In 1973 Ursula Le Guin delivered an epic burn to a new kind of fantasy writer in the person of Katherine Kurtz. The passage, famous in its own right, has acquired the aura of legend and is worth revisiting. Having been sent a new fantasy from Lin Carter, editor at Ballantine Books, Le Guin sat down to read. The book was Deryni Rising. She was interrupted after reading this passage:
“Whether or not they succeed in the end will depend largely on Kelson’s personal ability to manipulate the voting.”
“Can he?” Morgan asked, as the two clattered down a half-flight of stairs and into the garden.
“I don’t know, Alaric,” Nigel replied. “He’s good—damned good—but I just don’t know. Besides, you saw the key council lords. With Ralson dead and Bran Corliss practically making open accusations—well, it doesn’t look good.”
“I could have told you that at Cardosa.” (1, p. 41)
When Le Guin returned to the book, she writes
“I happened to pick up a different kind of novel, a real Now novel, naturalistic, politically conscious, relevant, set in Washington, D.C. Here is a sample of a conversation from it, between a senator and a lobbyist for pollution control:
“Whether or not they succeed in the end will depend largely on Kelson’s personal ability to manipulate the voting.”
“Can he?” Morgan asked, as the two clattered down a half-flight of stairs and into the White House garden.
“I don’t know, Alaric,” Nigel replied. “He’s good—damned good—but I just don’t know. Besides, you saw the key committee chairmen. With Ralson dead and Brian Corliss practically making open accusations—well, it doesn’t look good.”
“I could have told you that at Poughkeepsie.” (2, p. 85)
Add two and change four in a passage of eighty-two words, and it’s a completely different novel. Yes, a cheap shot. But it’s an instructive real-world example of the power, not only of the words, but of the details. And what lies behind the details.
Although Le Guin apologized publicly to Kurtz, I don’t think there’s a writer who doesn’t wince at reading this. Being called out by a pre-eminent master of the craft has got to hurt, and I can’t imagine that time has done anything to dull the sting. It doesn’t help (much) that Le Guin noted there were infinitely worse examples she could have chosen, but she picked Kurtz because, she says, “in this book something good has gone wrong—something real has been falsified.” The rest of the essay, From Elfland to Poughkeepsie is about what Le Guin sees as what’s wrong.
From Elfland to Poughkeepsie was written in the years before urban fantasy and alternative history, before Buffy went to Sunnydale and the same year that Blade saw the light of day (if you could call it that.) In other words, she’s not writing about blended genres or crossovers. Le Guin is writing about epic fantasy.
The main focus of the essay is language—and the most amusing part is the What Not To Do advice for fantasy writers. What do you not do? Well, don’t use the second person singular unless you know how to decline it (in other words, don’t “thee” and “thou” all over creation unless you know which is the subject form and which the object); don’t write archaisms that make you sound like a thesaurus threw up: words like tenebrous or eldritch. And stay the hell away from ichor. “You know ichor. It oozes out of severed tentacles, and beslimes tessellated pavements, and bespatters bejeweled courtiers, and bores the bejesus out of everybody” (2, p. 90). Although archaic language distances the story from the reader and, done properly, lends dignity to a tale, Le Guin reminds us that archaism is not necessary, and while it’s pretty, it’s also dangerous and easy to mess up. Outright imitation is deadly. Only Lovecraft can write like Lovecraft; only Dunsany can write like Dunsany—all imitators sound just like what they are.
Le Guin’s choice of the Deryni passage illustrates two things, one about language (next week) and one about character. This week, character—specifically, what makes a hero. “Nobody who says, ‘I told you so,’” Le Guin writes, “has ever been, or will ever be, a hero” (2, p. 87).
”Elfland” is the catchall name the Le Guin uses for Faerie—that place that is the Other. She likens it to “a great national park, a vast and beautiful place where a person goes by himself, on foot, to get in touch with reality in a special, private, profound fashion” (2, p. 83). The trouble with Elfland, she continues, is that it’s become a lot like Yosemite National Park, with the campers and air conditioning, four-wheelers, wi-fi and television. The reality of the wilderness has been replaced by a mediated glamping experience, so people can go into the woods, not to forge a path and find themselves in solitude and without the distractions of modern life, but more like Bear Grylles with a camera crew and a personal chef. It’s no longer a different reality; the mundane of the everyday world has been dragged into a wild place.
The same sort of thing seems to be happening to Elfland, lately. A great many people want to go there, without knowing what it is they’re really looking for, driven by a vague hunger for something real. With the intention or under the pretense of obliging them, certain writers of fantasy are building six-lane highways and trailer parks with drive-in movies [remember, this is 1973], so that the tourists can feel at home, just as if they were back in Poughkeepsie. (2, pp. 83-84).
On one level, Le Guin agrees, fantasy is sheer play, the imagination let loose, a game played only for the sake of the game. And that describes a lot of fantasy. But on another level, the game is different (and if you’ve read any of the previous installments of this series, it’s going to sound quite familiar).
In literature, as realism is to daydream, fantasy is to dream. That is to say it’s uncanny. It rises from the unconscious and lives in the subconscious. It works on us because it lives in us.
It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic, but surrealistic, superrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud’s terminology, it employs primary, not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes….Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. And their guides, the writers of fantasy, should take their responsibilities seriously (2, p. 84)
Fantasy is not a mirror of reality; it was never meant to be. It operates on a deeper level. A good guide should know the paths before taking others down them. This is, I think, the secret of fantasy, its power, its attraction. When it’s done right, the reader feels it on a primal level. Which is why some novels never lose their shine, why we dip back into their worlds again and again—because there’s always something else there, something we didn’t notice last time but this time, suddenly, has become immensely important to us.
This is because fantasy is not about our everyday reality. Fantasy, Le Guin writes, “instead of imitating the perceived confusion and complexity of existence, tries to hint at an order and clarity underlying existence” [emphasis mine](2, p. 87).
The “perceived confusion and complexity of existence” is the purview of realism, that form of narrative that corresponds to daydreaming. Fantasy, the world most closely corresponding to dream, is where “an order and clarity underlying existence” is most clearly evident, that creative mind behind the story, or writer as world-builder, which taps the same well as religion. From religion to mythology to legend to folklore—that’s the progression as outlined by Lang and Tolkien and mythographers like Joseph Campbell. It’s also the progression that got left behind by many new-to-fantasy writers who jumped on the fantasy train without knowing what lay behind the craft, where the train came from nor where it was going.
Side note to illustrate: I was recently invited to a meeting of established writers. I thought it was a pity invitation, really. After all, here I was, unpublished and doggedly pursuing my craft, while the other four were doing quite well, mostly in historical romance. So we met for lunch, and quickly the reason for my inclusion became apparent. All four of these writers wanted “in on the fantasy thing,” and were “considering” various mashups—a fairy falls in love with a gangsta rapper was one of them. None of them had read much beyondTwilight or Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series, but they all felt that there had to be nothing to writing fantasy. Throw in a hot elf or sexy werewolf and they would tap the enormous fan base that obviously didn’t mind consuming trash, since Tolkien was, after all, still popular despite that The Lord of the Rings was just a sausage fest and no, they hadn’t read it themselves and the movies were silly except that Viggo Mortensen was easy on the eyes….. They were looking for me to spill the secret, to let them in on the “tricks” of fantasy. I started to talk about the power of the subconscious and the archetype and looked around to see bored blank stares. So I stopped, and the conversation revived around me about how easy it must be to make up your own reality. When we parted company I’m sure they thought I was rather witless and a waste of their time. So, that “jump on what’s popular because it looks easy” vibe is still happening. I wished the four luck and asked them to let me know how their work was going once they got into it.
This is not a knock on writers wanting to stretch their forms, but it is a knock on hubris. A big part of writing is not knowing what you’re doing until you do it—that’s a given. If you know beforehand how hard it is to craft a novel, you’ll be too intimidated to try it. But these were seasoned writers who were quick to talk at length about the difficulties of writing historical romance but thought that fantasy is romance with a couple of ruffles and a sprinkling of fairy dust. That they were seasoned writers makes the doubly-culpable. Even if they had been novices, I submit that it’s a given you should know something about your form going in. You wouldn’t write in a genre unless you like to read in that genre, or at least have read a couple of the major authors.
Not everyone subscribes to Le Guin’s views on the relationship between myth, archetype and fantasy. Some people see fantasy as nothing more than sheer escapism, and that’s fine. You get out of it what you’re looking for and if you’re satisfied, there’s no arguing with that.
I happen to think Le Guin has it right, and there is much more depth and power to the form than is superficially apparent. And I’ll hold that until I find a better, more intellectually satisfying explanation. Because, yes, there’s fun and escapism, but there’s also heartbreak and hard pure beauty, and it calls to you in ways that realistic fiction doesn’t.
Anyway, back to heroes and the difference between realistic fiction and fantasy.
About realistic fiction: If the purpose of realism is to explore the complexity of life, you expect that complexity to be reflected in your heroes—no, that’s wrong. You don’t have heroes in realism—you have protagonists. You expect them to be fallible. You expect them to stumble and lapse, to stub their toes and cuss. In other words, you expect the same inconsistency in them that you find in life.
Not in fantasy. “The Lords of Elfland are true lords,” Le Guin writes, “the only true lords, the kind that do not exist on this earth: their lordship is the outward sign or symbol of real inward greatness” [again, emphasis mine](2, p. 87).
Remember the disparate qualities of fantasy: akin to dream, rising from the subconscious, Tolkien’s secondary creation of a world that lives, that makes its own coherent reality, a form that seeks out an order underlying the clutter of the real world and the way we perceive it. Those features of fantasy make this a reasonable demand.
In fantasy, a hero is a marker, a guide, a measure by which to judge the other characters and their progress. The hero is an ideal, which makes the figure seem fusty and antiquated, quaint by the standards of realistic fiction. One of the reasons why fantasy heroes are not easy to find is because much of fantasy today resembles Le Guin’s Yosemite Park with its six-lane highway and home-like amenities. You know the difference—when you find the real thing you can feel it. When you’re in the hands of a master, you sense the resonance that’s missing when you read someone who’s playing at fantasy.
Protagonists are not heroes, not necessarily. Although they can certainly become them—they can grow into the role. Protagonists experience a character arc—they learn, they grow, they fail, they lapse. The Lords of Elfland do not. Frodo gets tired and wants to give up; Aragorn does not. Gandalf does not. A Lord of Elfland will never say, “I could have told you that at Poughkeepsie.”
So who are the heroes of Elfland? I have a handful in mind: from Tolkien, Aragorn, Faramir, Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond; from Susanna Clark (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell) we have John Uskglass the Raven King; from Steven Erikson (The Malazan Book of the Fallen) you can count Anomander Rake, Caladan Brood and maybe the Crippled God; from Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book) Silas; from Le Guin herself (The Earthsea Cycle) Ogion the Silent and Kalessin the Eldest. None of these are the characters the reader primarily identifies with; none of them are Frodo or Strange or Ganoes Paran or Nobody or Ged. The heroes are characters who guide or assist the protagonist; yes, they are all on their own journeys, but they stand apart from the narrative—signposts, if you will, marking the trails in the great national park of Elfland.
More next week about the relationship between language and fantasy, and the other half of the Deryni burn.
Previous Installments
Notes:
1. Katherine Kurtz, Deryni Rising. NY: Ballantine, 1970.
2. Ursula Le Guin, “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie,” in The Language of the Night, ed. Susan Woods, NY: Putnam, 1979, pp. 83-96.