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| Walk with me... |
I just finished re-reading The Long Walk after a long walk of my own, years and years of life since my last reading decades ago. Some thoughts.
We get no details on why the Walk came to be, just a couple scant suggestions. Like this: “In the old days, before the Change and the Squads, when there were still millionaires, they used to set up foundations and build libraries and all that good shit.” There is a reference to a war fought against a nuclear-armed Germany in 1953. So it’s not set in an apocalyptic future but some alternate history, perhaps one in which Germany develops an atomic weapon before 1945 and greatly extended the second world war. The result is a terrible totalitarian 20th century where the country is so lost and the future so bereft of hope that it turns to horrible death-fueled game shows to forget.
We don’t know, and I like it this way. Given the many chapter epigraph references to the Price is Right, prize fighting, and the Ten-Thousand Dollar Pyramid, I’m sure King was inspired by the game show craze sweeping the nation in the 1970s.
Things haven’t changed all that much. We all seem to be walking around in a fog, distracted just enough by digital spectacle to ignore the real horrors going on around us, as well as our own impending deaths. Just scroll an Instagram feed.
The Long Walk is an extended metaphor on dying. We’re all on the same Walk, two minutes from a ticket out (Walkers who slow their pace get three warnings before they are shot dead). That brief space tracks somewhat closely to what happens when you stop breathing. We’re separated from the other side by a thin margin. So we walk, and everyone around us drops off, one by one, until its our turn.
I know the literal, physical territory of this Walk, I was just on it, yesterday, when my wife and I had a nice dinner in Portsmouth, NH. The Walk starts in Maine, crosses into New Hampshire, and a skeletal handful make it all the way to my home state of Massachusetts. Weird, wild. Between King and H.P. Lovecraft New England takes a back seat to no other region of the United States when it comes to horror.
I really do enjoy King, in particular his old stuff. Say what you want about his long-windedness, his occasional closure whiffs and bad endings, and his lack of philosophical depth (King himself describes his work as the literary equivalent of a cheeseburger). I’d be hard-pressed to think of another writer who can so sweep you up into a story and hold you spellbound until the end. That’s true talent.
Thing 2
I’ve seen a few places—messageboards, articles, reddit threads—refer to the sword-and-sorcery definition I offered in Flame and Crimson as “seven points,” which makes it seem like a cumbersome checklist that must be met.
This is not correct, because it’s not what I wrote.
What I wrote was, sword-and-sorcery often contains these handful of elements; it does not need all of them nor any precise proportion. But shorn of any it’s hard to picture anyone calling said story S&S.
I kind of like this, it seems to me flexible and elegant, forgiving but not without boundaries. A precise definition of S&S is not really possible, IMO. When you look at how the subgenre evolved it coalesced over three decades and in conversations with authors and a fan community. It has changed and will continue to evolve. So instead of a precise definition I offered up a constellation of tropes. With the caveat that I am just a guy and YMMV.
See some of my other musings here.
But for some reason this seems to be a continued source of confusion and occasionally complaint. Some feel the need to simplify the definition, boil and boil down like maple syrup in some type of purity contest, until the definition of S&S might fit on the head of a pin.
If you must insist…I can’t boil it down to one word but I’ll give you two: Pulp Fantasy.
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| I am this target audience. |
Thing 3
I mentioned Instagram further up; yesterday that platform triangulated me with precision, locked in with unerring heat detecting radar, launched its missile, and hit me with a dead-on bullseye.
The missile: A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap. Signed by director Rob Reiner.
How did I not know this existed? The ad hit my feed. I preordered.
The takeaway: Algorithms work, and I too can be reeled in like a fish on a line.
13 comments:
When King is on he's a very good storyteller. He's really frustrating when he's not. Yeah, he's not a philosophical novelist like say...Dostoevsky, but he doesn't have to be.
There's been a lot of discussion on the definition of S&S. A person can be to bound to strict definitions, but at the same time you need definitions. I once commented that experimental modern poetry was not really poetry because it lacked rhyme and meter and such. Another commenter who actually liked that stuff go mad at me and said poetry was "beyond definition." He did not seem to realize that if you can't come up definition, however faulty, then you may not be as knowledgeable as you think you are. Too be clear I am not saying are this, but I've seen a lack of definition be a problem.
For what it's worth, I always took your list in the way you intended, descriptive, not prescriptive. If I remember correctly, you even noted exceptions to some of these elements in prominent S&S works.
Agreed Matthew, we need some definition, if for nothing else than recommending like titles to others, marketing, etc. But genres should be flexible at the borders. This is art, not science, and writing to template is a bad idea. And rigid arguments about what is and isn't S&S not particularly useful, IMO, even though it can be fun! I'd rather talk about what's interesting or good rather than where it "fits."
Thanks brother. That's exactly how I intended it. And some of the more interesting S&S isn't afraid to break a few "rules" or expectations.
Would be interesting to see a list of items that are, and are not, S&S in your estimation. Could be books of course, but also movies/TV.
Whew... interesting idea that would be very difficult. Do you mean a comprehensive list? There was a LOT of semi-obscure S&S published in the 60s and 70s, both paperbacks and small press magazines, etc, and there's been a large volume published in the last 4-5 years. And I'd be on less solid ground with film and TV shows (I watch very little TV).
Whoah! no, while an exhaustive list would be awesome - I'm more interested in a few examples where you draw the line between "this is just barely S&S, while this is just barely NOT S&S" etc that sort of thing.
You've given me something to think about... maybe I'll risk a post on this. But here's something immediate to look at. Many consider The Dying Earth cycle to be science fiction, science fiction, or sui generis (its own "Dying Earth" subgenre, with other works following behind). I consider them S&S; I'm not unique in this but by no means is this consensus. My reasoning is here: https://goodman-games.com/the-dying-earth-a-case-for-sword-and-sorcery/
Neat. Kind of how people say Star Wars is not Sci-fi but instead is Fantasy.
Btw - A good recent S&S film is "Spine of night"
I've seen Spine of Night... very much enjoyed it. I never reviewed it but mention it here: https://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2021/11/signs-of-modest-s-revival.html
Great. Maybe you could include it in this potential future post. :-)
It occurred to me since I posted above that "Primal", the HBO-produced animated series from Tartatosky (sp), is one of these borderline S&S tales. I think it definitely falls on the S&S side of the line.
Tartakovsky has acknowledged a debt to Robert E. Howard to the point that he named Primal's two main characters Spear and Fang after the title of REH's first published story.
I wrote about the S&S influences here:https://dmrbooks.com/test-blog/2023/4/19/spear-and-sorcery-the-influence-of-robert-e-howard-on-genndy-tartakovskys-primal
I missed that post! Thanks for sharing. Primal is one of my favorite series, certainly of the last 15 years.
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