Reading Undine

"Ondine," photo by Eva the Weaver

 Of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful

- George MacDonald

I'm not ready to go as far as MacDonald, but I will say that reading Undine, the classic fairy story by Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqué (how's that for a French-German hybrid name?), was very pleasurable for me. Here's why.

When I read a new fairy tale, or one I've forgotten, it's like eating a nectarine. You know what it's like. You sit at the table, and in just a moment the soft peel is off that perfectly round fruit. Then it falls apart into slices, tailor made for human mouths. Twelve, thirteen little bites, and it's done--delightful, tangy, juicy, sweet. A perfect snack.

But never a meal.

Now imagine you could have a tangerine and you could eat it for a good half hour, like you would a full dinner. Sound nice?

<< Well, no, you might say. Halfway through the meal, my tongue would get so cloyed from the sweet, juicy, intense thing that I'd lose my appetite.

But suppose I could make it last that long without cloying your palette?

<< Then it would be so watered down that it wouldn't have any flavor, you might object. Or any nutrition at all!

Ah, and there's the beauty of Undine. Somehow, reading this story was like reading a fairy tale that lasts and lasts. Its sweetness is strong enough to engage the palette, but not so strong that it cloys. Its substance is light enough to draw you into the magic of faerie, but not so light that it feels empty or watery.

Somehow--I don't know quite how--Undine draws you into a longer adventure, all framed in the old fairy tale storytelling tradition, with light touches of description and only glimmers of the inner life of the players. Just like a real fairy tale. And yet it doesn't lose your interest in the places where it takes you or the people who live there.

A meal of tangerine. A meal where the tangerine is somehow transformed into something much larger, more substantial even, without losing its essence.

So maybe I can see why MacDonald called it the most beautiful fairy story. Still seems like strong praise. But surprisingly good? I can agree with that.

Note: You can find Undine free at Project Gutenberg, or on an e-reader near you.

The Arrogance of CGI

If you’ve been watching the latest movie trailers, you know that Hollywood has ramped up its use of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) to create incredible and bizarre worlds and every manner of fantastic creature. In one sense, this is quite an accomplishment, but in another, it’s a kind of arrogance. Because CGI has, in the hands of some movie producers, tried to pull back the veil on the sacred wood. And I’m fighting back.

Let me back up. This observation began within me like a little kernel, planted there after re-reading Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” a little over a year ago. Tolkien said that of all stories, fantasy was least successful as drama (i.e. theater), because the magical parts of the story come off looking ridiculous and unbelievable. At the time I thought (as you might be thinking), “Yeah. But that was before CGI.” Nowadays, a good graphics team can simulate very realistic fairy worlds, believable ogres, fabulous magic smoke, and transformations that would rival the ones that you see in your head when you read.

Aha! (he says, melodramatically)

Intentionally or not (let’s go with it, though, and say intentionally), CGI has come on the scene to lay bare the fairy wood to the all-seeing camera. Now any lover of things fey knows that all-seeing human eyes, close-ups and slow motions, do not mix well with the fairy world. Those who peer into the mysteries do so to their own doom. Pandora: don’t open that box. Young maid: don’t look at the wolf when you enter the castle. Narcissus: don’t look in the water.

Aha!

When I peer into the computer-generated world of fairy, what do I see? Is it an image of myself, meant to enthrall me to my doom? Is it an illusion that will sidetrack me from the true path, which would lead to the unmaking of the spell that holds me and mine in thrall? Is it a false wisdom that will cost me no end of trouble?

But there’s more. Perhaps old professor Tolkien was right. Maybe even with CGI, the all-seeing stage—the screen—still makes a mockery or a monster of the mysterious realm. Maybe fairy continues to elude us, because we want to ravage its secrets. We’ve lost sight the peril of treading there, and we’ve made the sacred groves into theme parks.

Better yet, maybe seeing the magic wonderfully enhanced (with digital sound) leads us to disbelieve in it, robbing us of the very thing we enter the fairy wood to find: something beyond ourselves.

Perhaps allusion, which is by nature more elusive, is necessary to create the illusion.

(or have I gone too far ...?)

What think ye? Am I just playing here? Is this just a way to plead for the richer experience of reading, of seeing the fairy world in my own head, experiencing the transformations in the words of the storyteller? Is it, worse still, envy at the skill of CGI? At its capacity to make clear the thing I only imagine?

The Wizard of Oz: American Faerie

For a long time, I’ve wondered if (and how) the creatures of faerie that resided in Europe could have made their way to American soil, where I live. Or is our soil already occupied by native sprites, whose voices and stories people like me (of European extraction) can’t easily catch on the wind?

Frank Baum made an effort to catch the wind of an American fairyland, to weave fresh American fairy tales, most famously The Wizard of Oz. This is, on its surface, a pretty simple book (as it should be): simple in language and straightforward in its telling. That’s not to say there aren’t unexpected and delightful turns. But the plot is easily followed. The characters have humorous incongruities, but not what I would consider great complexity. Like most (or perhaps all) European fairy tales, the narrator is “omniscient,” moving seamlessly into the perspective of any character most central to the current action. Like European fairy tales, this one has wild woods, witches, magic shoes, a magic hat, instructions that must be obeyed. Like European tales, it has just the right number of helpers and wishes to come out without any extras at the end.

But it also has distinctly American qualities. (The Library of Congress calls it “The first totally American fantasy for children.”) For instance, the places where magic happens are almost always wide open, not close and clustered forests. This setting is more typical of the American heartland. More importantly, maybe, it has newly-minted characters. The iconic Scarecrow, the ever-so-modern Tin Woodman, and that girl Dorothy in her pigtails, carrying her basket out of the house for a long walk. Oz, of course, the elfland version of that iconic American, the traveling charlatan and sideshow performer—with a good heart. Not surprisingly, he’s from our world (Omaha). And then the various peoples, like Munchkins and Winkies, who remind me a little of elves and dwarfs but aren’t. This feels like American innovation. Even the names of things have a fresh, non-traditional sound.

I wish I knew why this tale was and is so appealing. Maybe it’s Dorothy’s innocence—her goodness that prevails over all obstacles. Maybe it’s the freshness of Oz-land. Maybe Baum captured something, an American flavor of European folklore. Or maybe he was just a gifted storyteller, weaving surprises that his readers delight in.

Maybe one of you can solve the riddle for me.

At the end of the day, I’m not ready to pack up and find my way to Baum’s faerie. But plenty of Americans have been (witness this site, and this list of books, with full text!), and that’s quite a legacy.

Narnia as Faerie

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis says that Father Christmas is the sort of person you only meet in a place like Narnia. But what is a “place like Narnia”? Isn’t there only one such place, with talking animals, tree-spirits, giants, spells, dwarfs, prophecies, and the sharp contrast of good-and-evil?

Come to think of it, there is. J. R. R. Tolkien called it “faerie.” Ursula K. LeGuin called it “Elfland.” If you’ve been there, you know that place. (If you haven’t, pick up some fairy tales and start reading!)

What makes Narnia faerie—the realm of nature-magic, deep as the land? I’ve mentioned some of its trappings. But, as Ursula K. LeGuin reminds us, trappings do not a good fantasy make. And, love it or don’t, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a good fantasy. An authentic journey into faerie—a kind of faerie, too, that you can see and feel in your mind.

Lewis achieved just the right mix of realism and magic. The rules of Narnia are clear, things aren’t arbitrary—people really do bleed there—and yet the magic is real (within discernible limits). So is that what makes this novel a journey into faerie? The skillful realization of magic within a believable world? Does technique a good fantasy make?

Or is it the fact that it is a journey, through a portal and into a woods—for it does start in the woods, like many fairy tales. Is it the fanciful device of the wardrobe, a new thing (relatively speaking) juxtaposed with an old thing (the faerie wood)? Does that make it authentic fantasy, a journey into faerie?

Or is it the sharp contrast between good and evil? The White Witch couldn’t be more evil; Aslan couldn’t be more good. Is this stark contrast what gives it that magical quality?

Or what about the smallness of the characters? Lucy, the youngest of four and a girl (in patriarchal England) is first to discover the portal. And she’s the one who seems closest to Aslan—she and Susan, in the first book, and Lucy alone as the adventures unfold. Even Peter is only a child, though a very responsible, grown-up eldest son. Edmund, who experiences the greatest transformation (after Narnia itself), is the proto-typical younger brother. These little people, small characters, become—but don’t start out as—realm-shapers. They fall into something that’s already been going on. They’re the target of prophecies of old, innocent though they are of them. Does this, then, constitute Narnia as faerie?

No. It’s like chasing the wind, or defining the shape of a spirit. Narnia feels like faerie because, in some mysterious way, C. S. Lewis opens a door on faerie. It’s faerie as C. S. Lewis encountered it. And he had the elfish power to weave its odors and sights around us.

I don’t think he could have done it, if he hadn’t been there himself.

Fantasy - according to Ursula K. Le Guin

The wise Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the much-loved Earthsea novels, published a classic article on fantasy in 1973, “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie.” What Tolkien called “faerie,” Le Guin calls “Elfland”:

Let us consider Elfland as a great national park, a vast beautiful place where a person goes by himself, on foot, to get in touch with reality in a special, private, profound fashion.

From this beginning, Le Guin argues that “certain writers of fantasy” despoil “elfland” by making it too accessible, too familiar—by, in short, demanding too little commitment from the reader. Her essay focuses on style—as in, the way the story is told, including especially the language used. It’s a very good argument. But here, rather than rehash it, I want to cull from it the gems Le Guin drops regarding the nature of fantasy.

The quote above already gives us one clue to her vision: faerie is a place where readers can uniquely come into contact with reality. It’s a wild place, not necessarily congenial to life elsewhere, in “Poughkeepsie.” As she puts it, “you are not at home there.”

As she circles closer to this peril and foreignness, Le Guin compares fantasy to “a game played for very high stakes.” She writes, “It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence.” This, by the way, is a common sentiment about fairy stories more generally, among their admirers. Such stories present the reader with an “alternative,” a parallel that heightens experience and, in this way, discloses human nature. Similarly, for Le Guin, fantasy involves “a heightening of reality.”

In its approach and its materials, then, fantasy is “nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction.” Returning to her metaphor of the park, she asserts, “It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.” One thinks of Tolkien’s remarks about the perils of faerie—warnings every adventurer would do well to heed. As I understand this, fantasy (when it’s done well) works to concentrate nature—including human nature—to reveal what normally lies hidden. In a sense, fantasy is to nature as poetry is to language.

As I mentioned above, Le Guin’s central argument is about style, and the bulk of her essay focuses there. In the midst of this argument, though, she drops another gem: filling a story with the trappings of fantasy—dragons, hippogriffs, a Medieval setting, knights, castles—doesn’t make it authentic. True fantasy is, for her, “a journey,” comparable to psychoanalysis. It “employs archetypes,” which, she reminds us, “are dangerous things.” Here one thinks of Terri Windling, who sees intimate, internal journeys as a rightful domain of fantasy.

But Le Guin’s essay focuses on heroic or “epic” fantasy. So, much of her argument about style has to be considered in that light. Even so, her demand for a costly journey into “faerie” is valuable for all of us. At least for me: it helps to account for my disinterest in much of what passes for “fantasy” on the paperback rack at the local library. She reminds me, “A writer may use all the trappings of fantasy without ever actually imagining anything.” But this “commercial exploitation of the holy ground of Myth” comes at a cost: it devalues the essential promise of the genre.

These impassioned, insightful remarks from a skilled storyteller brush gently against others I’ve noted in prior posts. If you have a chance to read the essay, it’s well worth the effort, and still timely some thirty-nine years after publication.

[Note: You can read some of Le Guin's critical essays here.]

Snow White and Her Shepherd

Today’s post will be a little more personal. For years now, off and on, I’ve been working on a fantasy story about a shepherd, Foldwin, who crosses paths with a wild, beautiful, enchanted young woman. Call it my pet project. Or maybe my apprenticeship.

I started the story as a gift for my wife, who loves fairy tales. In fact, the bones of the story trace back to a road trip in which, to while away the time, she and I hatched a short adventure about an enchanted girl driven from home by a jealous mother, and the farm boy who agrees to escort her home—not knowing what he’s in for, of course. When I sat down a couple of years later to write the tale down, it came out much longer than I’d expected. Challenges and twists presented themselves, and—in the spirit of Tolkien’s essay, “On Fairy Stories”—I met them, unafraid to dip into the cauldron of tales, such I knew it then.

Some things I drew out of that cauldron included talking donkeys, a snowy mountain, a wicked queen with an enchanted mirror, and a golden realm—faerie within faerie, so to speak. The girl, unbeknownst to me, was a kind of Snow White figure, though without the gullible passivity. In fact, she scared the life out of that poor shepherd, half the time, even though—predictably—he fell in love with her.

In the end, the story stretched to almost 50,000 words—a short novel, and one of the longest things I’d written up to that point. I combed out some of the worst tangles and presented it to her. And she liked it very much.

That probably could have, and maybe even should have, been the end of that story. But I took in my mind that, rather than just working at a factory forty hours a week (as I was then doing), I might be able to write my way out of such tedium and into something much better. Or at least, I thought, maybe I can write my way out of debt. So I began the long process of trying to learn about publishing, and I edited and completed earlier stories and started sending them out. I worked over Foldwin too, and sent it to several publishers. They all liked the sound of it, all ordered a fuller sample, and all passed on it. (Shrug)

So I shelved it. Then re-edited it, sent it out a couple more times. Then shelved it again.

And came back to it years later. (It’s on my shelf again, but that’s not where this is going.) In an earlier post, I referred to the perils of embarking on a journey to faerie. This is my prime example. “Foldwin the Shepherd” was (and is) in essence a fairy story. As such, it had the tendency (in the earlier drafts) to pass over as assumed things that, in a novel, ought to be explained. Such as why a shepherd would volunteer to help a wild, standoffish young woman. In the fairy tales, the shepherd would obviously do that—it’s how he and the reader embark on the story itself. So it was in my story. But at 50k words, you don’t get to pull that stunt. Novel readers expect some probing of the characters’ psyche, or at least an account of their motivations.

Putting in that kind of insight added thirty-five thousand words to the second draft. But then other things had to be explained. And, for that matter, angles and tensions and suspense suggested themselves for inclusion. After all, in a fairy tale of three pages, you don’t have a lot of time for themes or suspense. In a story of 75k words, you better have those, or your reader will feel like a part in an assembly line, experiencing discreet whams from a series of dies (with apologies for the factory metaphor …).

When it comes to themes and tensions, though, a fairy story presents unique challenges. For one thing, it strips away the limitations of our mundane life and, in their place, it demands an accounting of the laws of the story world. It demands that I, the writer, know why certain things can (and must) happen there, and what the new limitations are. For me, this meant becoming a more astute observer of nature in all its guises. I needed to learn how and why there was enchantment and magic, why donkeys could speak, and why the witch-queen surrounded herself with snow. All this while I was trying to learn the mechanics of good novel writing.

But aside from these technical matters, a fairy story demands from the writer an honest self-knowledge that, at that point in my life, I was still learning to embrace. Or maybe I should say it requires an openness to self-disclosure, a willingness to encounter oneself in strange places, to see oneself as something you had not expected to be. I think—I’m far from alone—that fantasy makes peculiar demands here, though my experience with quality literary fiction suggests a similar process.

In the end, my own complex rendering of a Snow White tale has turned out to be a kind of apprenticeship in fairy story creation. What I didn’t expect, was that I would be fashioned so much in the process.

Postscript: An excellent article on the Snow White strand of folk tales, by Terri Windling, can be found here. Among other things, it gives other examples of more pro-active Snow White figures.

The Consolations of Fantasy: "On Fairy Stories," Part 3

J.R.R. Tolkien argued, toward the end of his essay “On Fairy Stories,” that one of the gifts fantasy brings to humankind is a glimpse of joy, a sudden “turn,” an undeserved gift. It does this through an outcome he called “eucatastrophe.” (The prefix “eu-” comes from the Greek language and means “good.”)

Tolkien thought fairy stories bring us consolation from a “catastrophe” turned good, or (put the other way) happy endings tinged with sadness. Later fantasy, following in Tolkien’s shadow, has not always kept faith with this idea. Two trends in fantasy novels, though apparent opposites, both diverge significantly from Tolkien’s vision.

First is the (rightly criticized) tendency for fantasy-novel heroes to be invincible. Facing ludicrously powerful forces of evil, they come through unscathed. This quality, whenever we see it, fails to measure up to Tolkien’s perception of “eucatastrophe” because it overemphasizes the “eu” part and forgets the other: catastrophe. Something terrible has to happen, some irreparable damage has to be done to somebody we care about, or the good outcome loses its poignancy and joy. If you want an excellent illustration of this, just think of Frodo before he leaves Middle Earth. Frodo is damaged—irreparably so. His heroic feat costs him his “humanity,” if I can call it that.

That outcome is not accidental. For Tolkien, there can’t be any consolation where genuine suffering is not recognized. (Anybody who’s ever been handed a platitude in the face of real personal tragedy knows this.) If the hero of a fantasy story is, in effect, invincible, a person who never suffers real injury or hardship, then the tale will be incapable of giving us one of the gifts that is fantasy’s birthright—at least, according to Tolkien.

Many people—readers and writers and editors among them—have been unsatisfied with such invincible heroes. As a result, we’re seeing an opposite trend, a reaction that also, however, fails to fill the role Tolkien envisioned for “fantasy.” Bluntly: I’m talking about so-called “gray characters.” These characters are “human,” at our worst and most egocentric. They lie, cheat, avenge themselves. If they do something “good,” it’s for despicable reasons. There’s no “good” versus “evil,” no heroes and villains, just the soft, spongy middle.

This, we are told, is “gritty realism.” And it might be that, but it’s also not “eucatastrophe.” It’s not what you get in the fairy stories. It gives no consolation—far from it. The accent has shifted to the “catastrophe”—except that here there isn’t “evil” in the old sense of the word, either. Catastrophe becomes the constant, the uninterrupted state of existence.

The first departure—failing to embrace the existence of real suffering, so that consolation can be provided by the unexpected “turn”—might be relatively harmless next to this second one. Because a brutal insistence on only “gray characters” and death and mayhem may—I hope not, but it probably does—amount to a denial of the possibility of “joy,” of hope, of the dream of goodness, that the fairy stories sometimes offered. Certainly Tolkien’s work offered it: those of us who love it are left with a keen yearning to visit Minas Tirith under Aragorn’s benevolent rule, or (for us democratic Americans) a long stay in the Shire, among people (hobbits, that is) who are genuine if a little provincial.

No doubt, many and greater champions of Tolkien can be found than me, but I want to join my voice to theirs. His characters are not perfect, and they aren’t unrealistic or one-sided, either. The best example here is Frodo. Think of it: he starts out good, he wants to do the right thing—so far, I think that’s like most of us. Check one. He’s a “little person” faced with forces beyond his control or understanding or capacity to overcome. Check two—so are most of us. Frodo’s asked to do something extraordinary, and he reluctantly agrees. Some of us have done the same; many of us, for instance, faced with an invalid child or parent make the “good” choice, the “right” one, the unselfish one, to care for that child or parent ourselves. People make such hard choices every day. Yes, their motives might be mixed. But they embark, wanting to do the right thing. And don’t forget, Tolkien lived during an era renowned for self-sacrifice. So, check three.

But what happens to Frodo at the end of this story? Let’s fast forward to the culmination of his quest, when he stands at the cracks of Mount Doom and, after all his work and all his suffering for “doing the right thing”—he fails. He can’t quite bring himself to do the self-sacrificial deed he intended at the beginning. He puts on the ring and he, little exhausted Frodo, defies Sauron. Check four—most of us would have failed too, in analogous circumstances. Think of the dutiful person taking care of that invalid child or parent, day after day, year after year. And losing, in the midst of all that, the thread of why she was doing it. And maybe coming to loathe the child or parent, in small and maybe larger ways. Or maybe feeling cheated in life—and even acting out to restore the balance.

As fantasy should for Tolkien, the “eucatastrophe” comes as the result of an unexpected turn. Gollum bites off the finger; Frodo’s original resolve is brought about despite his failure at the end. That part doesn’t have to be “realistic,” because this is “fantasy”—it draws on the fairy tale tradition, where such a turn is part of the magic of the story itself. How does Cinderella win the day without that lost slipper? Or the magic that got her to the ball? If you want nitty-gritty (and who doesn’t, sometimes?), fantasy might not be the best place to seek or find it.

But the catastrophe isn’t over yet. Frodo is damaged; he can no longer continue in Middle Earth. He’s saved his world from oppressive malice, but he’s lost the world for himself. He exits the novel a wounded figure. The battle against evil takes a real toll.

No, Tolkien’s characters and realms aren’t perfect; they have their faults and weaknesses. But when it really matters, they normally do the right things, or at least they want to. I think that’s more like most of us, or at least more of us than some folks like to admit. But even if you think all humans are so hopelessly corrupt that no one would have done what the “fellowship” did, the role of fantasy is not to show us the world as we normally live it, but rather to offer us a vision of the world that’s touched by “faerie,” by a magic that’s not about grasping but dreaming. Part of that dream is for people, realms, choices, that are good, at least in part. Or at least they struggle toward being good. And in the outcome, as cliché as some people may find it, without the “happy ending” that Tolkien said was “essential”—a happy ending tinged with sad, real loss—fantasy might just turn out not worth the hard work it demands.

[Note: This is the third of three posts on Tolkien’s essay, “On Fairy Stories.” The other two are here and here.]

Longing for the Medieval

"Bedrock Fortress," by t.j. blackwell

One of the delights of fantasy novels is their ability to take us to places we’d like to go. If that’s true—I think it usually is—then it’s interesting that so many fantasy novels take place in a kind of medieval world.

If you think about it, most of us were taught in school (or somewhere) that the Middle Ages were a superstitious, unenlightened age, where people died young from plagues and constant warfare, and they had to sleep on dirt or stone floors and live indoors without good windows. Those were the “dark ages.” No science; no medicine. Nobody could read, either, so people didn’t get to think for themselves.

If you’re American, you also were probably taught to associate that time with the terrible idea of “kings,” both high kings and petty ones. I remember in particular learning about the feudal system, with peons and lords and constant battles, and walled cities and the whole thing. Nobody envied those peons. Nobody thought highly of those lords, either.

So, if I’m remembering correctly, if all of us really were taught to think of the Middle Ages as backward and superstitious, why do we all want to go there?

Before I hazard a guess, I want to point out one thing that rarely gets included in the fantasy medieval past: the Church. If you dip into a book like A Day in a Medieval City, by Chiara Frugoni, you’ll discover that the Church was everywhere in the Middle Ages. It was in the middle of most cities (which weren’t all that large), and there were monasteries, abbeys, and such things all around the countryside. (Twain’s Connecticut Yankee makes good dramatic use of this fact.) Churches and steeples and friars and monks appear all over medieval tapestries—as do hell, and the manifold torments of its occupants. To use a Twain-esque expression, you couldn’t swing a … er, rope … without hitting a monk or a friar or some other cleric, in the medieval past.

My point is that the fantasy novel doesn’t give exactly a realistic picture of medieval life. I don’t mean that it should. For one thing, this strange silence about religion, which you’ll find in Tolkien already, might be due to the fairy tale and folktale influence on the genre. After all, European folktales were passed down—if not invented—in a society permeated by the Church and its representatives. And yet, rare is the monk or nun or friar in one of these tales, and far more seldom still is the tale really “religious,” especially “Christian,” in any explicit way. (This topic is for another day.) Moral, yes; religious, not especially.

So one possible caricature is: Fantasy novels happen in a vaguely medieval society where, as in fairy tales, the Church is not a real player—religion isn’t the point. To answer our question—“Why?”—you might say that fantasy novels, out of respect for tradition, take place in the same half-articulate social set-up that the folktales assume.

But I think it goes beyond that. I think for many fantasy fans, we experience a longing for a pre-technocratic society. We want to “go there,” where you have to start a fire with a flint (whatever that is) and, if you’re going to reach a remote kingdom, you have to walk through a barren countryside where there aren’t any good roads or automobiles or railroad tracks. Maybe a forest. This might be happening in some land that we can’t find on a map—in fact, all the better. We just want to go there, to Middle Earth (maybe especially there), and live where elves are not far off and dwarves might be inside a mountain. Or dragons might still plague people who live in houses with roofs of thatch. Something about that pre-plastic, pre-automobile, pre-highway, pre-Walmart, existence entices us.

And another thing: we seem to sometimes perceive the “good”—whatever that is—more clearly there, where the technology doesn’t get in the way. Free of its cords and electric pulses, its clutter, we perceive the “evil” there more sharply, too. And that, again, is a legacy of faerie, I expect. For there, in that world of brilliant color and deep shadow, uncluttered as it is by smokestacks and water towers, we sooner expect to encounter the magic that we crave, from some “other world,” hanging around the bend. Yes, even though we know that magic to be full of peril, unpredictable, and ever unwilling to bend its rules to the self-absorbed. Yes, because somewhere we seem to cling to that old-fashioned idea ...

  

"Fantasy" - according to Tolkien

I find I’m not finished with my musings on Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories.” There’s a lot there worth pondering, especially in a blog like this that would not exist, strictly speaking, were it not for that essay and its author.

In the essay, Tolkien claims that fairy stories offer special gifts to humankind. What they do for us, they do better than anything else. He calls these gifts fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation.

“Fantasy”—it doesn’t mean for him what you might think.

First, it’s obvious when reading Tolkien’s essay that he’s using the term in a new way. He describes “fantasy” as an almost elfish craft of creating stories that involve the “faerie” realm—or at least magical, non-realistic elements from “faerie.” But—and this is equally important—such stories also maintain an internal consistency or “reality” (or “truth”) within them.

Tolkien is not trying to invent a new “genre” here: he’s trying to revitalize an age-old practice or aspect of human culture—“a right of humanity” I think was his phrase. That “human right” is to create and prize such stories, for adults. In his time, fairy tales had been relegated to children and studied (but not openly enjoyed) by adults. I suspect things haven’t changed that much, except that more adults today would probably admit they enjoy fairy tales. But fairy tales are still, as then, enjoyed by … not everyone.

(Incidentally, very few subscription-based magazines openly seek out original “fairy stories” for publication. Most of those are children’s magazines.)

Fast forward sixty plus years. I think it’s fair to say that, currently, more fantasy novels are being published and read than fairy tales—although (as I’ve discovered) some fairy tale collections score prominently in the rankings, and people who like fairy tales really like them. Ironically, Tolkien acted as midwife to the creation of this genre we call “fantasy.” Well, he had plenty of help from the publishing industry, which saw an opportunity for profits, subsequently realized. The results are staggering. One website dedicated to such things lists almost twenty subgenres under the “fantasy” label, and condescends to include Tolkien in its lists, though not without severe criticism of his Middle Earth novels.

I offer no quibble to the bewildering array of fiction marketed under the label “fantasy,” though my personal preference is for fantasy with links to folktale and myth. (I also like sci-fi, which I experience as a different genre; its roots go back well before Tolkien’s work.) In my own tastes, I’ve obviously been influenced by Tolkien’s. For him, “fantasy” that is not somehow drawing on folktale or myth, set in some form of “faerie,” is a sort of contradiction in terms. But then, as I said, he was talking about a faculty, a human capacity for storytelling that washes and revitalizes the world: not a genre of fiction. And, in fact, Tolkien viewed “fantasy” as high literary art, superior in many respects to what is usually classed as “literary fiction.” His quibble with literary critics runs through various parts of the essay, and is probably familiar to every serious Tolkien fan.

I think it’s fair to say that not all “fantasy” (even on NPR's 100 Best list) is “high literary art,” even when it sells well. The production of books that entertain lots of people and consequently make huge amounts of money … is what it is. But commercial success and high literary art have no intrinsic correlation: a novel can be one or both or neither. Tolkien’s LOTR is obviously both: a pioneering work of stunning imaginative power, realized potential, and rich complexity, with a lingering effect on the reader—and it’s sold many, many copies.

But Tolkien’s epic is “fantasy” because it takes place in “faerie”—of a particular sort, if I can put it that way. And yet, LOTR is a new creation that gathers many leaves from the “tree of tales” and weaves of them a compelling story that makes the reader see the “real world” in a new way. By Tolkien’s terms, then, his own work is “fantasy,” while much that followed in his train is … not so much.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why you like Tolkien, and fairy tales, and some fantasy, but you’re lukewarm about much that sells under the label “fantasy”—well, maybe what you want is “fantasy” of a different kind. Look for “faerie”—tales that tap into the wonder, magic, and mythic landscape of the human imagination.

NOTE: This is the second of three posts on Tolkien's essay. Check out the first and the third.

Except the Queen, by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder

Now and again I hope to offer a few comments on books I’ve read that seem to me connected to the concept of “sideways-in” fantasy. Today’s post does that. (Warning: This post contains spoilers.)

Image from penguin.com

Except the Queen, a recent (2010) novel by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder, takes the folktale tradition—with some non-traditional influences—in an interesting direction. First, the lead characters are two low-ranking sister fairies who are banished from the fairy world to the human one, where they appear as old women. However, unbeknown to them, a power struggle is brewing between the fairy Queen and the unseelie host, personified in this tale by a figure called “Redcap.” Second, the setting is today’s urban U.S., where college-aged kids are getting violated in various ways by evil fairies. Third, the real heroine of the story is a girl alienated from her roots, who turns out to be the Queen’s daughter. True to many fantasy novels, the low-ranking lead characters play a vital role in saving the world (at least the fairy one) from some catastrophe.

If you think about this novel in terms of how it handles the folktale tradition, some interesting points emerge. One, the writers have worked hard to bring forward a consistent vision of the fey realm, its workings and (in the part of the tradition from which they draw) its dual nature (good and evil fairy courts, in particular). Their portrayal of the fey realm succeeds insofar as it evokes an almost pagan sensibility. It’s not the only way to think of fairies, but it is potent, frightening, and thoroughly magicked. (Compare, for instance, “Tamlane,” among the darker fairy tales.)

Another point seems obvious: The writers have given serious thought to how this fey realm could be thought to interact with ours. Like many fantasies set in today’s world, things happen in the story that would seriously restructure the world as we know it. This leads to what amounts to an alternate “modern world,” much like fantasy set in the vaguely “Middle Ages” amounts to an alternate “medieval world.” More, the tale takes on an almost apocalyptic feel toward its end. If you don’t care for that sort of thing, then you don’t. But it’s part of the modern fantasy tradition.

In other words, Except the Queen makes innovations within a recognizable tradition—as it should. Its plot—I mean, the story itself and how it unfolds and how it gets resolved—owes more to the fantasy genre (and the novel tradition more generally) than it does to the folktales from which it draws. But, as we might expect from Yolen and Snyder, the novel seems unusually conscious of (and respectful toward) folk traditions about fairies and their magic, frivolity, and potency. It brings these traditions forward and makes something meaningful of them within the narration of the story. That’s the vibrancy, I would argue, at the heart of this fantasy novel.

(Without it, by the way, you would have a fairly customary plot, however interesting: Strayed girl and abused boy meet up with the help of two old meddling eccentric women, and find their roots (for the girl) and end the cycle of abuse (for the boy). That’s what people who classify these things would call a “literary novel.”)

There were times that the novel didn’t work that well for me, places where too many perspectives were present and some themes weren’t as developed as I’d have liked. (Jane Yolen mentions, on her blog, that they cut 10-15,000 words for an editor.) Even so, it was worth reading.


Dealing with fey subjects is never easy, I think, however riotous it seems at first glance. Kudos to Yolen and Snyder for their respectful handling of the tradition in an urban fantasy.

J.R.R. Tolkien as Enchanted Piper

I recently reread Tolkien’s famous, influential essay “On Fairy Stories.” I initially read this when I was a young writer, still very much learning the craft. At the time, I had written little if any fantasy, though I had tried my hand at science fiction twice. I came to Tolkien late in life, reading The Lord of the Rings in my college years, even before (immediately before, in fact) I had read The Hobbit. To this day, I have a hard time reading The Hobbit as anything other than a child-friendly prequel to the more profound, more potent, more serious fantasy I read first.

But Tolkien’s essay came to my attention somehow, I forget how, and I checked it out of the library in some volume or other and read it. (You can read it now online; though I would recommend printing it first. Here’s a pdf. If you’re daunted by the length or style of the essay, here are some highlights).

At the time, I took some strange courage from Tolkien’s essay. I read it as an invitation to the delights of the faerie realm, and I wanted to go—and chose to embark, not just as a reader or hearer, but also a writer. What a long, perilous road I was letting myself in for. It turned out that Tolkien was correct on many fronts: real “fantasy” is difficult and easily botched. It is, he claims, the highest form of literary artistry, because it’s the most demanding, using the “Imagination” to the fullest, and must work harder than most other literary types to create or maintain an inner sense of reality within the story.

But I didn’t recall any of those warnings until I picked the essay up recently to reread it. What I remembered in my rash youth, what lodged itself in my mind and inspired me back then, was Tolkien’s concept that fairy stories are created by dipping into a great cauldron or “pot,” into which many story elements have been dropped over countless generations of storytellers. The creator (or, as he calls it, the “sub-creator”) of a fairy story selects elements from this “pot,” mingling them also with elements from his/her own world or his/her own imagination, to create his/her tale.

Sounds simple, right? The trouble is—or perhaps I should say: the challenge is that the storyteller has to have mastery of two realms, in effect. The first is what Tolkien calls “faerie,” and is as elusive as an elf in the woods. It’s something that you absorb only by reading and imaginatively entering the fairy stories that have been handed down. Put another way, you have to know what’s in the pot, and how what’s in there can be used. What its purpose is, its value, or—to use a nice, old, fey sort of word—its “virtue.” Think of it this way: when you open your imagination out into “faerie” you need to know when you’ve crossed into the “other world,” and what you might expect to find there—even if you turn out to be wrong on both counts, as you usually are.

The other realm is what Tolkien calls “the Primary World,” the one we live in and work in. This one sounds easy, but it isn’t. It can be almost as elusive as the other, because what fairy stories do, says Tolkien, is enable us to “recover” awareness of, perception of, things and qualities (or “adjectives”)—for example, a mountain and the color “green.” The creator of a successful fairy story in effect shows back or reawakens for the reader the world in which he or she lives. Needless to say, it is no small task looking at the world in which we live—that we take for granted—with fresh eyes, and then reflecting it back to a reader in a meaningful way, while telling a good, compelling story that also—by the way—intersects with “faerie,” drawing from a vast, bubbling pot of fairy tale elements only what is most apt for the new story—and not misusing anything in the process.

Haply, I missed the note of absurd difficulty and plunged in.

Maybe I was drawn by an enchanted piper. Who can say? For Tolkien was himself “enchanted” in that sense, that he’d caught the melody of some elvish lay on the air and felt compelled to share his own poor transcriptions of the poetry he heard, like old Bilbo translating elvish tales into the common tongue.

NOTE: This is the first of three posts on Tolkien's essay. Check out the second and the third.