[seeking the universal]
Apr. 5th, 2006 12:50 amHaving finally cracked under all the widespread raves about George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, I'm almost done reading the first book, and... I hate to say this, but it is well and truly just as good as everyone says it is. Like-- best fantasy series of the decade? Oh, easily. Some sort of 'masterpice' and seminal work and blahblahblah-- yeah. Which... just kind of makes me feel weird.
Generally, uber-bestselling books that are widely recommended fall into two categories, it appears: complete disappointments (maybe not so bad, really, but not worth all the hype by a long shot) and (rarely!) there comes the author who truly is that good. Good enough to appeal to a huge, wide-ranging audience without being... well... dumb. I mean, in my experience, the books that get famous & are well-beloved by masses of people tend to... uh... not be the most complex & difficult reading, so basically if a fantasy book is a famous bestseller, I'd avoid reading it like the plague (not that I like to struggle with a book, but I like some shred of complexity). In this case, it took 'A Game of Thrones' being $3.99 new for me to buy it on a whim while browsing at my Barnes & Noble; I really should've -known- because I'd loved the novella that preceded this all the way back when it was published, but like a fool I thought, 'I liked the girl in that story, but I don't wanna read about 10,000 court intrigues for 1,000 pages'.
Basically, I think it takes something more than your usual run-of-the-mill talent to write something both easily read and deeply complex. In a way, that is the truest mark of genius, at least in writing: making it look easy without it actually being easy.
The thing that strikes me the most about 'A Game of Thrones' is really just how smooth such a complex and wide-ranging tale could be. There's not the slightest jolt between all the povs, not the slightest feeling of unnecessary exposition or plotting delay, not the least bit wasted in an 807-page work. As a reader, personally, it's working uphill all the way for me to follow more than 3 people, and nearly every other book I recall had at least one character I'd rather not have spent time on, but Martin makes every character vital and gripping and flows from one to the other like they were just links in a single chain, integral parts of a single story.
Seriously, I remember being so impressed & intimidated by Flewelling's ensemble cast & world-building, but this knocks all that down flat, because it just seems so natural; there's never a moment for me to step back and watch it from the outside as 'the reader'. I'm constantly drawn into the story, constantly engaged. It's as if the writer is paying attention to me in a sort of... conversation, almost, and not letting my mind wander much. But it's not a cheap thriller at all; it's like... there's too much living going on. There's all this excitement and danger and intrigue, but the bottom line is always the individual characters & their lives. Always.
There's never any feeling of detail overload, even with tons of detail. Never the pointless reiteration of the character taking yet another bath (or thinking & looking forward to a bath, or casually referring to a bath, or lamenting the lack of a bath...), never a meal-taking that doesn't have some meaning, never a moment without some emotional weight and some irony attached. And then there's the humor, dark and fierce and amazingly effective, used as a characterization tool, same as the poetic bits and everything else. It's all part of making the characters seem human; rather than telling the reader 'this character told a joke and people laughed' (as many, many a drama writer thinks they can get away with), George RR Martin's characters actually... tell the jokes.
The thing that really struck me and made me wanna write a post is the idea of 'universality'; wondering if that's what I'm seeing: the mythic 'universal' storyteller at work. Wondering if that's how a truly brilliant and intelligent piece of work becomes a bestseller. But what does 'universality' even mean? Especially considering the idea that every work has the 'ideal' audience, the 'intended' audience, all that-- what is it that allows a work to be widely understood and appreciated on several different levels at once? It can't -just- be intelligence/talent, because many, many truly wonderful works are underappreciated and unpopular with the masses.
I keep asking myself, what is it? What part of this is the X Factor? The element that transcends boundaries and intelligence levels and readers' interests? Why would I, a reader who always looks for romance, magic, tight personal stories and style above content have such esteem for a story that so far has -no- real romance, -no- magic to speak of, and enough characters that I keep forgetting a quarter of their names.
It does have poetry, though, and truth, and emotional power; it has a way of seeing right through people and being honest about that. The book's greatest strength is really in the depth of its humanistic imagination. Thinking back, that's what the Old Dead White Male writers always had, right? An insight into humanity itself; and with that, I suppose the idea of 'universal' becomes self-evident.
Generally, uber-bestselling books that are widely recommended fall into two categories, it appears: complete disappointments (maybe not so bad, really, but not worth all the hype by a long shot) and (rarely!) there comes the author who truly is that good. Good enough to appeal to a huge, wide-ranging audience without being... well... dumb. I mean, in my experience, the books that get famous & are well-beloved by masses of people tend to... uh... not be the most complex & difficult reading, so basically if a fantasy book is a famous bestseller, I'd avoid reading it like the plague (not that I like to struggle with a book, but I like some shred of complexity). In this case, it took 'A Game of Thrones' being $3.99 new for me to buy it on a whim while browsing at my Barnes & Noble; I really should've -known- because I'd loved the novella that preceded this all the way back when it was published, but like a fool I thought, 'I liked the girl in that story, but I don't wanna read about 10,000 court intrigues for 1,000 pages'.
Basically, I think it takes something more than your usual run-of-the-mill talent to write something both easily read and deeply complex. In a way, that is the truest mark of genius, at least in writing: making it look easy without it actually being easy.
The thing that strikes me the most about 'A Game of Thrones' is really just how smooth such a complex and wide-ranging tale could be. There's not the slightest jolt between all the povs, not the slightest feeling of unnecessary exposition or plotting delay, not the least bit wasted in an 807-page work. As a reader, personally, it's working uphill all the way for me to follow more than 3 people, and nearly every other book I recall had at least one character I'd rather not have spent time on, but Martin makes every character vital and gripping and flows from one to the other like they were just links in a single chain, integral parts of a single story.
Seriously, I remember being so impressed & intimidated by Flewelling's ensemble cast & world-building, but this knocks all that down flat, because it just seems so natural; there's never a moment for me to step back and watch it from the outside as 'the reader'. I'm constantly drawn into the story, constantly engaged. It's as if the writer is paying attention to me in a sort of... conversation, almost, and not letting my mind wander much. But it's not a cheap thriller at all; it's like... there's too much living going on. There's all this excitement and danger and intrigue, but the bottom line is always the individual characters & their lives. Always.
There's never any feeling of detail overload, even with tons of detail. Never the pointless reiteration of the character taking yet another bath (or thinking & looking forward to a bath, or casually referring to a bath, or lamenting the lack of a bath...), never a meal-taking that doesn't have some meaning, never a moment without some emotional weight and some irony attached. And then there's the humor, dark and fierce and amazingly effective, used as a characterization tool, same as the poetic bits and everything else. It's all part of making the characters seem human; rather than telling the reader 'this character told a joke and people laughed' (as many, many a drama writer thinks they can get away with), George RR Martin's characters actually... tell the jokes.
The thing that really struck me and made me wanna write a post is the idea of 'universality'; wondering if that's what I'm seeing: the mythic 'universal' storyteller at work. Wondering if that's how a truly brilliant and intelligent piece of work becomes a bestseller. But what does 'universality' even mean? Especially considering the idea that every work has the 'ideal' audience, the 'intended' audience, all that-- what is it that allows a work to be widely understood and appreciated on several different levels at once? It can't -just- be intelligence/talent, because many, many truly wonderful works are underappreciated and unpopular with the masses.
I keep asking myself, what is it? What part of this is the X Factor? The element that transcends boundaries and intelligence levels and readers' interests? Why would I, a reader who always looks for romance, magic, tight personal stories and style above content have such esteem for a story that so far has -no- real romance, -no- magic to speak of, and enough characters that I keep forgetting a quarter of their names.
It does have poetry, though, and truth, and emotional power; it has a way of seeing right through people and being honest about that. The book's greatest strength is really in the depth of its humanistic imagination. Thinking back, that's what the Old Dead White Male writers always had, right? An insight into humanity itself; and with that, I suppose the idea of 'universal' becomes self-evident.
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