C.S. Lewis's Great Deity: Aslan

 

Righteous, purely good characters in fiction often come across as...eh. Their goodness becomes a mark of insipidity.  

In general, fantasy does better here--Gandalf is preferable to the numerous gurus that populate contemporary fiction. Even Cadfael--a fantastic character--gets a little too above-it-all in the film version (despite the notable actor). 

With Galadriel and the other near-Saints of Middle Earth, Tolkien manages to emphasize that their leadership roles do not make them perfect. A reader of The Lord of the Rings meets Gandalf and Galadriel after long lives in which they made plenty of mistakes. Galadriel rejects the ring but might not have always rejected it. Gandalf recoils from Frodo's offer of the ring--he knows what terrible (justified) things he would do with it. In addition, he reiterates multiple times that he isn't sure what path to take with Frodo. Most importantly, he doesn't see Saruman's betrayal coming. Meanwhile, Aragorn, the high king, is torn between his duty to Frodo and his duty to Gondor throughout the first book. 

However, all these good characters pale in comparison to Aslan. 

I think one reason Aslan is so wonderful is that he is a lion. Lewis uses his lion nature to emphasize certain traits:

1. Aslan is not a "tamed" lion. He can be fierce and demanding.

2. Aslan likes a romp. His playful chase with Susan and Lucy after his restoration/resurrection in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is one of the most delightful in literature.

3. Aslan has a sense of whimsy. He teases Trumpkin. He turns the posturing Rabadash into an ass.

4. Aslan is kind. He shows respect to Reepicheep and takes his sense of honor seriously. He is gentle with Puzzle. 

5. Aslan can be sad. 

I'm currently reading a great deal about early Christian theology, specifically the controversies over whether Christ was created by God or co-eternal with God and frankly, it's kind of wearisome, mostly because it seems to rest on an insistence that Christ couldn't possibly really suffer, not if he was God--except if he wasn't God, he couldn't save. Round and round and round. (And from my view, entirely unnecessary: God can suffer and save; it's not that complicated a conclusion.)

I appreciate that Lewis allows Aslan to mourn the choice he has made to save Edmund--mourn, not regret. He allows Susan and Lucy to walk with him because they bring him comfort. 

Lewis is creating myth, not theology. He doesn't have to explain Aslan. He just has to let Aslan be.

And Aslan is a great GOOD character, in large part because he is approachable. His sternness doesn't negate his fundamentally warm nature. His warm nature doesn't negate his strength and authority. 

As with Edmund, Lewis pulls off this feat by not calling attention to his writing choices. Lots and lots of show. 

Alice in Wonderland: Tenniel's Timeless Achievement

The fascinating aspect of Alice to me is that I think of her, almost entirely, as Tenniel's illustration.

Before I continue--

My mother read to me growing up. Impressively enough, she never had any trouble understanding that I could draw and do other stuff while listening to her read. She read me everything, from Tolkien to Frances Hodgson Burnett. 

She did not enjoy reading Dr. Seuss to me, however, or the Alice in Wonderland books. The reason weren't political. It was about taste.

My dad read me Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. One year, we performed the Father Williams' poem at a church pageant. Another, we performed the Knight's poem.

I enjoyed having my dad read to me, but I must confess, my tastes are in closer alignment to my mom's. I have rarely reread the first Alice book. 

I have reread the second a few times. The first seems...well, nuts, I guess. A true dream with people getting smaller, then taller, and cats disappearing, and everybody being kinda rude.

Through the Looking Glass seems mellower to me, kinder, gentler. The characters seem less obnoxious. 

And yet, in both, the main character, Alice remains...every-girl, I guess. I don't remember her as anything much, except she is straight-forward in her conversations. 

But those images! 

Sometimes the illustration is what everyone remembers.

 

Movie Versus Book Character: Tarzan as Entrancing Feral Boy

Tarzan is a good example of how the movie version may be more appealing than the book version.

Frankly, I consider Tarzan of the book something of a disappointment. He fits the genre and the time period but still--

He is brought up by apes, yes, and he retains some of those superhuman-animal qualities. But when he is discovered, his lordly, aristocratic nature shines through, especially once he dons his Western clothing. By the end of the book, he strikes me as a kind of James Bond character with a somewhat unusual past. 

However kitschy, George from the Jungle is closer to what I hoped to get with Tarzan: a guy who is more at home in the jungle than on city streets and who will interpret those city streets in terms of his extant knowledge. 

Burroughs and Jay Ward and Bill Scott are both right and wrong. (1) People do adjust quite rapidly to new cultural surroundings; (2) feral children do not.

That is, most feral children who are supposedly raised by wild animals or (more likely) locked up/neglected to the point of having almost no physical contact with other humans, have little capacity for speech, little capacity for touch, little capacity for bonding. 

Interestingly enough, if the feral state comes AFTER the age of four to five, the child may recover to the point of being able to live successfully among humans.

In sum, unless Tarzan's parents died when he was about three (at least), he would have little to no chance of interacting with any human with any degree of success--much less behaving like a master-of-the-universe. Even if they died later, when he was, say, closer to seven, he would have difficulty readjusting to human society.

Consequently, I consider Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan to be a decent compromise. As John Taliaferro points out in his biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs, "Americans...viewed Johnny Weissmuller as the least inhibited man alive...Weissmuller...was clean-limbed in every sense. He gave the impression that he could have sold Bibles door to door wearing nothing but a G-string. Like Adam himself, he was naturally ideal and ideally natural. There was no hint of either embarrassment or braggadocio in his comportment." 

That is, Weissmuller plays Tarzan as the ultimate innocent--hot but, you know, not aware of it. Unlike George of the Jungle, who winks at the camera, Weissmuller's Tarzan seems honestly perplexed by how upset people get about things that are not that upsetting. 

He prefers nature. He doesn't command anyone. He is sweet-natured and impressively competent. He stays mostly unclothed.

That is, I think the Weissmuller movies capture what it is we viewers truly want. We don't want the aristocrat. We want the feral boy--only not a feral boy we have to feel bad about. 

Books to Movies: The Battle of the Five Armies, Boring War Bits, and How to Make a Scene Memorable

"The Gathering of the Clouds"

The politics of Thorin being unwilling to open up his property to suddenly needy neighbors is very intelligent. Does he owe Bard? Yes. Does he owe the Elvenking? Not really but Bilbo is right that there is plenty to go around. Is he afraid of exposing himself up to scavengers when his own position is still insecure? Yes. 

 

Thorin has legitimate fears though his obsession and refusal to negotiate (Bard is being entirely rational) doesn't help matters. It's very smart writing, and Jackson--using Tolkien's material almost directly--prepares us for Thorin's intransigence. He also gives Thorin relatively powerful arguments--"Why should we barter our birthright?"--while still underscoring Thorin's mistakes. Richard Armitage as Thorin and Luke Evans as Bard are two of the strongest characters in the two trilogies, and their exchange at the gate of Erebor is impressive.

 

The book does use more lore and mythic tropes in this section, such as talking birds. Jackson was wise not to. Again, set-up equals pay-off. Once you've got one talking bird...

 

Even Jackson's eagles don't talk, which I've always rather liked: they are forces of nature, not partners.

 

"The Clouds Burst"

 

is the war chapter. One chapter! In the movie, it is nearly 40 minutes long. I don't see the point. 

 

I've said it before, I'll say it again: the bomb in Die Hard is seriously still the best action sequence in all action movies.

 

One major difference between the book and movie--other than the length of the battle sequences--is that Bilbo in the book observes but doesn't participate. In the movie, he gets to the top of Ravenhill to warn Thorin and is present when Thorin is killed (as well as Kili and Fili). It's actual a decent pay-off for Bilbo having the ring, so I approve, even if the war sequence is way too long. 

Granted, the final scene and lines between Thorin and Bilbo are fantastic and memorable in both book and movie. 

I will maintain, however, that they would be more memorable if the battle sequences didn't go on QUITE so long and if so many deaths weren't already piling up. Thorin and Bilbo by this point are competing with Fili and Kili's deaths. 

 

In the book, those deaths are mentioned, but herein lies the conundrum of film. In the book, the brothers die and we feel sad but in a distant sort of way. In the movie, we have learned to care about Kili and Fili for themselves (and needed to). Subsequently, their deaths in the movie might have overshadowed Thorin's if not for the impressive acting of the leads.

 

It's the same problem as Bilbo leaving the Mountain. Has the scene been given enough weight? Too much? 

 

The battle sequences in Five Armies fail because everything has weight. Every scene feels like something in a video game. This, then this, then this, then this. There's so many "astonishing" moments when really, there should be three: 

• Thorin emerging with his group from the Mountain
• The eagles
• Thorin's death.

Eliminating all the extra-special astonishing moments helps the one or two important astonishing moments shine!

 

In fairness, I find war sequences boring in general. I prefer war movies like The Guns of Navarone that are about getting to the objective. The first half of the Five Armies movie is quite good and captivating. From that point on, I start to do things like clean my nails and feed my cats. However, since I don't find war sequences-or the game of Risk--that engaging, it isn't entirely fair for me to assess them.

 

 

Books to Movies: The Arkenstone & Getting Characters from Point A to Point B

The Arkenstone

 

Smaug: "I am almost tempted to let you 

take it." Bilbo remembers Smaug's words.

In "Not At Home," Bilbo finds the Arkenstone. It is an interesting example of how books and movies differ. The book can mention the Arkenstone relatively late--it comes up in the Lonely Mountain chapters--but Jackson was absolutely right to start mentioning the Arkenstone far earlier. In the book, it is simply a treasure Thorin values and connects to the Mountain. In the movie, it is a signal of leadership. 

 

The politics of Thorin reclaiming his heritage dovetail with Saruman's dismissal of Gandalf's fears, Thranduil's cynical isolationism, and Bard's ancestry as well as, on the bad guy side, the Master's greed and Lake-Town's police state, Azog's desire for revenge and the Necromancer's call to the Nine. That is, there is a consistent issue (implied in the book and used directly by Jackson) of determining how the social order should function. Who is in charge? Why? How? For what reason? What will be the outcome? 

 

"A Thief in the Night"

 

The decision that Bilbo makes regarding the Arkenstone receives equal weight in movie and book. However, I wish the movie had spent more time on Bilbo's actual departure from the Mountain.

 

Bilbo scaling the wall.

There's a strange issue here--how much time a writer or director should spend moving people from point A to point B. Too much "then they walked down the street and turned the corner and waited at the light" smacks of letters my mom used to write about all the chores she completed and neighbors she spoke to and errands she ran, as if her letters were a diary. (Uh, Mom, who are these people?)

 

Too little "show," however, and it seems like characters just magically transported themselves from, say, Maine to New York. (Driving never takes as long as it should on shows like Bones.) House famously had its doctors walk around hospital corridors as they spouted off dialog: they're moving from points A to B and moving the plot forward!

 

Tolkien was very aware of distances and never makes mistakes in terms of how long a journey would actually take. In fact, during a recent rereading of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I noted how scrupulously he maintains points on the compass (without being overly and tediously committed to the equivalent of railway times tables). He details exactly how Bilbo gets away from the Mountain and how he is taken in by Elvish guards. 

 

In the movie, Bilbo shows up suddenly at Thranduil's tent.

 

He then produces one of my favorite moments in the trilogy--and another of those moments that highlight Freeman's everyman ability to respond in very human ways to dramatic moments.

 

After all, that particular scene is occupied by McKellen, Pace, and Evans effortlessly acting at the top of their game. And here is the amazing Martin Freeman, saying, "Er, yeees." 

 

I suppose by shortening how long it takes Bilbo to get to the tent, Jackson was leaving more time for the battle scenes and...he didn't need to. I find those scenes mostly tedious.

 

To be continued...

Books to Movies: The Desolation of Smaug, Mirkwood, More on Pacing, What to Keep, What to Ignore

The Mirkwood scenes keep the fairy-tale dreamlike tone from the book while moving much more quickly. They also link the spiders more directly to Dol Gulder, underscoring Thandruil's failure to act. 

And they introduce the Tauriel/Kili romance. I have mentioned elsewhere why I'm a fan--though I wish the movie had paid the romance off better (not necessarily happier, just better). I will discuss the trilogy's ending more later. 

The Wood Elves are great characters in general: "less wise and more dangerous," as both Beorn (in the movie) and the narrator (in the text) state. The Elf King, Thranduil, played by Lee Pace, is a fantastic damaged leader. 

The conflict between him and Thorin is more direct in the movie than in the book but the dispute over gems is there plus the sense of long-held grievances and lifelong distrust: "Take him away...even if he waits a hundred years...I'm patient. I can wait."

In the book, Thorin and the other dwarfs are separated during their imprisonment. The others don't know what happened to Thorin, and Bilbo carries messages between him and the others. He also reconnoiters over several weeks and waits until the feast to free the dwarfs. 

The movie speeds everything up.

Frankly, the Mirkwood sequence is one of the best in all the films with excellent pacing. It also has one of my favorite "nope, Martin Freeman doesn't need a voice over" scenes when Bilbo realizes he failed to get a barrel for himself. 

Even the chase-chase-chase scene doesn't bother me. The dwarfs escape; the elves chase them; Azog and his people join in to get the dwarfs but end up inviting the elves' ire. The sequence is engaging, has a point, has mini-emotional arcs, and is actually fun to watch. It also brings several plots together, and there's no breakaway until the dwarfs get free. Then, the movie cuts to Gandalf.

Generally speaking, the action from Beorn through to the barrels is some of the best in the trilogy! The choices of what to keep and what to discard and what to speed up are very smart.

In sum, I think there are several reasons for the apparent seamlessness: 

1. What happens next is naturally what would happen next, including Tauriel and Kili's conversations. 

2. The characters' personalities--specifically Thranduil, Thorin, and Bilbo--are well-established enough to explain certain actions and reactions. Everyone behaves believably. 

3. The main characters remain the center without feeling "showcased," so Bilbo's reaction to the ring in Mirkwood--a scene where he is separated again from the others--feels in pace with the rest rather than a breakaway. 

4. The barrel-chase scene, again, highlights personality rather than being just a bunch of people getting felled by axes and falling into water. It even has some humor, as with Bombur's barrel act! 

Consequently, The Desolation of Smaug, extended version, is the one DVD set of Jackson's movies I purchased for myself. I consider the piece fairly high quality as an actual movie.

Books to Movies: The Desolation of Smaug, Sometimes the Movie Can Explain Things

Jane Espenson supplies a great piece of commentary during an Angel episode: she notes a continuity error and then says something to the effect of "oh, well, the fans will explain it away."

The beginning of The Desolation of Smaug explains a great deal. For one, it establishes a more political subtext for the dwarfs' return to Erebor than occurs in the book (though political subtexts are implied in the book)--as well as the need for the Arkenstone. And quite frankly, the movie additions make more sense than Tolkien's "uh, we're going to get some treasure" quest. A burglar was never going to steal 14-people's worth of stuff! But a burglar could retrieve a jewel representing kingship.

Arguably, Tolkien didn't need to explain the quest in the book. As Tanith Lee points out in The Dragon Hoard, going to face down a dragon and recover treasure is as much a given as looking for a pirate hoard. The book is about Bilbo going on an adventure in which expected (and well-crafted) fairy tale tropes appear. 

Regarding those fairy tale tropes, I get the impression that Tolkien enjoyed writing Beorn and his house and his folktale persona more than just about every other part of The Hobbit. He spends a fair amount of time on Beorn, just as he spends a fair amount of time on the folk/mythical character Tom Bombadil in Fellowship.

Jackson skips Bombadil. He keeps Beorn, for good reason. Great character! In addition, in the movie, this character furthers Jackson's plot points. Beorn helps the dwarfs. He also gives Gandalf information that increases Gandalf's worries about Azog and the Necromancer, who is directly linked to Azog. Gandalf's necessary departure from the dwarfs and Bilbo is established. 

A book can spend more time exploring the world rather than moving through it. A movie needs to quickly establish WHY the moving-through-it needs to occur.  

What are the stakes?

Books to Movies: Homer's Odyssey

From A-Z List 2, I chose Homer for "Books to Movies."

The issue: How well do sagas translate to film? 

A classic film will have an arc--conflict, rising action, climax, final wrap-up. The arc is possibly one reason superhero films have been so popular in the early twenty-first century. It isn't that filmmakers can't make rambling films about the purpose of life and people contemplating the nature of string. But a movie is a narrow event, which means something should happen.

Odyssey with Armand Assante as Odysseus has a number of positive factors. Assante's Odysseus captures the character's almost modern disdain for his fellow leaders' vainglorious strutting (the attitude exists in the poem), his desire to remain home, his leadership capabilities, and his half-respectful/half-conman relationship with the gods, including the goddess Athena.

The problem is tone. The action sequences are quite good--but the switch back and forth between Odysseus and Penelope makes the events less adventure tales and more a series of acts of incredible misfortune--and the original epic never struck me that way.

 

Moreover, the series suffers from an investment issue. A text--even a told story--can operate somewhat differently. The audience can be told that only Odysseus is left standing and shrug at the idea. Whatever. But a movie gets viewers to care about Odysseus's scooby-gang...who all eventually die. 

 

The point where everyone died was when I ceased to care about the outcome (which I already knew, of course). Assante holds the series together through charisma and strong acting. But the script portrays him as a hero rather than a survivor--and a hero who can't get his crew home isn't much of one. 

 

My thoughts while watching: Since the script skipped 10 years at Troy, why not just skip the 10-year voyage? Why go through the motions of getting us to care about the team and then dispose of them all? If the focus is Odysseus, why not skip forward to the part where he returns home and gets rid of the suitors? 

 

In fact, Wishbone's version starts the story with Odysseus's escape from Calypso, precisely emphasizing the story of Odysseus retaking his home. The related Joe & friends arc seems a bit of a stretch but ultimately both parts emphasize taking back one's home turf. I had to wonder if the original Homer (some scholars now believe that Homer was a title given to multiple poets) created a homecoming story and others kept adding on bits!

 

Of course, there is O Brother Where Aren't Thou, which combines saga and a narrative arc excellently. For one, it doesn't pretend it is doing anything else. It is a shaggy dog story, a homage to 1930s Americana music and settings, a comedy (definitely). Stephen Root shows up--what more needs to be said?! 

 

Most importantly, Odysseus--Clooney's Everett--is perfect. He IS what I imagine Odysseus to be: "Silver-tongued" (as the DVD cover states), level-headed, skeptical, a tad vain ("How's my hair?!), problem-solving, vaguely amoral, opportunistic, extroverted...less the hero-type and more the bargaining type. And he has an ex-wife who, like Penelope undoing her weaving, keeps her rather slippery ex-husband at arms' length. 

 

Not to forget Pete as a toad!

 

Adapting Versus Awakening in Fantasy Books

In reviewing past reading choices, I've concluded that I prefer certain types of fantasy.

That is, like with Beauty & the Beast versus Cinderella, I find I am drawn to one plot more than another. 

With fantasy, the categories that I've encountered can be broadly separated into adapting versus awakening. 

Adapting is about the characters arriving in a fantasy place and figuring out how to survive, make do, get along. In The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, for instance, Kondou ends up in another world, mostly by accident, where he promptly becomes the bureaucratic go-to guy for the government. At first, his role is one of survival (since he insists on drinking the magical equivalent of amphetamines to get his work done). It is also, however, about figuring out why the country has gone so off-the-rails with its accounting methods. And about Kondou managing his work load.

Likewise, the manga series Ascendance of a Bookworm focuses on the main character getting by in a very real, other world. Many of the clever DIY projects she comes up with fail because the world simply doesn't have those tools or resources. She can't turn materials into what she remembers. She has to gain knowledge about them first.

In both the above cases, the premise (the reason for the character showing up somewhere else) takes a backseat to the character getting on with things. 

Awakening is more about "the man behind the curtain" and the immediate impact that such revelations have on the primary protagonists. The Matrix--though ostensibly sci-fi--is a fantasy of this type. Red pill or blue pill? One's true name, role, purpose? What ultimate truth explains everything? 

The difference can be delineated through a common fantasy trope: the Quest. In the quest, the characters are moving towards a denouement which, like a revelation, will upend/change the world. However, how the quest is handled varies between the two fantasy types. In adapting, the focus is on solving immediate impediments: Sam steps outside the Shire; Frodo agrees to take the ring against his inclinations; the Fellowship goes through Moria rather than over Caradhras. In the end, Frodo is unable to adapt to Bag End and the Shire. He can't go home again. But everyone else gets on with the business of life. 

In awakening, the focus is very much on identity or self-revelation: Neo is The One; Dorothy always wanted to go home.

A single book illustrates the difference. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is supposedly about a final revelation or literal awakening, and the 2010 film threw in an extra revelation/task to try to bolster that aspect of the story. However, in truth, the book is about adapting. The three lost lords are mostly an excuse for people, like Eustace, to adapt to several new environments.

There is a great deal of crossover, of course: the excessively creepy Girl on the Other Side runs full-tilt towards a revelation but the characters have to adapt to different living arrangements along the way. Although the ending is somewhat disappointing and drops a bunch of balls (huh, what about all those set-ups?), the middle volumes are worth the read. For a series with more satisfying endings: Diane Duane's teen magicians have to figure out how to be magicians in the modern world, while the quests they undertake reveal their true selves. 

And I enjoy some awakening/revelation fantasy. The Matrix is a great movie! 

But my reading choices show a consistent veering towards adapting: how do people get by? how do they manage? what do they do to make everything work? I read very little urban fantasy, even a series like Noragami, likely because the "awakening/revelation" theme is much more prevalent, almost by necessity. The fantasy is, to a degree, about what no one else sees/experiences except the protagonists. So...what does that mean that only they see it? 

I think the inescapable religious subtext with awakening plots can be interesting. But I am more interested in HOW the protagonists will feed the fairies or dinosaurs or monsters (or little girls, as in Spy x Family): how they will cope in a specific world or under a particular set of circumstances; how they will manage, how they will solve the next problem. What will they change about themselves to get by? What choices will they make?

Beauty & the Beast after all.

F is for Fairy Tale with a Farcical Frameup

What I read: Faerie Tale by Raymond Feist.

Faerie Tale is a modern fairy tale. Its fairies are the Daoine Sidhe--cool elves not cutesy elves. Feist also relies on the almost amoral elves of myth rather than the highly moral (but still aloof) elves of Tolkien's world. And he utilizes several medieval/Renaissance ideas about elves, including ideas found Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. His fairy world is dangerous, evocative, and engaging!

This fairy world comes in contact with a prosaic family in modern upstate New York over the course of a summer and fall (from June to All Soul's Day). The overall effect is Ray Bradbury meets Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series meets a little bit of Stephen King meets conspiracy theories á la The Da Vinci Code (although Faerie Tale was published much earlier in 1988).

The first three influences make the book very good. It's a bit slow-moving but never boring, and the final chapters are (mostly) quite gripping.

The conspiracy theory stuff weakens the book considerably--instead of being a 100% jolly good read, it becomes a 85% jolly good read. Like The Da Vinci Code, Feist uses a pompous version of Indiana Jones (more long-pontificating-screeds-of-exposition investigator than fighting-snakes investigator) to tell us all about the big bad conspiracy--a group of men who have infiltrated all levels of government/society throughout history in order to maintain a treaty between the Sidhe and human kind. Our pontificating investigator tells us repeatedly how POWERFUL this group is, how INFLUENTIAL and DANGEROUS and, well, you know the drill.

Here's the problem--with all conspiracy theory subplots, I might add:

For an all-powerful, influential group, these conspiracists are the most incompetent bunch of power mongers ever to grace planet earth.

At least in the initial seasons, the Syndicate didn't

need to be competent. It just needed to exist.

*Spoilers*

First, they allow the house of a fellow dead conspiracist, containing important records and detailed maps, to go on the market. They don't buy it. They allow it to be sold to an unsuspecting family. They allow the unsuspecting family to live in the house for five months even though they could have bought the house much earlier. They send NO ONE to watch the family. They send NO ONE to watch the area. They make NO efforts to keep the family from moving the treasure. They do not contact the Sidhe to warn them the treaty is in jeopardy. They spend all their time in Europe, locking up our pontificating investigator, and they send the one guy from their group they don't trust to America. They finally show up at the end wearing dark shirts and looking important.

Geez, if I were the Sidhe, I'd demand new ambassadors--like a bunch of all-powerful conspiracists who could at least live up to the name. (As Q states in Star Trek: "It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent.")

The addition of the conspiracy theory not only weakens the book, it is entirely unnecessary. It is mostly exposition and creates a very weak and unnecessary pay-off for a very weak and unnecessary set-up. The pontificating investigator is kept from returning to help the family by the conspiracists. This is pointless confusion. The pontificating investigator is researching wacky stuff; the wacky stuff is enough to keep him from returning IN TIME. In any case, he isn't the real hero of the book. The real heroes are the twin boys.

I actually recommend the book--with this proviso: Ignore the conspiracy theory stuff. Concentrate on the family and the boys. You don't have to rewrite anything in your head. The real pay-off for the book is more than adequately set-up.

2023: I struggled to find any other stand-alone books by Raymond Feist. I finally had to accept that there were no stand-alone books. All the rest are series. 

I'm not a huge fan of series. The only series beyond five books I've truly invested in is C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series. Otherwise, as with ongoing "you must watch this episode to watch the next" television, I tend to avoid forced investment. 

There may be a connection here between my aversion to conspiracy theories and my usual aversion to series. Cherryh's series is NOT based on a conspiracy but on the complex negotiations between regions on a world where economics, history, politics, and personalities create barriers and opportunities. I'm not forced to read because evil-thing-are-right-around-the-corner! I read because the writing is just so good!  

Fairy Tales: Trailblazing George McDonald

George MacDonald impacted a generation of British fantasy writers. C.S. Lewis references him quite often, maintaining that MacDonald "baptized" his imagination long before C.S. Lewis returned to the Anglican Church. 

I determined to finally read Phantastes, the book that inspired C.S. Lewis and others. 

I now understand what it is MacDonald did. 

In truth, the book isn't much in terms of plot. The narrator enters Fairy Land, where he encounters a number of people and monsters and locations and stories told within stories. There is no clear narrative arc--that is, certain encounters never seem (on the surface) to be paid off. 

On the other hand, for someone familiar with C.S. Lewis and Lewis's opinion of MacDonald--and MacDonald's biography--the religious themes are clear; in many ways, the book resembles Pilgrim's Progress, being the tale of a man undertaking a journey that will fundamentally change his moral character and enlighten his mind. 

However, MacDonald is far less heavy-handed. He is also entirely unapologetic. MacDonald doesn't attempt to explain the link between Fairy Land and God (as C.S. Lewis did). All things are God's creations. End of argument. 

What makes MacDonald so entirely extraordinary is (1) the effortless description. Fantasy readers will recognize the people and locations and tropes and motifs. Like C.S. Lewis and Tolkien--and the Romantic poets--MacDonald knows his fairy tales so well, he can use them with entire unself-consciousness. The scenes roll off the page, becoming more and more solid while growing more and more fantastical. 

(2) The lack of ickiness. 

The book has a surreal quality shared by dreams and fantasy art, yet it is not icky, as dreams and Surrealism (for instance) can be: Dali without the gross aspect. 

I don't know how MacDonald does this--he utilizes horror in his writing with the same ease as fantasy, dream states, tragedy, and realism. MacDonald is one of the few writers to provide a death (one of the stories within a story) that uplifted me rather than leaving me vaguely unsettled, depressed, or, even, deliberately spiritual. Simply, "Ah, yes, of course." 

Phantastes is a bit dense on the exposition side and, as mentioned above, there isn't much of a narrative arc (that I could figure out). To experience what MacDonald does in Phantastes without the long passages, I recommend The Golden Key: A Victorian Fairy Tale by George MacDonald, illustrated by Ruth Sanderson. 

The combination of text and illustrations is impressive. Even more impressive is that the illustrations are entirely in black & white and yet, combined with the text, they exude color. 

A beautiful volume and a testament to the key or light that MacDonald provided so many writers. 

Interview with the Translator: Hills of Silver Ruins, Karma

Kate: In Book IV, Chapter 38 of Hills of Silver Ruins, Taiki needs to return to Mount Hou to recover from taking blood. In several books, Taiki implies that he has to pay for what happened in Japan, even though it was legally not his fault (he had no knowledge of the crimes though his literal physical presence was responsible for them).

Karma--what goes around comes around (at its simplest)--is a basic human concept. How embedded would you say the idea is in Ono's work? Does the philosophy extend beyond how Westerners conceive it? Or use it?

For instance, many of the Asian shows I watch give a little more credence to the idea of words/concepts (what has gotten thrown out into the universe) being fulfilled. Where Westerners might have characters overcome such a (superstitious) worry or congratulate themselves for their entirely invisible forward thinking, the Asian shows imply that behavior on-screen might actually, ya know, come true. (There's a kind of unreality about Western name-calling, which is why bullying theorists can entirely divorce themselves from the outcomes of their behavior.)

The opening "this is fiction" caveats are subtly different: Western art says, "No, no, I didn't base this story on anyone real. Don't go and sue me." Asian art says, "This is fiction. The actions in this series are for entertainment. They are not intended to urge or promote any particular behavior. Really."

Watch out! Don't go wishing for monsters because, as in Supernatural, they will likely show up!

Eugene: I think publishers and broadcasters in Japan are more likely to pull an episode of a manga or television series if it echoes (even coincidentally) an alarming current event in the news. There's nothing wrong with fiction "based on actual events" as long as it isn't too close for comfort. The shogunate insisted that Edo period plays based on the Forty-Seven Ronin, for example, always be set at a historical remove.

Of course, that was more about the politics of the situation, but a similar sort of restraint is still expected.

Karma is a key element of Buddhist philosophy. Karma arises out of a very cool Buddhist concept, the "storehouseconsciousness." It is a cosmic database that stores a record of all your past personal actions. Not like a video recording, but rather the metadata, a set of attributes created from those events. This is what passes onto your next life, not a soul in the Christian or Hindu sense.

 As in Angel Beats, your soul is preserved if you get stuck in purgatory. Lord Enma, ruler of the underworld, can use his "Mirror of Judgment" to display a sinner's misdoings. But this record is wiped upon reincarnation. Only the store consciousness remains.

The feedback between the storehouse consciousness and the world around you creates a constantly updated decision tree expressed as karma. Especially in Shadow of the Moon and A Thousand Leagues of Wind, caught up in events beyond their control, none of the main characters "deserve" what happens to them. But as Clint Eastwood's William Munny says in Unforgiven, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

What matters is how you react to events (random or otherwise) going forward. In narrative terms, it's all about the character arc that results. Every action and decision changes the attributes in the storehouse in an ongoing feedback loop, pushing behavioral outcomes in one direction or the other. As Fuyumi Ono puts it, "the small stones accumulated in the past one day produce a mountain of results."

Self-help psychologists say much the same about habit formation. The important difference in Asian societies is that this is not seen as an autonomous outcome. The "year zero" approach won't work for individuals or societies because karma is always there. Not just human nature now (which will never be defeated by legalistic means), but that metadata going back as far as human beings existed.

Buddhism takes literally the famous saying by William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

 

Fairy Tales: Hoffmann & Thoughts on The Nutcracker

Encountering The Nutcracker in the fairy tale section of the library reminded me of the difficulty of categorizing. 

Should The Nutcracker be placed in the 700s with the other ballet books because most people, including me, expect to find it there? If I went searching for it in the 700s without checking the computer first would I be frustrated by its non-appearance or delighted to learn--as I admit I only recently learned--that it was originally not a ballet but a fairy tale written by E.T.A. Hoffman in 1816?

It was adapted to a ballet in 1892 with Tchaikovsky's music. Hoffmann was connected to the theater and music world, so the connection is not as remote as it sounds. He was a theater manager, a respected music critic, a composer, and a writer. He belongs to the period of German Romanticism. His career of brilliance followed by a run of unfortunate events and decisions reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe, who was familiar with his work. Like Poe, he laid down plots and ideas that far outlasted his short life (he died when he was 46). The ballet Coppélia is also based on Hoffmann's fiction. 

Balanchine delivered his famous version of The Nutcracker in 1954. I have seen the ballet several times and rewatched the live 2011 version on Youtube (it won an Emmy)--and I was reminded why I generally enjoy books and movies about ballet dancers more than ballet itself. 

In fact, one of my favorite books growing up was one of the A Very Young...books by Jill Krementz: A Very Young Dancer tells the true life story of the ten-year-old School of American Ballet dancer chosen to play Marie in The Nutcracker. Love that behind the scenes stuff!

The Nutcracker is something I'm glad I saw--and I remember quite enjoying in-person live performances as a kid--but it also reminds me of the many musicals I've seen. I love musicals until about 90 minutes in, at which point my brain starts to go, "Seriously? Another song? Really? Get on with the plot already." 

I also tend to find puppets and dummies rather alarming (yep, I'm one of those people who dislikes clowns). 

Consequently, to read the tale, I turned to a collection of Hoffmann's tales, The Best Tales of Hoffmann, edited by E.F. Bleiler, rather than any of the lushly illustrated books that turn up in the fairy tale section. For one, quite honestly, the lushly illustrated books have terrible fonts. The failure to deliver decent text is a real failing, in my mind. A big picture of a nutcracker doesn't make up for the bad font; it just gives me nightmares. 

I was most surprised to find that the ballet follows the first part of the tale fairly closely: Christmas Eve, presents, the gift of the Nutcracker by the eccentric godfather, the breaking of the Nutcracker, the arrival of the nutty mice, the Nutcracker's attempts to fight them off, the thrown shoe...

The ballet departs from the story at this pivotal point--for one, the Nutcracker becomes human in the ballet while in the story, his "curse" is not ended until after Godpapa Drosselmeier provides an explanation of the curse--it was due to the Mouse King. Marie then sacrifices a great many of her toys to save the Nutcracker from being chewed up by mice. She finally manages to convince Fritz to help and he provides the Nutcracker with a sword. The action takes place over some time.

It's quite readable! Bleiler points out that English Victorians tended to translate Hoffmann into tedious English, but Hoffmann's German was, in fact, brisk and modern. As Bleiler states, Hoffmann has "the technique of presenting the supernatural convincingly. He can arouse momentary conviction and acceptance for even the most outrageous fantasy." In fact, the story reminded me of Japanese anime like Spirited Away in which the dream world overlaps with the "real" world without apology (and far less dancing).