The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness

I was recently reading in a collection of letters from Jack Lewis (a present from my lovely wife), and I came across the following passage, which struck me:

"This week I have re-read Jane Eyre. It is quite prodigiously better than the other Bronte books...it is very worth reading. Part of the interest lies in seeing in the most (apparently) preposterous male characters how quite ordinary people look through the eyes of a shy, naive, inflexibly upright, intelligent little woman of the mouse-like governessy type.... Particularly delicious is her idea of conjugal bliss when she says on almost the last page 'We talk, I believe, all day.' Poor husband!" [C. S. Lewis, Books, Broadcasts and the War: 1931-1949, Volume II in The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis edited by Walter Hooper (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004), 291)

I thought it was a very fun quote--not in the least because it brought out a number of points about the book Jane Eyre which I myself had considered. It is always interesting to me to hear the opinions about many of my favourite authors on other authors, whether favourite or not. Jack's opinion on the works of Jane Austen, for example: "[Austen's] books have only 2 faults and both are damnable. They are too few & too short" (ibib, 967). I found both of these opinions very interesting, partially because I was perusing this volume of letters more or less at random, and came across these fascinating references to a couple of books near and dear to the hearts of a number of my female friends (my own dear wife, not the least).

This is not, however, the purpose of this post, but serves only as a convenient segue into a discussion, which is one of my wife's prime criteria for judging a book, namely the voice of an author. For those unfamiliar with the concept, by voice I refer to the way an author puts his words on the page. I tend to have a fairly dry, academic voice, even in my fictional writing (which is why I tend to write what I call fictional non-fiction--a lot of discussion on the politics and religion of Henryon [the name of my fantasy world], but very little actual plot). This is appropriate because I am a dry, academic person. A strong voice can help drive a book forward, elevating it from a mere plot-based book to something more. After all, plot is the easiest part of writing. Look at Shakespeare, for example. His plots are, in general, nothing much, as others have observed before me. It is what he does with them that is the real joy, changing them from fun stories full of sex and violence to part of our English cultural heritage. It is not for nothing we fight to defend "The Language of Shakespeare."

Indeed, for my wife, if an author can vary how his characters speak, that author has already put hooks into her. One of the things she loves about her new favourite author, Brandon Sanderson, is in his voice. She did not like Weiss and Hickman's Rose of the Prophet for much the same reason. Sometimes this may be found in a good first line: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" or "All children grow up, except one" to name a couple of my favourites. These are good because they set the tone for the entire rest of the book. Actually, The Hobbit is a good example of an author's ability to change his voice (you didn't think that I could write a post on any topic without a reference to Tolkien did you? "The disciple does not stand except in the shadow of the Master"), when taken in connection with The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Here you have three books, written by the same author and set in the same fantastic world. Yet they are very different in tone and voice. Of the three, I far prefer The Lord of the Rings, because I believe it represents the best middle ground between The Hobbit's conversational style, and the mythic sweep of The Silmarillion (not that I have anything wrong with epic or myth, but I read novels for different reasons than I read myths). Other differ, but that illustrates my point about voice.

Whether or not Miss Bronte was using her writing skills in order to present us a picture of "a shy, naive, inflexibly upright, intelligent little woman of the mouse-likegovernessy type" or, as I tend to think, was projecting a little bit of her psyche into the text is unimportant. Part of the enjoyment of the book is seeing the world through another's eyes and getting another perspective on the universe.

Closely related to this is the idea of an Unreliable Narrator. Now, since many of my readers are careful students of Literature in their various languages of choice, I must admit that I suspect they know better than I the implications of this particular device (I am, after all, a Biblicist, so the application of idea to my field has fascinating theological ramifications, most of which I am unprepared to deal with). I only bring it up, because I first encountered it in a series of books penned by the late, great Roger Zelazny, The Chronicles of Amber. Now, Zelazny wrote faster than he thought, and so his books are full of internal inconsistencies. However, Zelazny turned this into a virtue. In The Chronicles of Amber the narrator and protaganist, one Corwin by name, begins the book with amnesia. As the book progresses he begins to remember things, but sometimes he gets them wrong. As an example, he has a number of brothers and half-brothers and at one point he messes up whose mother belonged to whom. This is, I know, somewhat common place, but it came like a hammer blow to my young teenage self. If Corwin got this wrong, what else is he getting wrong? Then, in another place, Corwin lies to the reader, a lie that only comes out later. Again, a hammer blow. If you couldn't trust Corwin, who was your window into the world, who could you trust? All of these thoughts were confirmed by the second series in the Chronicles, written from the perspective of Corwin's son Merlin, who had a very different take on the events in the first books. These books helped to remember to always examine my own assumptions when reading any book, so whenever my wife starts talking about voice (and she invariably does), Zelazny is the light I hold up to the world.

How about you? Any authors you love to read merely because of how they write? Any books that shook your assumptions about reading? Any other examples of changes in voice showing an author's ability to vary his tone and style? Natually, because I am most interested in fantasy on this 'blog, I would be delighted to hear about those, but this post is much more about reading in general than any specific genre, so please, tell me your opinions of voice, without regard to genre.

Excelsior!

A Shout Out for Science Fiction

So, this 'blog is primarily dedicated to the discussion of all things fantastic. I prefer it that way, for I dearly love fantasy, and as I discussed in the last post, I dearly love the myth that fantasy drew from. However, I felt a need to write a brief comment on fantasy's cousin science fiction.

I say cousin, but they aren't really cousins, although they are often lumped together. Part of this, I believe, comes, perhaps on the speculative nature of them both. Some of this comes from a sort of blurring of the lines in movies such as Star Wars, which has blasters and starships, but is in all its particulars, except for set dressing, a fantasy film. Space fantasy to be sure, but fantasy. Even more thorny are shows such as Star Trek, which is more scientific than Star Wars, but which is still, in terms of real science, not very scientific. This is all to say, that just as fantasy runs the entire gamut from high to low, swords and sorcery to epic, so there is also a spectrum for science fiction, based primarily on the grounding of its speculations in actual science. At the far end of the spectrum, closest to fantasy are films and books such as Star Wars. At the opposite end is the hard science fiction, preferred by thos great science fiction authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.

I enjoy the whole spectrum, unlike, my wife, for example, who prefers fantasy almost to the exclusion of science fiction. Some of my favourite books have been science fiction, especially books by Clarke and Heinlein. My wife is not alone, however. Fantasy, especially juvenile fantasy, is very trendy right, likely in the light of the successes of books series such as Harry Potter. It is interesting to me that one may read Harry Potter and his companions, good and bad, and still not have to worry about losing your high school status as a "cool kid" (this is a gentle ribbing to all those "Mormon Mommy 'Bloggers" who loved Twilight, but would be horrified to hear it described as fantasy), but Asimov and Heinlein are still the domain of the geek.

So, I have certain geek tendencies, although social awkwardness is not really one of them, my wife would hasten to add. Regardless, science is an important part of our world-view, and I personally think that science needs science fiction. After all, every religion needs its myths.... In all seriousness, I suppose the primary purpose of this post was to encourage my readers who love fantasy (and if you don't, you are unlikely to read me more than once)to branch out a little bit and try some science fiction. I'd start with something accesible, like Clarke's brilliant 2001: A Space Odyssey or if you like a little bit of philosophy with your reading, Heinlein's Starship Troopers walks an excellent line between a discussion of the rights of citizenship and a rollicking adventure yarn. To my readers who already read science fiction, let's read some more.

Excelsior (ad Astrum.)

Lies, Breathed Through Silver

The myth is vital to consider in reference to fantasy fiction. As this 'blog has discussed previously, fantasy and science fiction have elements of "folk scripture," using the term from Brother Nibley. A large part of this derives from the longing for home talked of in a previous post. However, it is not only fantasy that has this longing for home. In fact, fantasy inherited many of its magic and wonder from an older and deeper source. I speak, as you may have guessed, of mythology.

It has been observed that what Professor Tolkien was doing with The Lord of the Rings and particularly with The Silmarillion was writing new mythology, crafting an English myth cycle, similar to those found in other cultures. Certainly, the charge seems to stick when looking at The Silmarillion (The Lord of the Rings seems to me to be another beast entirely--mostly because of the hobbits. Aragorn certainly belongs in a saga or myth, but Frodo and Sam seem out of place. This is, of course, the idea and is part of the genius behind the books). Even if Tolkien did not set out to create a new mythology, he was certainly well-versed in the legendary and literary tradition which he was pulling from (including names--Gandalf's comes from the Poetic Edda, a Norse cycle of myths). Likewise Jack Lewis pulled extensively from his own classical training in all of his fiction, from The Chronicles of Narnia up to Perelandra (Till We Have Faces is actually a retelling of a Greek myth. It isn't really a fantasy book, and so in some ways stands outside of this discussion. However, it deserves mentioning here, because it illustrates Jack's familiarity with the classical myths, as well as his willingness to use them in other contexts). Thus, Bacchus and Silenus and the Maenads accompany Aslan in Prince Caspian.

Fantasy has always drawn from mythology, but in many ways fantasy is like mythology's little brother. I was pondering about mythology the other day, because I have been tapped to possibly teach a course in Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythology. This excited me, of course, and I was thinking about how to approach mythology. One of the key points I came to was to remember that the ancients believed this stuff--more or less. It is interesting to us to tell stories about the battles between Horus and Set or the tale of Marduk overthrowing Gilgamesh or the divine infighting prolonging the Trojan War, but to us they are just stories. To those hearing these stories originally (for they would have all had an oral component, to be sure), these tales were on some level believed and treasured. It is difficult for us as moderns to know how much they believed them. We know that the Greeks had a long-standing tradition of allegoricizing their myths and their gods (a tradition which Christianity unfortunately inherited)--but we may never know whether or not the ancient Egyptians really believed that the sun was Amon-Re. There seems to have been some level of actual belief, or at least a willingness to spend massive amounts of time and resources to prepare for an afterlife.

So, at least one of the reasons that myths are so powerful is because of the belief of the cultures that produced as opposed to fantasy. Another, closely related reason is that these myths are deeper and more powerful than an individual may produce. An imagination, no matter how fertile, is not equal to the combined sub-conscious of an entire culture. Also, as many anthropological reader from James Frazer on have observed myths tend to visit and revisit the same themes the world over. In part this is because the human experience is at least, on certain levels, universal. However, from a more explicitly religious perspective, Jack Lewis suggested that these myths were planted by the Divine in order to point men toward their final home and destination--bringing us back full circle to the inherent longing for home which is such a part of the appeal of fantasy, as has been previously addressed. Myths represent some of mankind's strongest struggles to the divine, and so have a deep and compelling richness.

I love to read fantasy, but when reading fantasy, I like to look for those universals which underpin all stories--those myths undergirding reality, the true pillars of creation on beyond sight and mind.

I will leave you with a quotation (first learned from Jack Lewis) which taught me much of the meaning in myths:

I ween that I hung | on the windy tree,
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, | and offered I was
To Othin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none | may ever know
What root beneath it runs.

The Prose Edda, Hovamal, (Bellows translation)

Your Title Here

I apologize for not writing a column last week. I had family visiting, and that took up most, if not all of my free time. It was a good visit though.

This week we are going to be a little more idiosyncratic and less theoretical than we have previously. I mentioned in my prologemena that I would be talking about my own efforts as a fabulist, in addition to those of the Masters. I understand that the appeal of this is less than it might otherwise be, but there you go. I never promised insightful theoretical posts every week.

I love titles (as in noble titles, not as in what one calls an opus). Always have. Because of this I often make up grandiose titles for myself and for others. For example:

His Imperial Majesty, Avram Richard Shannon, Lord of the Whole Earth, Emperor of the French and Attendant Territories, Great Khan of the Golden Khaganate, Protector of the Oceans, and Commander in Cheif of the Grand Army.

For that one, I borrowed a bit from a Bonaparte, but again, the point was to sound grand and important. I know this a little bit silly of me, but I never claimed not be a silly man. The upshot of this is that for my own fantasy world, Henryon, the various titles are important. Often, I will make up a characters titles before I make up the character. In many cases a story element will come out of a specific title I choose. Sometimes, I make up a title for my friends or family, which are then attached to characters (this is a throwback to the days when Henryon had a Wizard of Oz-esque vibe to it, with all my friends being people in the world. This has long since been abandoned, with habit of giving my friends Henryon titles the last remnant). These characters help to flesh out Henryon. A few examples:

His Grace, Avram Richard Shannon, Grand Duke of Henryon, Bearer of the Silver Sword, Knight Associate of the Silver Sword, Legionary, with Crossed Swords, Knight Grand Morning Star after of Order of Sir Francis, Magus Latae

Now, that is the first Henryon title I ever made, and it has survived, largely unchanged for about fifteen years now. Many of the important elements in Henryon, such as the Knights of Sir Francis and Silver Sword derive from this particular bit of youthful silliness.

A couple of other titles:

His Grace, Soren Shim (Samuel Tomas Shannon), Baron of the Eleven Islands, Chief Emissary to the Court of Peculiarities, Knight of the Silver Sword, Master of Stars after the Order of Sir Francis, Magus Decreptos

Her Highness, Kirana Alorya (Thora Florence Shannon), The Golden Lily of the Valley, First Aloryan, Princess of Galleo, Lady of the Thousand Hills, Dame of the Silver Sword, Dame Commander of the Golden Lion, Magister Sylphi

I want to emphasize that although these titles are given to some of my closest friends and family, the characters that bear them in Henryon are only loosely based on their bearers in the real world. I only inclued their names afterwards as an indication of who they were initially conferred upon.

So, when you are being fabulist, how is your imagination sparked? Also, if you don't have a Henryon title, and would like one, let me know, and I'll see if I can't work something up for you.

If this post was not general enough, then be sure to tune in next week, where we will talk about Mythology. Until then:

Excelsior!

A Long Time Ago...

Today's 'blog post is dedicated to a specific fantasy world. Every so often on this 'blog I will pick a specific fantasy/science fiction world or series and discuss why I like it, perhaps mention parts I dislike about it, and generally explore a little why I dig certain types of fantasy.

Today's is an easy one, because today we are discussing George Lucas' magnum opus Star Wars. I love Star Wars, which isn't too big of a statement because most people like Star Wars. The fact remains that the Star Wars Trilogy contains three of my favourite movies (I like the other three--well two out of the other three--as well, but they simply aren't as good as Star Wars to Jedi). I love the ethics, I love the action, I love the music. There is very little about Star Wars that isn't to like. Like my dear brother, I always wanted to be a Jedi Knight, although not with his deep abiding passion. The other day I was watching this DVD which came with my soundtrack to Episode III. It had little vignettes from all six movies, and reminded how much I like Star Wars.

I have even come to grips with the Prequel Trilogy. Although it is not as good as the original three, it has parts worth watching. In fact I am doing my best to no longer refer to the Prequels as the 'Lame Trilogy,' because it really isn't fair. There are good parts in all the movie, including Attack of the Clones (which remains, in my opinion, by and far the weakest of the Star Wars movies). For example:

The Phantom Menace: Last week I mentioned that The Return of the King movie was in second place for most movies seen in the theatre. This movie is the top of the list. I saw this movie seven times in the theatre. For me, I think, the high point is Qui-Gon Jinn. One thing that all three of these new movies show is the wide variety of heroism encouraged by the Jedi Order, with Qui-Gonn being a very different sort of Jedi than anything we had ever seen before. I know that many people consider it the worst, but in my mind Liam Neeson's performance carried this movie. This movie may feel superficial in places, but it remains rollicking good fun. Also this movie has just about the best trailer ever.

Attack of the Clones: I have seen this movie about three times. I don't much care for it. I appreciate Ewan MacGregor's further development of the character of Obi-Wan (a development cemented in Revenge of the Sith, and which, coupled with the wonder that is Sir Alec Guiness, catapulted Obi-Wan Kennobi to the position of near my favourite character). In a scene put in the DVD Anakin Skywalker admits that as a Jedi he ought to be better than he is (a scene which is actual crucial to his fall to the Dark Side of the Force. Anakin didn't fall because he killed the Sand People or Count Dooku. Anakin fell because he chose the dark path. An important lesson in that, perhaps).

Revenge of the Sith: A good movie. Emotionally intense in places. I stood in line, in costume to watch this one on opening day. My wife and I had our picture in the paper and everything. In fact the article is enshrined for all time by the Bridal Association of America. I liked this movie, and not just because of happy memories, partially because it actually showed Anakin and Obi-Wan as friends. In fact, while I do not enjoy it as much as the Original trilogy, almost all of my memories of this movie are positive.

My favourite of the films is Star Wars (I know it has the subtitle A New Hope, and I even like the subtitle, but I've been calling it Star Wars most of my life). I love the duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. The dialogue was always so full of portent and hints of past relationships. In many ways that is why I was so dissappointed in the Prequel trilogies--I felt like some of those portents weren't played out as much as I would have liked. And I really like Luke Skywalker.

I love the Rogue Squadron bits on Hoth. It is one of the neatest bits in Empire. Frankly, I love the fighter scenes in general. I have never had any desire to be a pilot of any kind, unlike my bretheren, but watching Star Wars makes me want to pretend to be one. That and Top Gun.

One of the things I like most about Star Wars is that it still contains bits on the longing for home which I discussed previously. Now, I am not, in this, as in anything, one of those people who makes long tortured connections between the Gospel and their book/movie of choice. However, one of the ideas behind this 'blog is that we can learn things through the glass fantastic. In particular I have been thinking about the quote from Yoda, "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

Luminous beings, indeed.

Dedicated To Faramir

So, there has been an enormous upswing recently in fantasy movies--especially movies adapted from books. From old favourites to books barely cooling from coming off the printing press, science fiction and fantasy films are big big business nowadays, for good and for ill. This week's post is an attempt to discuss fantasy films a little bit, as well as to establish some of my feelings about fantasy films in general, especially how they relate to fantasy books (as always a little bit of science fiction may slop over into the discussion, since the two genres are so closely related). Actually, this topic is very germane to last week's topic, and the one flows from the other. Especially, because as my Master (for those who are unaware, the being known as Inkling in theInterwebs is the same man who instructed me in the Jedi Arts--go read his 'blog on Star Wars and related points) pointed out, imagination does seem a little bit on the downward spiral and some of this is very likely ascribable to the ready availability of entertainment options (such as movies and video games) to feel our needs. In fact I read an article once by a game designer who felt that Christopher Tolkien's famous animosity towards movies based on his father's work--and you can too right here (the language is a little blue in a couple of places, but nothing too drastic). This author worked on The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game for Decipher, Inc., and so had a chance to interact with with the Tolkien Estate. His observations are insightful and made me appreciate Christopher Tolkien a little bit more.

Essentially, Christopher prefers people to experience his father's world through the interaction of the words Professor Tolkien wrote and our imagination, and not through the fixed medium of the cinema. Sir IanMcKellan might play a fine Gandalf (and I think he does), but that is not necessarily the point. Gandalf in the book is a mutable character, experienced differently by every reader. One does not have nearly the same flexibility when dealing with the film version of the character, even with some kind of viewer response mechanism. He can only appear one way, for example.

I do not wish you to think that I am one of those people who always believes that movies made from books are always inferior to their source material. Although I am sure that I have leanings in that direction I try to judge each movie on its own merits. I thoroughly enjoy the Lord of the Rings movies (Return of the King is in second place for movies which I've seen the most often in theatres at 5 times). I recently saw The Spiderwick Chronicles and enjoyed it as well.

I suppose that my real difficulty comes from the fact there are actually two (at least) operative principles to be dealt when adapting a book to film. One is the inherent differences between the two media. There are different tools, et cetera, to be used in print and on film. The plot is moved forward by different mechanisms. Anyone setting out to adapt a book as a film has to make allowances for that and modify the source material accordingly. The other issue is that there are more people involved in making a movie than in a book. In a book there is usually an author or two, an editor, and a publisher, with the author having almost all of the say of what goes into the book. A film is a much more collaborative effort, as even a cursory examination of the credits at the end goes to show. With so much input from so many sources, it is in fact, a small wonder that so many accurate adaptations get made. Even those, however, suffer from the difficulty mentioned above, wherein the film becomes somehow fixed.

Actually, the most frustrating adaptations, to me at least, are those where somewhere in the film-making process the film-makers decide that they need to improve the story. Some changes I can understand. For example, although I was saddened by the removal of Tom Bombadil from the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring, but I understood it. Streamlining is one of those things that movies need to do when adapting books. Other changes are less forgivable. I do not enjoy the Harry Potter movies, for example, because in an effort to ensure that all of the important plot points make it onto the screen all of the whimsy and the jokes were cut, which is a pity, since I like the whimsical parts the best.

Even more unforgivable is when a director imposes their own vision over and above that of the author's. The most egregious example I can think at the moment is Hiyao Miyazaki's abominable adaptation of Diana Wynne-Jones's Howl's Moving Castle. I loved this book as a child. I had enjoyed a number of Miyazaki's other films, such as Princess Monoke and Spirited Away, and so was pretty interested in seeing the adaptation. I was not too put off by the fact that it was to be a cartoon--since one of my favourite film adaptations of a fantasy book is a cartoon (The Last Unicorn)--actually because of the technology, for a long time the cartoons could be more fantastic than the live action ones; lower fantasy, such as Willow, seemed to work best for fantasy movies. Anyway, back to my narrative, when I discovered that this film was playing at Brigham Young University's International Cinema, I was very excited. I was sorely disappointed. The second half of the movie is unrecognizable from the book, lost in Miyazaki's heavy-handed anti-war message. Now, there is not anything inherently wrong with a director having a message to put forward. It's part of their right as artists. What bothered me was the imposing of the message on the book. It did not sit well with me.

Ultimately, I agree with Christopher Tolkien. I'd rather read The Lord of the Rings than watch it. I still enjoy watching movies, and the occasional fantasy movies, but the closer they are to my heart the harder they are to swallow. I enjoyed The Spiderwick Chronicles, but I have not been around to reading them yet. I have not enjoyed the new Narnia movies, because I think they meddle too much with things best left alone (also they don't feel particularly Narnian—more like someone saw that The Lord of the Rings movies made a lot of money, and said, hey, didn't they know each other. Let's cash in on this one). Narnia is very near and dear to my heart though.

So, are there any fantasy movies you love? How about those you think are horrible, either on their own merits or as travesties of a well-loved book? Let me know what you think, and I'll see you in seven.

Excelsior!

I Take a Pencil in My Hand...

The other day I was having a conversation with my wife, mother and sister about the demise of imagination and imaginative play--how many children, perhaps because of television and video games, no longer pretend they are anything but themselves, not even to play house. A sad, sad thing. Of course, our lament, like most laments, is premature, but my sister had concrete evidence. She babysits for a family who apparently do not know how to play pretend. Now there may be those who consider this to be an unnecessary skill, and they may be right, but here at Essays in Enchantment we consider playing pretend to be very important. It was one of the chief joys of my childhood, and one which I have not given up. In fact I was going to write a long 'blog post about playing, and how the old enjoyment I got out of playing pretend was carried directly over into role-playing and writing, and that I would write more fantasy fiction, but I'm a better role-player than a writer, but lo, and behold, my brother has already written it. There is a quote from Legend of the Five Rings, a role-playing of Japanese fantasy, which says: "We tell ourselves the stories of heroes to remind ourselves that we too can be heroes." And so it is. Of course, I don't limit myself to role-playing. Just yesterday I was mopping the floor at work at I started singing sea chanties to myself to pass the time while I swabbed the deck on the British Naval vessel I was serving on. Have any of you ever read "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber. Yeah, that is me (although I am quick to point out that there is no similarity whatsoever between Walter Mitty's wife and my own wonderful eternal companion). I have always felt, perhaps incorrectly, that my life was improved by flights of fancy, since such flights helped encourage me in the rest of my life (perhaps unlike Walter Mitty).

Let's be heroes, then! Why should we let the banality of our mundane lives get us down. There is a world of good out there for us to be doing, let's go do it. We should us our imagination to remind ourselves of what it means to be a hero, and then do true heroic actions, such as do good to our neighbours and live according to the pattern set down for us.

Next time, we discuss fantasy movies, derived from fantasy books--advantages and disadvantages. Until then,

Excelsior!