempt. Much of the series is bildungsroman, focused on Simon's growth from a young boy into a hero. Finally, many of the countries and religions in Osten Ard have real-world analogues that should make them more familiar to the reader (Erkynland = England, Nabban = Byzantium/Rome, Hernystir = Wales/Ireland/Scotland, Rimmersgard = Scandinavia, the Thirthings = Magyars/Huns, Perdruin = Venice/Genoa, Aedonite Church = Catholic Christendom).

These things are all very-well established tropes that have cropped up throughout heroic epic fantasy since Tolkien. At first blush, Simon will remind readers of Garion from Eddings' The Belgariad, Pug from Feist's Magician, and Taran from Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain. The Storm King ruling from his far northern kingdom will no doubt remind readers of the demonic, supernaturally powerful dark lords found in fantasy from Tolkien on (including Jordan, Alexander, Eddings, Brooks, and others). What Williams establishes is a status quo not only of setting, but also of technique and material.

But where the other authors simply sought to retell the same old tale, Williams had the talent to do things that were unique and different. He doesn't just imitate the story elements of Tolkien, Mallory, and Chaucer. He seeks to incorporate an atmosphere, sense of wonder, and thematic substance.

Literature and Substance

Heroism, Combat, and Death
George R.R. Martin was initially inspired by Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn to write a mature, intelligent fantasy. It's a shame that Williams doesn't get quite as much credit as he deserves and Martin has definitely eclipsed Williams' popularity. It would be unwise, however, to compare A Song of Ice and Fire with Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Williams and Martin are attempting to do very different things with their respective series, and Martin's work is not yet finished. Williams explores themes that Tolkien never had. Tolkien's archaically poetic voice matched his equally archaic subject-matter. The Lord of the Rings features a lot of elements subversive to heroic quest literature but Williams challenges themes that Tolkien overlooked.

Williams' voice is deep and mature. The characters are dynamic, driven, and evolving. Simon grows and changes, but he does not do so in a vacuum. Unlike Tolkien, whose characters saw many things and did many deeds, but ultimately (except for Frodo), remained the same as before, Williams' characters are unmistakably changed by their experiences. And with good reason--they experienced something so horrifically terrible, it would be ridiculous for them to simply go on as if it had never happened.

Now, this is not being entirely fair to Tolkien--his characters do change. But after their adventure, the greatest shift that occurs is the world becomes a bit more mundane (the Elves leave, the King returns, and Hobbitism continues as it always has, with that brief interruption from Sharkey). In comparison, however, the changes in Tolkien's world are much more superficial. In Williams' work, the entire world is ripped apart in the struggle over King John's throne. Alliances are made and broken, and when the dust settles, no one's demesne is as it was before. Characters have either been forced to become great heroes or have been broken and/or killed. I am reminded of Catherine Barkley's axiom in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, in which she says that the world breaks everyone, and if it cannot break them it kills them. Williams offers a third alternative--those that aren't broken or killed become heroes.

But being a hero isn't a happy thing. Simon's first taste of warfare is bloody, horrific, and ultimately unromantic. Despite all of the romantic elements that dwell on the surface of Williams' epic, there are deep challenges that flow deep below. Simon's knighthood is rewarded with a troop of men that he leads to their deaths beneath his new banner. He watches friends and comrades die and kill around him, and is shocked to numbness by the smells, sounds, and sights of the battle. His senses are assaulted and he, in a primitive echo (or perhaps, foreshadow) of the great Sir Camaris (Williams' Lancelot), is a demon in battle who weeps for the men he smites.

Being a hero means loss. Being a hero means overcoming the agony and pain of one's circumstances. Like a Homeric epic, Williams' heroes display ἀρετή (arete), but when they are alone, the pain wells up and they lament for themselves and for those around them. Thus, one of the most noteworthy characteristics of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is the role of war, death, and combat. Characters die. Combat is lethal. Wounds can result in disfigurement and death. In many epic fantasies, the main characters seem to be immune to the dangers of combat (unless the author has literary reasons for killing one or two off). Williams is never afraid to have an encounter result in half the party being slain--a far more realistic depiction of combat than what is common in mainstream epic fantasy.

Symbolism
Another element that runs strongly throughout Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is symbolism. Williams' keenly infuses a great deal of meaning into the three eponymous swords that give the series its title. The names of the swords: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, are reflective of the thematic weight they bear.

Minneyar (Memory) was forged from the keel of a Rimmersman's ship when they settled in Osten Ard from across the sea. It was made of metal not found in Osten Ard and bound by the Dwarrows with the Words of Making. It wasn't of Osten Ard at all, and it's alienness made it powerful. It was carried to the Sithi stronghold of Asu'a, and was there when the faeries were slaughtered beneath the cold-wrought iron of the heathen Rimmersmen.

Thorn was made from the meteoric iron found in the meteorite that destroyed the Temple of Yuvenis the night after Usires Aedon was hung from the Execution Tree. Again, Dwarrows forged the blade with the Words of Making. Again, it was not of of Osten Ard, but of alien origin.

Jingizu (Sorrow) was forged by the Sithi prince Ineluki, when their city of Asu'a was being destroyed by the Rimmersmen. It was a blend of iron (poison to the Sithi) and their mystical witchwood, and was bound together by the Words of Making. It was named for Ineluki's lamentations as he wept at the loss of Asu'a and the destruction of his beautiful people.

These three blades each carry a legacy and each forms a major theme in the book. Memory symbolizes the cruelty of man and the memory of the faerie. It also symbolizes the memories of the characters and the harms that have been done. Disguised by Prester John, it is also given additional meaning--memory in the face of a lie. Prester John may have been the greatest king in Osten Ard, but he was also a liar, and the memory of his lie pursued him to his death. Simon ends up bringing Memory to Ineluki at the climax of the story.

Sorrow is obvious. The book is filled with loss. The Sithi lost their kingdom, and they broke with their bretheren, the Norns. They came fleeing from the dreamlike world of the Garden to Osten Ard and brought the evil they sought to escape with them. Theirs is a tragic tale. And Ineluki's search for vengeance and the emptiness of his very soul as he continues in Undeath (or Unbeing) is filled with sorrow and fury. The themes of Sorrow and Memory are closely tied together here. Sorrow is borne by King Elias, who laments the loss of his wife, and was willing to throw his very kingdom away in a mad gamble to get her back through black sorcery.

Thorn is redemption. Christ's head was pierced by thorns, and his hands by thorns of iron. Thorn is a great, black iron sword wielded by Sir Camaris. Sir Camaris, like Lancelot, is the greatest knight in Aedondom. He explains how battle is the vocation of the knight because it is the way God decides the fate of nations on the earth. It has a will and a mind of its own. It can only be wielded when the cause is righteous. The connection between thorn and Usires Aedon is vital to its identity. Simon carries Thorn for a time, although he is not it's master. Camaris spends much of his time in guilt and internal turmoil, begging forgiveness for God for his sins, both on the battlefield, and off. He inevitably is there at the climax, carrying Thorn when he meets Elias and Simon before Ineluki.

Faith & Redemption, Forgiveness, and Dark Lords
In the presense of all three, Simon stands at the crux. Instead of throwing a ring into a fire or blasting Ineluki with magical fire, he forgives him. He extends sympathy. He refuses to hate. The climax of the book stands alone amongst epic fantasy.

In this respect, Williams' differs sharply with his colleagues in the epic fantasy business. Tolkien's Dark Lord Sauron is destoryed when his Ring is destroyed--he was truly dead, but continued to exist through the Ring. His motivation was to continue the work of his master, Morgoth the Enemy, but for some reason, his objectives were vague beyond the cryptic "cover the world in darkness" routine. Brona, the Warlock Lord of The Sword of Shannara used sorcery to remain a powerful wraithlike creature, bound to the material world through lies of magic, lies which were broken when touched by the Sword of Shannara. Terry Brooks' evils in Shannara all have equally vague objectives, which in the end boil down to "cover the world in darkness". Takhasis, the Queen of Darkness in Dragonlance, was defeated through heroic bravery and by the supposed innate nature of evil to consume itself.

Williams' provides his evil characters with much more depth. In the end, this makes them less vague and distant, less unfathomable. At the same time, it makes them much more sinister and inhuman. They have traded in all of their other drives, desires, and emotions for the few negative feelings that now sustain them. The Norn Queen longs for the lost past, and seeks to Unmake reality, because she has grown so egocentric over the long march of millenia that she cannot imagine the world continuing without her. Ineluki, the Storm King, however, thirsts for vengeance. His life ended in sorrow, which is why he named his sword Jingizu (Sithi for "Sorrow"). Yet in death, he found no release, and, sustained by black sorcery and hatred, he perservered. Unlike the other undead monolithic evils of epic fantasy, the Storm King was sustained by mostly his own emotions--by hatred and the desire for vengeance. He wanted to inflict the same sorrow upon the humans that they had caused him.

The defeat of these epic beings does not necessarily involve the wielding of great talismans against them. Indeed, for most of the books, the characters have no idea how they will use the Three Swords that seem to be their only hope to defeating the Storm King. Nevertheless, the weapon that defeats Ineluki is forgiveness and sympathy. Simon tells Ineluki "I will not hate you." The most powerful talisman that can possibly be held against evil is the human heart.

This ties in with the final point I'd like to make. The role of Christianity in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Williams presents a start contrast to his contemporaries in epic fantasy again by placing the Church in a much more positive role than other epic fantasy. But he plays it subtly. The Aedonite Church is rife with corruption, just like the true historical church. However, it is a source of faith for many of the characters, and those characters who are the strongest in their faith place their faith in God--the Church is simply their vehicle, and not the object, of their affections. The "holy father" of the church is a man of great wisdom, faith, and justice. In many ways, the Aedonite Church represents the Catholic Church as it should have been, but unfortunately for history, wasn't.

The most telling scene is where Pryrates, King Elias' advisor and a powerful sorcerer, attacks the Lector (the analogue for the Pope). Father Dinivan stands between Pryrates and the Lector's rooms, armed only with his wooden tree (their version of the Crucifix). And the faith that Dinivan displays balks Pryrates--momentarily. Although Dinivan is defeated, he severely wounds Pryrates. Although the action between the Lector and Pryrates is not described, the sorcerer reports to King Elias that the lector was a very powerful man, while wincing as if remembering the wounds that he received--wounds that most certainly would not have been physical, but spiritual.

Magic, Spiritualism, and Faerie
I could continue to elucidate a variety of points that make Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn an incredibly unique tale. Williams takes a vast number of epic fantasy and chivalric romance tropes and imposes them upon a framework which warps them into a shape that is entirely new and challenging.

It is worth mentioning, however, a number of excellent adaptations that he's made in his books.

Magic and sorcery are magical and sorcerous again. Pryrates has much more in common with Tsotha-Lanti or Xaltotun from Robert E. Howard's stories than he does with Gandalf, Rastlin, or Allanon. Magic is incredibly subtle and unnatural. It twists the fabric of reality. When the Dwarrorws explain how the Words of Making work, they are emphatic that they are powerful and grave to use, because they force things to take shape that, by all intents and purposes, shouldn't be. Like reversing gravity, or cancelling it's effect whatsoever.

This ties in with the nature of the Sithi. They are, like the faeries from White Wolf's Changeling: the Dreaming, from another world, although it's spoken of as a geographical location. Williams' is purposely vague, because the reader is supposed to fill in the blanks. They could be from space, or they could be from a dreamlike realm beyond the wall of sleep. Their magic is songlike, a mixture of words and tones that creates and effect. It also makes their form of sorcery very liturgical and ritualistic, but not in the manner that most sorcery is imagined.

In addition, the battles between the Norns and the Sithi are the best description of a fight between faerie peoples that I have ever read. How the Sithi and Norn songs counter one-another, and how their hand-to-hand combat is dancelike and lethal, almost like snakes striking at one another, is incredible.

There are still more and more themes and threads that I could discuss about Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. The series is, perhaps, the best piece of epic fantasy that I've ever read. Like Frank Herbert's Dune, it seems like a straightforward struggle between Good and Evil, but also like Herbert's work, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn deals with themes and concepts that strike far beyond the boundries of the conventional epic fantasy. Williams challenges the pre-established notions of what an epic fantasy is by re-inventing almost all of its major characteristics. Nothing remains untouched. Nevertheless, when the book is finished, you've still experienced all of the things that make epic fantasy great.

I'd like to also note that Williams turns a lot of established cliches and tropes on their ears while preserving the mythopoeic feel that should permeate epic fantasy. He's done more than simply imitate Tolkien. He took the trappings of Tolkien, Chaucer, and Mallory and done something meaningful with them. In the end, he ties things up and closes the book. In the twenty years since Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn was concluded, Williams has not returned to Osten Ard. That story was told and finished. By allowing it to end, he has preserved the substance and meaning of his tale without diluting it with a never-ending cycle of publications.

In some ways, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn should provide a sort of model regarding how to write heroic epic fantasy without falling into the traps that Tom Simon elucidated. I find it quite telling that George R.R. Martin, though inspired by Tad Williams, does not imitate his style or substance, instead reaching for and developing his own in A Song of Ice and Fire. This is why Williams' contribution to fantasy is so important. While Eddings, Brooks, Jordan, and Goodkind were churning out epics that used Tolkien and his sources as a model to imitate, Williams took that model and not only told a story but sought to explore a variety of themes that speak to the human condition. Although he was largely overlooked by the mainstream fantasy-reading public, the authors that mattered noticed him and set about to break fantasy out of the cliche-ridden repetitiveness, meandering and pointless plotting, and vapid attempts at philosophy that had infected it.