[Come away, O human child...]
May. 18th, 2006 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaToday's my day for finding out about strange recent fantasy-book phenoms, it appears-- one an older kerfuffle regarding what's known as the "Venom Cock" book which was nominated for the Tiptree literary award by the same person who nominated the CSI/HP mpreg cross-over just recently. In any case, I think my day was made reading the excerpt from the 'Venom Cock', which starts,
"Right away, I noticed their erections. Truth, I’d been looking for them, as had Waisi and Kobo’s twins, Rutvia and Makvia. All four of us poked each other and tittered. Behind us, Mother yanked on Waisi’s and the twin’s braids with her strong potter’s hands. She even yanked on my own scabby bristle, causing instant tears. We paid heed. Unwise while in the presence of so much masculinity to mock the phallus."
Now, that's just classic. Absolutely classic. :D :D Dragon cock. Oh baby, this could've been hot. (And btw, if that's not writing worthy of mockery, I don't know what -is-, and neither do I want to know. BEGONE, YE HUMORLESS PEOPLES!!1 Ahem.)
Anyway, while browsing amazon.com for unrelated purposes, I came across a whole big hoopla for The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue, complete with several blurbs by the author, an autobiographical note, and an express section highlighting the top amazon.com reviewers' opinions on the book. Not the usual industry mags quotes, but specifically amazon.com people. Why?? I dunno, but I found it suspicious. And also annoying and wanky, but hey-- that's just me.
Given, I haven't read this book, but apparently, it is based around this haunting stanza in the poem by Yeats: "Come away, O human child!/ To the waters of the wild/ With a faery hand in hand,/ For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
The point seems to be that the book 'demystifies' the faery world by making hobgoblins into something like semi-immortal (but mostly human) bums, and thus, "by surrounding his fantasy with real-world, humdrum detail, he makes magic believable" according to one reviewer-- which is basically what really got to me.
Now, I actually love urban fantasy & magic realism for exactly this reason (ie, 'making magic real' by setting the fantastic side-by-side with the mundane), but there's something about the inherent implication of calling this a "fairy-tale for adults" that seems to imply that in and of themselves, old-style hobgoblins aren't "believable", and one somehow needs to reinvent them as changeling bums or whatever.
Mostly, I think the whole idea of explaining away magic is vastly different than just placing it in a modern or mundane setting. To me, there seems to be a tremendously important boundary between the merely allegorical (ie, the use of fantasy tropes or elements as metaphors for some sort of psychological or social writerly agenda of exploration), which is what JKR does with magic a lot of times, and the rationalistic, which takes 'meant for adults' and turns it into a curse.
And I've realized I've ranted against 'adulthood' in fantasy in one way or another quite enough on this journal, but I still believe to some degree you cannot-- simply CANNOT-- have a successful fully 'adult' fairy-tale (by my terms) if by 'adult' you mean 'rational' and not just mundane. If your agenda-- your theme or gig, whatever-- is too obvious, and more importantly if you don't have a sense of humor about it (as the writer of the 'Venom Cock' book didn't seem to), you really can't say you're writing a fairy-tale at all. You're writing something dry and flaky and useless, like a straightforward religious retelling of The Little Mermaid (already a rather Christian piece by a rather Christian author).
To me, writing good fantasy, whether urban or classic pastoral, requires an understanding of its heart of the kind that Yeats surely had-- and also all kinds of 'modernist' retellers like Lewis Carroll and Hans Christian Andersen and CS Lewis: its heart, which is wild and dark and ancient and forever young. And that's why all the cries about how myths and fairy-tales are 'dying' and becoming lost & irrelevant are totally off-base. The heart of folktale & magic by nature cannot be put in any box, explained with any riddle, or ever taken from within our own. In my experience, the best fantasy upholds this idea by the writing itself being able to 'breathe the air' of magic rather than just use its terms or wear its clothes.
See, that's what rationalist adults and/or fantasy writers don't get-- that fairy-tales aren't about hobgoblins or dragons in the first place. I mean, I love fairies and unicorns and dragons but even if you lost them all, Faery the place would remain, and why? Because. Faery is a way of seeing. It's merely more common in children, but anyone who can look at a forest glade and feel they're elsewhere is really there. That simple, and that difficult & slippery-- because a sense of awe, wonder and Mystery doesn't come easily to a lot of people, does it?
More than that, Faery is a way of being (crazy, they say...). And this doesn't mean that this requires 'being fey' or ethereal, or that you can't transplant a Faery native into the 'real world' or a normal person into Faery with interesting results-- but that's mostly because the boundary itself is porous and nothing is quite what it seems in any good fairy-tale. Things don't have to sparkle with silver, basically, and overall there are really no rules to Faery except that one: forget what you think you know.
...All things being equal, btw, the online sf/fantasy-writer blog community sort of scares me o_0 I sort of don't want to um... I dunno, just. It attracts me less than HP fandom, is all I've got to say. Perhaps because at least in fandom you always hear '...but we're just fangirls, so' whether or not it's practiced, whereas these people have actual cause for taking themselves too seriously, and it does not do good things. At all. (And okay fine, I'll admit it, I'm more comfortable without all the 30-something & older men... sorry.....)
"Right away, I noticed their erections. Truth, I’d been looking for them, as had Waisi and Kobo’s twins, Rutvia and Makvia. All four of us poked each other and tittered. Behind us, Mother yanked on Waisi’s and the twin’s braids with her strong potter’s hands. She even yanked on my own scabby bristle, causing instant tears. We paid heed. Unwise while in the presence of so much masculinity to mock the phallus."
Now, that's just classic. Absolutely classic. :D :D Dragon cock. Oh baby, this could've been hot. (And btw, if that's not writing worthy of mockery, I don't know what -is-, and neither do I want to know. BEGONE, YE HUMORLESS PEOPLES!!1 Ahem.)
Anyway, while browsing amazon.com for unrelated purposes, I came across a whole big hoopla for The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue, complete with several blurbs by the author, an autobiographical note, and an express section highlighting the top amazon.com reviewers' opinions on the book. Not the usual industry mags quotes, but specifically amazon.com people. Why?? I dunno, but I found it suspicious. And also annoying and wanky, but hey-- that's just me.
Given, I haven't read this book, but apparently, it is based around this haunting stanza in the poem by Yeats: "Come away, O human child!/ To the waters of the wild/ With a faery hand in hand,/ For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
The point seems to be that the book 'demystifies' the faery world by making hobgoblins into something like semi-immortal (but mostly human) bums, and thus, "by surrounding his fantasy with real-world, humdrum detail, he makes magic believable" according to one reviewer-- which is basically what really got to me.
Now, I actually love urban fantasy & magic realism for exactly this reason (ie, 'making magic real' by setting the fantastic side-by-side with the mundane), but there's something about the inherent implication of calling this a "fairy-tale for adults" that seems to imply that in and of themselves, old-style hobgoblins aren't "believable", and one somehow needs to reinvent them as changeling bums or whatever.
Mostly, I think the whole idea of explaining away magic is vastly different than just placing it in a modern or mundane setting. To me, there seems to be a tremendously important boundary between the merely allegorical (ie, the use of fantasy tropes or elements as metaphors for some sort of psychological or social writerly agenda of exploration), which is what JKR does with magic a lot of times, and the rationalistic, which takes 'meant for adults' and turns it into a curse.
And I've realized I've ranted against 'adulthood' in fantasy in one way or another quite enough on this journal, but I still believe to some degree you cannot-- simply CANNOT-- have a successful fully 'adult' fairy-tale (by my terms) if by 'adult' you mean 'rational' and not just mundane. If your agenda-- your theme or gig, whatever-- is too obvious, and more importantly if you don't have a sense of humor about it (as the writer of the 'Venom Cock' book didn't seem to), you really can't say you're writing a fairy-tale at all. You're writing something dry and flaky and useless, like a straightforward religious retelling of The Little Mermaid (already a rather Christian piece by a rather Christian author).
To me, writing good fantasy, whether urban or classic pastoral, requires an understanding of its heart of the kind that Yeats surely had-- and also all kinds of 'modernist' retellers like Lewis Carroll and Hans Christian Andersen and CS Lewis: its heart, which is wild and dark and ancient and forever young. And that's why all the cries about how myths and fairy-tales are 'dying' and becoming lost & irrelevant are totally off-base. The heart of folktale & magic by nature cannot be put in any box, explained with any riddle, or ever taken from within our own. In my experience, the best fantasy upholds this idea by the writing itself being able to 'breathe the air' of magic rather than just use its terms or wear its clothes.
See, that's what rationalist adults and/or fantasy writers don't get-- that fairy-tales aren't about hobgoblins or dragons in the first place. I mean, I love fairies and unicorns and dragons but even if you lost them all, Faery the place would remain, and why? Because. Faery is a way of seeing. It's merely more common in children, but anyone who can look at a forest glade and feel they're elsewhere is really there. That simple, and that difficult & slippery-- because a sense of awe, wonder and Mystery doesn't come easily to a lot of people, does it?
More than that, Faery is a way of being (crazy, they say...). And this doesn't mean that this requires 'being fey' or ethereal, or that you can't transplant a Faery native into the 'real world' or a normal person into Faery with interesting results-- but that's mostly because the boundary itself is porous and nothing is quite what it seems in any good fairy-tale. Things don't have to sparkle with silver, basically, and overall there are really no rules to Faery except that one: forget what you think you know.
...All things being equal, btw, the online sf/fantasy-writer blog community sort of scares me o_0 I sort of don't want to um... I dunno, just. It attracts me less than HP fandom, is all I've got to say. Perhaps because at least in fandom you always hear '...but we're just fangirls, so' whether or not it's practiced, whereas these people have actual cause for taking themselves too seriously, and it does not do good things. At all. (And okay fine, I'll admit it, I'm more comfortable without all the 30-something & older men... sorry.....)
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 08:29 pm (UTC)...I should've know the goblin content would attract :D :D
no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 09:40 pm (UTC)But srsly, modern novels that claim to make faery "believable" are missing the whole point. The idea of faery (or as you've put it wonderfully, the way of seeing that's faery) requires you to want to believe in something a little bit "elsewhere." I think it taps in to a deep human hunger for belief in something grander than us; often, it becomes a transcendent Other, which we seem to have been fantasizing about forever, since the first man looked at the stars and asked, "Why?"
Sometimes I agree with the Romanticists: children are sometimes closer to the "truth" of the world, (i.e. getting back to our Real Nature, etc) in that children immediately, without any prompting, make up magic. And we all did it as kids. I know very few people who did not play The Floor is Lava. Quick, jump on all the pillow cushions, don't touch the ground, IT HAS SUDDENLY AND INEXPLICABLY BECOME LAVA! Somewhere in China or Siberia there is a kid jumping around, destroying his mother's furniture, trying to reach the safety of the bed in the other room. The idea that adults have somehow lost their silliness or their capacity to embrace the unbelievable is ridiculous and seems like nothing more than post-bowdlerization bowdlerization. ;p
no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 09:56 pm (UTC)...though I never played the lava game :( I did think there were dragons under my bed, but they were good dragons that protected me from the Evil Scary Things Under The Bed, hehe. And I also had a treasure chamber with its entrance in the wall beneath my pillow, also under the bed. It was like, a castle-style treasure chamber. I dunno why I was so fixated on it. And oh, of course I constantly thought that weird shapes from furniture and clothes were about to move if it got even a little dark. And the moon was following me (I mean, it really looked like it was moving behind me), and just like Anne of Green Gables, I was friends with my reflection in the bookcase (who was a princess), things like that. Heheh okay that was all a ramble which doesn't really prove anything, but still :>
I really like tying it all in with the idea of the 'transcendent Other', because faery definitely taps into that with the 'who' rather than the 'where'. The thing that separates fairies & goblins from angels & straightforward religious connotation is probably their placement-- in that they're not someplace exalted and far-removed but rather sort of... a step away, sideways. Here and not here. In the shadows in the corner and in the old tree and everywhere there's quiet and moonlight. In that sense the Other becomes sort of like a Shadow Us more than angels/gods/etc also-- like, who we are by moonlight, who we forget we are, who we dream we are.
And I don't think it's necessary to be a Romantic to think children have access to some truths adults tend to forget-- if anything, because it's so obvious that adults really tend to forget most useful things, from how to think to how to dream to how to love, all of that. It's all the neuroses :>
no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 10:18 pm (UTC)How can you not have played the lava game? Or the floor is toxic ooze, or the floor is mud monsters, or some variation thereof? At least tell me you made forts out of the couch cushions. Or pretended your bed was a raft. Or dug really big holes in the yard, in hopes of reaching the dwarf city. That last one may have just been me.
I think faery serves as an interesting liaison from the ancient world to the modern. The ancient world was characterized by divine beings who lived side by side with humans. I mean, that's why the Greeks had such a highly developed form of hospitality (like in the legends of Herakles, when he shows up at his buddy's house and the guy's wife has died, but he doesn't tell ol' Herc because he's trying to be a good host) because Zeus might literally drop in for tea. And then along comes the Axial age with its monotheistic religions (specifically the Abrahamic religions) effectively saying: "God is not here anymore. I mean, he totally was, but then he settled down in his transcendental realm, which incidentally is the Ultimate Reality, and we're going to continue on in this way, demystifying the world, until Science and Logic rule and religion has no place! Lolz, pwned!" (I'm sure that's written out in aramaic somewhere. That's the next lost gospel we find. ;p)
But faery is this twisty little in-between bridge: they have their own world, but they live in ours, and where the two overlap is where all the fun bits happen. People still like to believe they're connected to magic, which is in a way, its own sort of religion. We like to believe, really. And like the Italian philosopher Vattimo says, "I believe that I believe." ;) I think, more than anything, it's the spirit of faery that I believe in, the way it has almost become synonymous in modernity with imagination or creativity; it's become a place to escape to that more and more adults admit to finding enjoyment in with a slightly sheepish smile. And they are, of course, OUR PEOPLE. ;D
no subject
Date: 2006-05-19 05:00 am (UTC)But I so agree with your point, of Fairy as a way of seeing. Actually, I've become irritated with many, many fantasy authors, because everything becomes so mechanistic. Just setting everything in a pseudo-medievel world, or having hobbits or dragons or elves or whatnot, or even for that matter having a door from our world that goes to some kind of fairyland-- none of those things will necessarily make a good fantasy, in my opinion. You've described how perfectly how that's not really what it's about!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-19 03:31 pm (UTC)And yeah, those books irritate me too-- actually, much of mainstream fantasy irritates me, with all the sequels and prequels and cookie-cutter modeling and D&D everywhere. Not surprisingly for basing magic on game theory, it -reads- like a game, with levels & skill-sets & preset character types. Well, I suspect people couldn't really harness the interplay of creativity & true magic enough to bust out enough bestsellers, probably...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-19 09:02 pm (UTC)I ♥ you.
They were looking at dragons' erections?! Little perverts! Especially if they're anything like donkeys ...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-20 12:27 am (UTC)♥. Um. But. I was actually wrong and those are men who got erections from -handling- dragons or... something.....ummmmmm.......
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Date: 2006-05-20 09:01 pm (UTC)OMG. Dragon = blow-up doll. That made me laugh waaaay too much.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-20 11:35 pm (UTC)DO NOT MOCK ZE DRAGON PHEROMONES!!1 *snerk*
no subject
Date: 2006-05-22 10:15 pm (UTC)I's not. Just their erections. [smirk]