A few thoughts on The Bankrupt Nihilism of our Fallen Fantasists

In joining with it seems everyone else on the internet I thought I would weigh in on Leo Grin’s The Bankrupt Nihilism of our Fallen Fantasists . I felt reluctant to do so at first and I still feel that way to some degree, since I respect Grin and the wonderful work he’s done at The Cimmerian, and I much prefer to comment on art and not the man (or woman) behind the works. But that’s what I’m doing here, commenting on the essay itself. So here goes.

Leo seems to be drawing most of his flak for the political commentary in his post. He would have been better served (in my opinion) to keep his post to a critique of art. But in his defense Big Hollywood is a political website and he feels passionately about that stuff. He's a big man and been at this for a long time; like it or hate it he said his piece.

I am not as adamantly opposed to grimly realistic fantasy literature as Grin, even if its terminus is “nihilism.” I’m on record as liking A Song of Ice and Fire. I have had Joe Abercrombie on my to be read list for quite some time. I enjoy some of this stuff as a palate cleanser.

That said, I don’t prefer a steady diet of realism in my fantasy (one Red Wedding is enough, thanks). As I’ve said before the new wave of shock and awe/ grim and dark/whatever you want to call it fantasy literature is not inherently better or more adult than stuff like Tolkien and Howard. In fact, I think it’s the work of an adult to try to make something of this life, not revel and roll about in the muck. Fantasy literature can shock, surprise, and provide edge-of-your-seat storytelling. It can strive to present an accurate depiction of the squalor of Medieval life and the terrible carnage of the battlefields of the era. That’s all fine. But it can also aspire to something more, and at its best it does.

I often ask myself: Why do I like fantasy? I like swords and armor and medieval settings. I like wizards, as long as their magic is dark and mysterious and unpredictable. Monsters are cool. In other words, I like the trappings of the genre. Although, like Grin, I also don’t have the patience anymore for multi-tome epic fantasy, which is why I studiously avoid series like The Wheel of Time. Tolkien gets some flak for starting this trend, but the hardbound The Lord of the Rings I have sitting on my bookshelf checks in at a slim 1,008 pages--all three "books" (Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King) combined. To put that in perspective, Martin’s A Storm of Swords, alone, is nearly as long as LOTR.

I also like books that have something to say about the human condition. Tolkien does, and Howard and Poul Anderson do to some degree. I just finished listening to the audio book of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men: While not fantasy, that book certainly does. While it has many other fine qualities, I’m not so sure I can say the same (yet) about A Song of Ice and Fire. Then again maybe I'm being too hard on Martin; I think what he's doing with the character of Jaime Lannister for example is pretty amazing.

I also like fantasy works that are mythic. This is much harder to explain or quantify. It’s what draws me to Anderson, to E.R. Eddison, to Tolkien, and also to newer works like Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Perhaps a better question to ask is, why do I like myths? Maybe because they provide a framework for how the world works, other than everything is crap. I already know that politicians are corrupt and war is hell; what else do you got?

In the end I have a hard time explaining this stuff, but I do know that works like The Steel Remains don't feel particularly mythic to me. They feel ordinary and de-mythologized, and not very, well, fantas-tic.