Heart's Blood, by Juliet Marillier

"Beauty and the Beast" meets Jane Eyre, with a bit of undead in the mix. What's not to like?

This novel isn't news, I guess, since it was published in 2009 (Roc; released as a mass paperback in 2010). But I just found it, read it, and thought it was worth a few remarks.

I would class Heart's Blood as "mythic fantasy," because it taps into the fairy tale tradition, though not in a heavy-handed way. It's not simply a retelling of a fairy tale (like "Beauty and the Beast"). The main character, Caitrin, is a bit like Jane Eyre, as I hinted above: she enters a situation that's … well, a lot more complicated than it seems at first. There's not exactly a mad wife stowed up in the attic, but it has that feel at times, and some other details call Jane Eyre to mind. Caitrin's a little like Belle, too: she all but plucks forbidden roses early in the tale. Plus, there's a kind of enchantment over the castle, its grounds (Whistling Tor), and its inhabitants--both the servants and their deformed master, Anluan.

(I suppose it's fair to wonder whether Jane Eyre is modeled on "Beauty and the Beast" at some remove or other. Or maybe some other fairy tale. Maybe one you (normally quiet) readers has a theory about that?)

Like Jane, Caitrin is also fleeing an abusive home life, thanks to the sudden death of her father and the misbehavior of distant relatives. Like Belle, she's a looker. And, well, … of course she's got to fall for the crippled master. Right? And vice versa?

So where this novel succeeded for me wasn't in setting up some new permutation of an old fairy tale (or British novel, or both), though it does that, and it does it well. What made it work was how Marillier judiciously loosened the reins on the old storyline, allowing it to take new directions, satisfying because she's drawing on older traditions, but not stale or predictable.

I liked that the Norman (military, i.e. "epic") threat wasn't the point of this story, though it makes a meaningful impact.

And I enjoyed Caitrin's strength. She overcomes real challenges within herself and outside of herself in a credible, heart-warming way. As in countless old folktales, Caitrin finds herself caught in a web of forces beyond her power to control. But with a mixture of hope and small steps of incredible courage, she manages to find her way through--with a bit of fey guidance, to be sure.

Magic. Romantic tension. Mystery. And a strong heroine. Like I said, what's not to like?

Read it? Thoughts?

Fairy Tales and Other Short Stories

Before Anton Chekhov and the modern period, people still enjoyed the occasional short story, apparently. These short stories were so good, folks told them over and over again. They memorized their plots, their main characters, and some of the spoken parts, and they passed them along orally from town to town and generation to generation.

In fact, those stories were so good, that you know some of them. What's more, many of those stories' plots have been adapted for film, woven into novels, captured in visual art forms of every kind. The first animated films were based on them, and television shows running this season are still trying to tap into their popularity.

What modern short story can claim that kind of power -- the power and influence of the traditional folk tale?

Recognize this tale? (Photo by JP)

To get at the issue, let's consider what sets these old tales apart. Not their length, obviously. The presence of magic? Well, no, not if you include fantasy short stories in the mix. Here are some key traits, in no particular order.

• They have no known author. But this is only partly true, because some of the most successful examples of this genre were composed by Hans Christian Anderson, Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, and others. Most weren't -- they were collected and edited, but not invented, by known figures. But even the ones that were draw on a folk tradition of storytelling and, from this tradition (as a support for the personal inventiveness of the author), they draw some of their power. The conscious use of tradition gives these tales a breadth of perspective, rather than the peculiar perspective of one (let's face it: usually not that well adapted) member of society.
• The characters are sharply drawn. We know folktale characters by what they do, not how they feel about things. A modern critic would say such characters are just "types" or even stereotypes, lacking internal complexity. A post-modern critic will likely complain that "good" and "evil" are too neatly divided between the characters (though this isn't always true). But there is no question that the reader knows who the "hero" is and what sort of persons the hero and antagonist are. Perceptive readers (modern or post-modern) can find ambiguity in both -- a delicious exercise when done well.
• They take you on a journey. With only one exception I can think of, the hundreds of folk tales I have read all move, they all take the reader to some new place, however bizarre or unanticipated. Unlike many modern short stories, never do folktales study, as in a still-life, a particular moment of the main character's life, or some complex situation peculiar to our society. In fact, short story purists insist that this folktale tradition is wrong. But some genre short stories, in my experience, play with a similar dynamic, extending over days. Few if any cover the same stretch of terrain as, say, the Nix of the Millpond (a man's entire life) or even Cinderella (a girl's birth to coming of age).

The really tricky part comes when some of us lovers of folktales (myself included) try to write short stories. We obviously can't help the first bullet point above, although we can draw more (or less, but why would we?) on the folktale tradition. We can and probably must choose to flex the borders of bullet point two: We may need to say something about what motivates our characters and how they feel about things, to satisfy today's readers. And we might (for a variety of reasons) feel that humans are morally complex.

But at bullet point three, I think the choice has already been made for us -- at least that's true for me. If you like folktales, you won't get much pleasure from a short story that doesn't go anywhere, that microscopically analyzes the human emotions present in a particular moment. And vice versa, by the way. (I've been told by one of these purists that wanting a story to "go somewhere" means I just don't like short stories!) I would argue for a compromise here: agree to disagree. Recognize that there are (at least) two kinds of short story.

There's value in both, in my view. One trait traditional folk tales share with modern short stories is an interest in exploring human nature. That's why these tales have this kind of staying power. Many of them -- and above all, the most successful ones -- reveal something profound about what it means to be human, to live here on earth where wild woods infringe and evil desires lurk. Where everyday people are capable of unspeakable horrors and astounding acts of courage. And you get to ask: What sort am I? What if ...?

Thoughts? What sort of short story do you like, if any? What makes one work for you? Any tips or ideas to share for connecting these two very different sensibilities (modern and traditional) in a short tale?

Editing as Following the Story

Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/92804037@N00 inajeep

Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/92804037@N00 inajeep

I've made no secret that I'm perpetually reworking a story I wrote several years ago (See Snow White and Her Shepherd). Recently I took it up again, after another break. Some parts still aren't jelling for me. But after all these several rewrites, what more can I do?

What I've come to see this time through the story is that I've gotten better at what feels like an essential skill of my craft: following the story. Seem obvious? At the rewrite stage, this is very difficult to do. There's a kind of inertial drift to the story. It goes this way, because it's already down on paper this way. And something in me has tended to resist upsetting the order or the drift of the words already there. One has to get past that readerly impulse that treats a story as a thing complete, wrapped around in cellophane, observable but beyond shaping. "Following the story" is different than reading what you've already written. It may mean ignoring what you've written.

The whisper of the story comes, for me, by way of nagging sensations of doubt. What is my hero doing here? What happened to the wound he received on page 12? Why is this land lush and green and not dry and wind-blown? Or why is it built up like a medieval fortress when it should be earthy and wild?

The key, the thing I feel I'm getting better at with practice, is the capacity to trace the offending element to its root and excise it. But rarely can you get away with a surgical removal. The thing that's offending is bound up with your original misperception of the story. In taking it out, you are changing the fabric of the whole. And so, at least for me, you have to begin following the story forward again, from that point. You have to listen patiently for every change that your excision requires, as you read, edit, rewrite, rework, mold the materials of the story.

But it's this constant listening, this ear to the story, to following its course as you would a fragile stream in a thick wood, under heavy brush and leaves, not knowing--again--where precisely it will take you. It's the admission that you're following--not reading, but searching out the story again. That's key.

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 Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit

There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. And when once people have found one of the little weak spots  in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets, and the like, almost anything may happen.

I first encountered E. Nesbit in my little Victorian fairy story collection, “Modern Fairy Stories.” Two of her stories were included in that volume: “Melisande” and “The Magician’s Heart.” The stories were entertaining, but not my favorite in the collection.

This is the first of her novels I’ve read. It was published in 1907, the same year that Ozma of Oz (the third Oz book) came out. I happened to be reading them both at the same time; Ozma to my boys, and this one to myself.

What intrigued me about the book, honestly, was the feeling that “This must have influenced C. S. Lewis.” I thought this because there are two boys and two girls who get caught up into magic at a castle. There’s a mythological, Greek-gods dimension to the magic. But most of all it was the language the children speak, which I seem to recall one of Lewis’s biographers said came from books, not “real life.” (That was A. N. Wilson, whom I have never forgiven for that biography.) Obviously the date of publication and the English setting fit, too. (A quick Google search shows that Lewis was a Nesbit fan and knew he was working in her style.)

But once begun, I found the story intriguing on its own terms and, in some ways, intricately wound. The children get drawn in by degrees and through a series of mistakes in magic. What begins as a nuisance is gradually revealed to be a much deeper, more tangled web. And things that seemed impossible to explain—and deus ex machina plot twists—turn out to have deeper roots in the story. It ties together nicely.

The book also features several fairy tale allusions, most of them humorous, and a bit of horror—nothing too rough for a nine-year-old. Better still, as the quote above shows, Nesbit took seriously in this novel that a fantasy should open up the reader to the mystical dimension just beyond nature—or perhaps always just concealed within it. Like Lewis, her story aims to lift your thoughts to something higher than your mundane experience. It rises at points to genuine mystical feeling.

I needn’t say more. You’ll either read it or, if you’re tempted by a faster resolution, there are plenty of plot summaries on the web.

In fact, I’ll give you one, with analysis (below). Meanwhile, if you’ve read The Enchanted Castle, I’d love to hear what you thought of it.

Mari Ness on Nesbit and Baum.

Fantasy - according to Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino puts magic, the breaking of everyday rules, at the center of his notion of fantasy. Why is magic a feature of fantastic tales? What purpose does it serve?

"Fantasy," he said, implies “a detachment, a levitation, the acceptance of a different logic based on objects and connections other than those of everyday life or the dominant literary conventions.”

The magic is there, in other words, to let us sever ties with our everyday world and habits and ways of thinking. Cut loose, we can drift in the tale, in a way we otherwise wouldn't.

But for Calvino, this is not escapism in a bad sense--in the sense that we're looking to shrug off responsibility for life, or to deny its reality. Yes, in fantasy you as a reader don't confront “the problem of believing or explaining.” But that's because you come to it expecting this levitation: “the pleasure of fantasy lies in the unraveling of a logic with rules or point of departure or solutions that keep some surprises up their sleeves.”

The impulse behind all this? Intellectual play. Like myth, it lets us recombine the elements in our world, which may entertain or just might clarify what the world is, and what we are within it. 

Italo Calvino, “Definitions of Territory: Fantasy,” Le Monde, August 15, 1970; transl. Patrick Creagh, 1986.

Reprinted in: David Sandner, Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (Praeger, 2004).

The Great Art of Fantasy

Mortimer Adler, in his classic "How to Read a Book," suggested five questions to help readers evaluate the artistic quality of a novel (and I quote):

1.     To what degree does the work have unity?

2.     How great is the complexity of parts and elements which that unity embraces and organizes?

3.     Is it a likely story, that is, does it have the inherent plausibility of poetic truth?

4.     Does it elevate you from the ordinary semiconsciousness of daily life to the clarity of intense wakefulness, by stirring your emotions and filling your imagination?

5.     Does it create a new world into which you are drawn and wherein you seem to live with the illusion that you are seeing life steadily and whole?

He writes, “I will not defend these questions beyond saying that the more they can be answered affirmatively, the more likely it is that the book in question is a great work of art. I think they will help you to discriminate between good and bad fiction, as well as to become more articulate in explaining your likes and dislikes.”

Adler says nothing about fantasy fiction (why would he, writing in 1940?). But his questions four and five would suggest, as J.R.R. Tolkien claimed, that fantasy done well can be one of the highest forms of literary art, bar none. (Of course, where it fails, it can also be among the worst.) In fact, Adler’s questions might even suggest that “literary” fiction succeeds only insofar as it approximates what Tolkien called “subcreation”—a thing at which the best of fantasy excels.

After all, what kind of imaginative writing better “elevates you from the ordinary semiconsciousness of daily life,” especially “to the clarity of intense wakefulness,” than the kind that takes you out of our own world to another realm? For it to achieve this elevation, though, the writer's craft has to have that same intense wakefulness about it. It can't be a sleepy hodge-podge of worn tropes, but must select its detail with precision. The best fantasy does this as well as any kind of writing.

For that matter, what kind of fiction creates “a new world into which you are drawn and wherein you seem to live” more completely than the kind that requires “subcreation” of a world in the author’s imagination?

In fact, done well, fantasy can also excel at what Adler calls the “inherent plausibility of poetic truth.” Not factual truth, of course—which isn’t the point of fiction, after all—but the truth that is deeper than factuality, that touches the soul.

Needless to say, “literary” fiction (perhaps better termed “realism” fiction, in this conversation) can attain to high art. Honed language and clarity of thought and expression can bring us into an alternate version of our own world, in which none of the fanciful elements (like magic, or strange geography, or otherworldly creatures) plays a part. This alternate world is so like ours that the reader has no need to learn special rules, except those of the writer's peculiar point of view. But it is, as the life of an imaginary person living in an imaginary society (albeit one very like ours), an instance of "subcreation." It simply doesn't go as far in the process of subcreation as fantasy does. Or maybe we should say that it cloaks its subcreation more intentionally than does fantasy.

Meanwhile, fantasy, rather than cloaking its imaginative work, tends to cloak the similarities that exist between its imagined world and our own.

Both, then--the "realism" fiction and the "fantasy" sort--have the power to bring us out of semi-consciousness to a wakeful state, a new recognition of the world in which we live.

And so, a work in either genre can be termed "a great work of art." At least in Adler's way of defining it.

Two Kinds of Writing Advice

As a writer, I've been on the receiving end of plenty of writing tips, strategies, how-tos, and how-not-tos. Looking back at this wealth of opinion on how to craft good stories, compelling characters, believeable worlds, etc., I see some patterns. In particular, two overarching approaches to writing stand out: the blueprint approach and the intuitive one.

Let me preface this post by saying that writing advice was important to my growth as a writer. When I was learning the craft (and when aren’t we?), I plowed through a lot of how-to manuals (I still pick at them). I got my Writer’s Market and read all those articles (well, almost all of them). I checked out volumes from the library and worked through them. I wouldn’t go back now and undo that—even for the advice I’ve rejected. When I started reading advice, I’d already written a lot of stories, and these manuals taught me about revisions, preseverence, inspiration, what works and what won’t, and more. The more advice you can get when you’re starting out, the better.

But after you read a lot of writing advice, you realize that some kinds of advice work better for you than others. I suspect other beginners have experienced this. I’ve identified two general approaches, and I’ll first discuss the one I encountered first. Since I was working especially on “how to write fantasy,” and especially novels, I’ll focus on that kind of advice.

1. The blueprint approach. The first approach to “how to write a fantasy novel” is to tackle the pieces, or elements, of the novel. These would include the world in which your story takes place (including the type of magic in that world, and its role in that world), the characters and their personalities (plus what kinds of creatures will exist in your world), the dilemma those characters must face, the way that dilemma unfolds (the plot), and such smaller pieces as “scenes” that occur in the larger story arc.

Proponents of the blueprint approach often advise us to build exciting, interesting, and believable worlds, populate them with exciting and interesting characters (not too perfect), and throw them into a situation that is also exciting and interesting. They might tell us how to construct a kick-ass plot line, how to make dialogue zing, and how to give depth to characters. If you follow their advice, you can (perhaps) build something readable or at least something halfway there.

2. The intuitive approach. The second approach begins from the other side, so to speak. If the first approach builds the story like a house, the second feels its way into it by a door or window (or perhaps a crack in the foundation). In the second approach, there is a house but no blueprint, because the writer does not know where she or he is going. Probably the most widely read description of this approach is Stephen King’s On Writing. King disavows plots altogether, claiming he is not (nor does he ever desire to be) a plotting person. He starts with an idea (an intuition), a new combination of two things, and he describes the unfolding of the story as a discovery, not a construction project.

But other writers say similar things. Ursula LeGuin informs us that she did not know what existed on the islands of Earthsea until she “went there” with her characters. She too seemingly intuits, discovers through writing. Jane Yolen tells us that she writes like a reader, not knowing what will happen next (and interested to find out).

This intuitive approach to writing is less commonly encountered in how-to guides, and for an obvious reason: it’s hard to give concrete advice about following your intuition. (Though Stephen King did a pretty good job.) What’s more, writers who take this approach tend not to gravitate toward “how-to” thinking in the first place. They aren’t blueprint sorts of people.

Which brings me to the impetus behind this post, and its final point. If, like the second group, you’re an intuitive, idea-oriented person, you’ll probably find the blueprint approach mechanical, devoid of excitement, turning the writer into a typewriter. If you’re the blueprint sort, you’ll probably find the intuitive approach overwhelming, lacking focus or direction, confronting the writer with an intimidating blank page.

The point is, then, to discover which kind of writer you are. I wish I had known sooner; I would have spent less time trying to pinpoint the exact beginning and end of a scene in my novel, and more time thinking inside the scene. Maybe this post will help you avoid a similar pitfall.

Reclaiming Narnia

After I wrote my last post, I went surfing to see how widespread my idea about Narnia being faerie is. (Somewhat after the fact, I admit; also, not that common.) What I discovered in the process was that Narnia has been largely co-opted by two different camps. On the one side is the overtly theological camp, which wants to read even more theology into Narnia than C. S. Lewis would have welcomed. I’ve read enough of his work to know that Lewis himself believed in the old-fashioned notion that the best of Greek and Roman (pagan) culture had some genuine good in it, and this good found fulfillment (for him) in Christ. I think he would have said this about fairy tales, as much as he did about ancient poets. So no, it’s not a theological allegory, a parlor trick for duping people into learning religious dogma; he even says as much.

The other camp—there seem to be always two camps these days, and always squaring off over some shared misunderstanding. Anyway, the other camp holds that the Narnia books are too Christian, too theological, too inconsistent, too this and too that … Virtual whiners, we might call them. Fault-finders. They apparently dislike what the “theology” camp likes. Both are missing the point.

If, like me, you’re disgusted by this kind of co-opting and want to reclaim Narnia, here’s my suggestion. Read these books aloud to children (preferably about 6 years old). You’ll discover a few things, I think. One is that Narnia reads extremely well aloud. At least, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe does. You can easily and intuitively inject the correct emotion into just about any piece of dialogue. There are pauses and surprises that come right out of the book at you—and better yet, at your rapt child-audience. Watch their faces while you read, and then tell me that it’s “too theological” or it’s an “allegory.” Nope. It’s gripping fiction for children. It’s fantasy that captures—and expands—a child’s imagination. And sometimes (not always), a child might even think Aslan is kind of like Jesus. But don’t count on it.

Lewis once wrote (I think in his autobiography) that adults shouldn’t be too snobby about how children first encounter classic themes and stories. He saw value in first becoming acquainted with a retold, childish form of those old stories. Later in life, coming across the “genuine article,” they’ll experience (he thought) a shock of surprise—pleasant and appealing—and associate their earlier fond memories with it.

I suspect he had something like that in mind for Narnia, and especially the story of one person giving up his (or her) life for another out of love, beyond the demands of mere justice. Yes, that’s a story in the Bible, and Lewis was profoundly attached to that biblical story. He made no secret of that, even in the Narnia books. But it’s also a story that Lewis would have said is found in the best of “pagan” literature, in certain fairy tales and in other great works of art. It’s a story of love that we do well to encounter in our dew-eyed youth, if only so that we can believe in such love later in life, when it’s both harder to believe in anything that good, and also more necessary.

PS: This post comes as I’m re-reading Prince Caspian—aloud to kids.

"The Fairy Way of Writing" - Joseph Addison

In 1712, a British critic named Joseph Addison discussed what we would call “fantastic” or “fairy stories” as an identifiable literary form. This is, he says, “The Fairy Way of Writing”:

There is a kind of writing wherein the poet quite loses sight of nature and entertains his reader’s imagination with the characters and actions of such persons as have many of them no existence but what he bestows on them. Such are Fairies, Witches, Magicians, Demons, and departed Spirits.

Addison seems to think, when the story is “fantastic,” art becomes something apart from nature. While this may appear to make sense, in fact fantasy arguably requires more sympathy with nature, not less. What’s more, the beings he mentions don’t exist merely in the author’s or readers’ imagination. They exist in a tradition of storytelling that both author and reader dip into.

Addison seems to admit this a little later in the essay:

Besides possessing “a particular cast of fancy, and an imagination naturally fruitful and superstitious”, the author “ought to be very well versed in legends and fables, antiquated romances, and the traditions of nurses and old women, that he may fall in with our natural prejudices, and humor those notions which we have imbibed in our Infancy.”

In effect, fantastic tales “work” because we recognize something in them, however strange their new embodiment in this particular tale. This, by the way, is nice early confirmation for a point I’ve made before in this blog: to write good fantasy, it’s crucial to really know the deeper stratum of folk and fairy tradition that is employed – whatever tradition the author chooses.

Now back to Addison: Even stranger, at one point in the essay he seems to admit the possible existence of fantastic kinds of beings:

we are sure in general there are many intellectual beings in the world besides our selves, and several species of spirits, who are subject to different laws and economies from those of mankind.

It’s not clear to me how seriously he means this. If he’s serious, this leaves open the possibility of “wonder,” the sneaking suspicion that these stories (or something like them) might really be true.

As a recent critic, David Sandner, puts it, “Modern skeptical humanity should be immune to the ‘secret terrors’ of the fantastic, but is not.” Sandner adds that this is part of fantasy’s “power,” namely, its ability to reawaken our supposedly bygone, superstitious fears. (Think ghosts, goblins, demons.)

But critics of fantasy sometimes point to this very power as a fault: the longings and fears fantasy reawakens are “childish." From a staunchly modern perspective, this “childhood” is also the childhood of humanity—the “premodern man.” If readers discover that they are, in some way, “premodern” (superstitious, irrational, unenlightened) … Well, I don’t think that’s the fault of fantastic literature. It only shows that fantastic stories, done well, are a rightful part of our human storytelling heritage.

I’ll conclude with a quote that shows how perceptive Addison could be about what makes for a good, effective “fantastic” story. He says that if the author of a fantastic story lacks a deep knowledge of traditional legends and folk tales,

he will be apt to make his fairies talk like people of his own species, and not like other sets of beings ... and think in a different manner from that of mankind ....

Source: David Sandner, Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (Praeger, 2004), 21-23; 316-325.

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.

Fantasy - according to Terri Windling

Terri Windling once gave a speech in which she laid out two realms of fantasy produced in the twentieth century:

those rooted in the grand themes, symbols, and language of myth, epic, and romance, and those rooted in the humbler stuff of folklore and fairy tales. The first category includes tales epic in scope, full of sweeping heroic adventures and battles on which the fate of worlds, or at least kingdoms, depend. The latter category includes much smaller tales, more intimate in nature — stories of individual rites of passage and personal transformation.

These two realms of fantasy, in turn, hark back to two very different ancient story-telling traditions. The epic kind, as she mentions, grows out of the court—the elite circles in which men of power and substance (or their supporters) passed down authoritative accounts of the world. Some of these epics can be quite profound meditations on the meaning of human existence, the struggle against corruption and overwhelming evil, or just the existential question of life’s meaning in the face of death. Think of Homer and Beowulf. Battle scenes are important to epic, partly because the story of struggle against evil foes is one way political regimes justify power. Romance, too, of the chivalrous kind, concerns men (and their consorts) in the aureate glow of the king and his court.

Windling’s second category harks back to a separate tradition of storytelling. As she puts it, “The oral folk tale tradition, on the other hand, was a peasant tradition, and a largely female one.” That peasant tradition, then, is less likely to be about the rise and fall of great empires, than to be about the rise and fall of a sharp-tongued girl, a submissive daughter, or an uppity son. Storytellers in this folk tradition work on themes that are no less hair-raising, no less pregnant with magic and evil. They’re simply for a different audience.

In some ways, in fact, the magic in the “peasant tradition” can be more unexpected and, therefore, more terrifying, more grim—maybe even more potent.

Modern fantasy novels generally take their departure, says Windling, from one or the other tradition. They can depart far from that tradition, of course, and individual writers can work in both mediums. There are no doubt instances where the two seem to merge. Literature rarely holds to type.

But Windling’s observations are worth bearing in mind. They offer a helpful corrective to thinking of “fantasy” as inevitably in the epic mode. Effective fantasy can thrive without battles, drawn swords or sieges on towns--with none of the machinery of war. It can have small people, girls and boys or peasants or herb-swilling old women … caught up in smaller tensions of magic or finding escape through it. And it can surprise us with its human insights along the way.

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.