The BIG FAT THEORY of BIG FAT FANTASY

[Larry]

*bump*

Would be interested in reading what some of the newer denizens of this forum might make of the arguments of six years ago, especially since it seems one author may have used some of this in a couple of his books

 

[RedMage]

Will do. But first, sleep. Then I'll have to read 22 pages of discussion. Yay!

 

[RedMage]

Ok, so I didn't read all the posts before this. Hardly any in fact. Maybe that's bad, maybe it's not. But now my thoughts aren't all bogged down with other peoples' thoughts

Here is the original question, posted oh so many years ago now:

How does epic fantasy fit into the Big Picture? What historical influences gave rise to it? What contemporary needs does it answer to? Why is it a 'degraded' literary category? Is there a Big Fat Fantasy gene, or are social conditions to blame? What is the psychology of epic fantasy? Or for that matter, it's economics, politics, ethics, sociology - or even physics? What would Freud say? Or how about Heidegger, Adorno, Popper, Foucault or Wittgenstein? What would alien anthropologists watching from orbit think?

What would your mother say?

Some speculated back when that fantasy is a part of our modern myth/story telling. That it was our 20th Century attempt to explain what we couldn't otherwise explain in the world around us. Still others thought that it was a conditioned thing that you/we were encouraged to like/enjoy as children and adolescents.

I think fantasy is more of a wish fulfillment bent than either of these two things. Not a bad thing at all, it is the expression of the hopes and dreams of both authors and readers for a different world than the one we live in now. Explaining things like lightening and how fire works and how cuts scab over and heal, science does all of that for us now. It's not about explaining things. It's about going to the root of what makes us human.

Take, for example, the end of the world, apocalyptic epic fantasy. That's about being a part of something more than yourself. About doing something that makes actually makes difference. More than working a desk job in the corporate hq of a national or, even, international corporation. It's about being wanted, about being loved and loving back enough that you are willing to do whatever is necessary to preserve the subject of your love.

The reason for this? It doesn't exist in our world anymore. The Age of Exploration from Columbus to the dawn of the 20th-Century is over. The Age of Heroes has been dead and gone even longer. People now do what they do because that's what their parents did, that's what their kids need them to do to keep putting food on the table. Making a difference anymore involves way too many other people besides yourself for any but the most arrogant of people to say they were the ones who made the change happen. Fantasy lets writers imagine a world where one man can make a difference and claim and be recognized as the single individual who made that difference. For readers, it lets them immerse themselves in a world where people are still honorable, still truthful, still able to see the noses on their faces, still to things for other reasons than a paycheck.

So if it's anything, Fantasy and Epic Fantasy in particular are about creating the myth of a better world than this. As I write this I'm suddenly thinking that if the apocalypse were to come and all the post-apocalypse books came true, that the great majority of loss of life wouldn't occur because people wouldn't be able to defend themselves or grow their own food or whatnot. It would be because they are unable to do anything that doesn't involve receiving a paycheck.

Ok, so this is maybe not the best explanation of what I think. But discussion always helps. So talk to me people! Discuss! Let me know what you think.

 

[ElinIsabel]

It wasn't that the students in general were "dumber" than before, it was more that their priorities were mostly on concrete, lower-level (according to Bloom's taxonomy of learning) processing of material. They wanted to consume what had to be consumed, regurgitate it on the exams, and then move on. When they read, they wanted stories that were easy to figure out, with comfortable themes. When I had to explain the workings of a Sherlock Holmes mystery to them, many had a difficult time until I acted out parts of the action to illustrate the point. Their brains are more wired for processing visual images than for processing word meanings on a printed page.

With this in mind, is it any wonder that they want most everything laid out for them, with info-dumps galore? As I've said before, we're moving into a post-literate society. What's to happen to literature should be interesting, if somewhat dismaying for those who understand and appreciate the more challenging works.

I used to be a teacher, (taught Religious Studies) and good lord, that is so true. Both my husband and I taught at a Connecticut prep school where you would think the kids would be smart and literate, but no, not at all; education was merely a product and a means to an end, both to students and parents.

But there was always a little minority that loved learning, philosophy, theology, literature, all of the good stuff, and was willing to put forth the effort. Those kids gave me a lot of hope. I think there is a core of young people out there who still genuinely want to learn and challenge themselves, who want well written and difficult books, and they will keep literature going.

I don't encounter the relative thing as much as a student or as a teacher; although that could be because I don't see relativism it as a problem Most young people I've worked with from high school up to my fellow grad students (who have had some of the best multicultural training you can get) all can get pretty absolute about their worldview if you poke them with the right stick.

Some speculated back when that fantasy is a part of our modern myth/story telling. That it was our 20th Century attempt to explain what we couldn't otherwise explain in the world around us.

Somewhere I read that fantasy was literature that made what was interior in human beings and our world exterior through the fantastic elements. Myth serves a lot of the same purpose. But I think one of the major differences between myth and much literature of the fantastic is that myth tends to affirm the common worldview and provide a basis for it, where a lot of fantasy seeks to subvert and challenge assumptions. BFF, however, often seems to function more like traditional myth, affirming the heros and tropes we are familiar with and know, and as a result, it is comfortable and accessible to a wide range of people.

The comfort angle also might accound for its largesse; when you are comfortable with something, certain characters, a certain place, you want to read more of it to continue the stream of cozy affirmation. A place that is too uncomfortable or too subversive might only be tolerable for a book or two. In a subversive fantasy, there is a tension and a distance that can only be sustained for a certain length before it demands a certain climax; in BFF, everything is more familiar, with a more immersive POV and style, and so the tension is spread out and the reader can linger there comfortably for a longer time.

I also think John Grant (and John Clute, who he references) have some interesting points about BFF here:

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/gulliver.htm

 

[Randy M.]

Just some thoughts ...

Some speculated back when that fantasy is a part of our modern myth/story telling. That it was our 20th Century attempt to explain what we couldn't otherwise explain in the world around us. Still others thought that it was a conditioned thing that you/we were encouraged to like/enjoy as children and adolescents.

I think fantasy is more of a wish fulfillment bent than either of these two things. Not a bad thing at all, it is the expression of the hopes and dreams of both authors and readers for a different world than the one we live in now. Explaining things like lightening and how fire works and how cuts scab over and heal, science does all of that for us now. It's not about explaining things. It's about going to the root of what makes us human.

I'm not sure any of the proposed reasons for the being of fantasy are mutually exclusive. Some of them may even work in combination.

I do think that, for writers, fantasy offers a tool that the forms of realism do not, a method for subverting observable fact to get to the core of what it means to be human. (A statement that is not meant to diminish what realism is capable of.) While realism of one sort or another has been the dominant form of fiction since sometime in the 1800s, most every major realist has taken a stab at some sort of fantastic literature, if only the ghost story.

Take, for example, the end of the world, apocalyptic epic fantasy. That's about being a part of something more than yourself. About doing something that makes actually makes difference. More than working a desk job in the corporate hq of a national or, even, international corporation. It's about being wanted, about being loved and loving back enough that you are willing to do whatever is necessary to preserve the subject of your love.

Essentially, with certain events -- at the extreme end apocalypse, though something rather less large, like simple murder, can also fill the need -- you raise the stakes for the characters involved, using it as the means to distill their characters to the purest elements. This could just as easily be applied to war novels: There were a lot of survivors of WWII, particularly on the American home front, who recalled the war years fondly because it was a compressed portion of their lives where their way of life was in jeopardy and what happened daily and what they did daily could have a direct effect on the rest of their lives. That kind of pressure, that feeling of being on the side of goodness and right must have been exhilarating for many of them.


Randy M.

 

[owlcroft]

Just an of-the-cuff view . . .

The original question wasn't about fantasy: it was expressly about epic fantasy, and the thread title more exactly addresses "Big Fat Fantasy".

I suspect that the defining quality of epic fantasy is that it most closely approximates a common variety of wish-fulfillment. (I don't suppose I need spell out how that is so.) Affairs are usually rather uncomplicated, and painted, so to speak, in primary colors. It is, one might say, only slightly grown-up children's bedtime-story material.

(I think that is why some naifs are impressed that this or that "ground-breaking" author lets characters get killed--in most EFP, few if any non-red-shirt characters ever come to much woe.)

I know that's superficial, and lots more could be said, with particularities addressed. But I suspect it contains the kernel of the issue.

 

[ElinIsabel]

It is, one might say, only slightly grown-up children's bedtime-story material.

Except children's bedtime material is far less "safe"; children's stories are traditionally the realm of women's storytelling, which is often far more subersive and dangerous than myth and hero stories, which leans towards reaffirmation of the patriarchal order. Traditional fairy tales and children's rhymes are downright gruesome, and even modern children's lit is a lot less afraid to confront death and shadow than a good bit of BFF.

I think wish fullfillment hits the nail on the head for BFF. Personally, my enjoyment of BFF (Eddings, Jordan) was usually based around comfort with the characters and the world, that "cozy" feeling, where other lit of the fantastic (Atwood, LeGuin, Carter, Lovecraft) is more challenging and shocks me out of complacency, showing me how grotesque and displacing the world can be, especially for me as a woman, which gives a different kind of comfort, or at least insight.

Though the more recent BFF does seem to be more challenging, at least inverting and subverting the hero and villian tropes and making the traditional fantasy world less comfortable...any thoughts as to why that trend is so popular? Is it less comfortable? Or a different kind of wish fullfillment?

 

[E_Moon]

Realism being subversive very easily slips into lecture rather than story (and lecture, rather than story, has been demonstrated less effective at both informing and changing attitudes.) Realism also runs head-first into the brick wall of resistance: the attitudes of the culture in which readers are immersed. It's in the effort to overcome that predictable resistance that writers of realistic fiction are too often tempted into abandoning story for sermonizing, or into exaggerating within the story (thus making it less realistic.)

Fantasy being subversive can breach resistant minds more effectively. The reader's awareness that he/she is entering a fantasy story results in a lowering of the defensive barriers (in order to enjoy fantasy, one must accept the writer's axioms, if only for the duration fo the story.) Despite the expressed disgust at generic fantasy in the Grant article mentioned above, even the most generic fantasy has this subversive effect: it provides readers with an alternative to the world-view in which they are submerged by daily life.

Example: A strong adherent of a political position or religious belief will slam the mental doors against a direct attack...but may be willing (is usually willing if he/she reads fantasy at all) to consider different ideas if presented in a different setting, far away from the people next door. The defense of "That's just being idealistic" may still be in play, but the drip-by-drip of fantasy--that's giving pleasure even as it trickles past the barriers--may make lasting changes. It may at least give the reader more understanding of people who think differently.

 

[Jon Sprunk]

Somewhere I read that fantasy was literature that made what was interior in human beings and our world exterior through the fantastic elements.

I like this statement. I think I will steal it for my own nefarious purposes.

 

[owlcroft]

Navarth: wiser than the average madman . . . .

There is a nice paraphrase of Ms. Moon's observations (with which I fully agree) from Jack Vance, as expressed through his famous secondary character, Navarth the mad poet:

I sought to express truth in all its vehemence. This is a danger. A meaning must be uttered idly, without emphasis. The listener is under no compulsion to react; his customary defenses are not in place, the meaning enters his mind.

 

[ElinIsabel]

Fantasy being subversive can breach resistant minds more effectively. The reader's awareness that he/she is entering a fantasy story results in a lowering of the defensive barriers

One of the first things they taught us when I was studying Religious Ed was "don't preach, tell stories." We had a class on oral storytelling technique as a part of the program.

And yeah...about the article, although I agree with some of his sentiment, that fantasy should be challenging, the thing that bugs me about the article is that I feel like it didn't distinquish well between what supposedly "Real" and "Generic" Fantasy is. I would hate to think that pre-industrial settings and dragons and all that good stuff is now permanently banished to "generic cozy fantasyland" post-Tolkien and Dunsany, and it puzzled me that he thought some was well written but not "fantasy proper". Hmmm.

Thoughts from those older and wiser?

This has been bugging me for a while.

 

[E_Moon]

I'm probably older, but wouldn't claim wiser. However...I don't like the Attitude. I didn't like the Attitude when I was a kid, and I don't like the Attitude now...the sneering, sniping, condescension and downright meanness involved. I don't think he's right about what fantasy is "for"...I don't think he, or anyone else, has a right to say what fantasy "should" be doing. There are things fantasy can do, to be sure, and to my mind both writers of fantasy and readers of fantasy have the right to choose which of those possibilities they wish to explore.

The notion that fiction writers have an obligation to be "challenging" or "enlightening" or that they should "force people out of their comfort zones" is pure arrogance. Fiction writers, reviewer, and critics are not literary physicians, qualified and licensed to diagnose what is wrong with readers and prescribe reading to fix it...and when they get on their soapbox and start declaiming, it's out of control issues as warped as any televangelist's. They want to be In Charge.

And that's not how fiction works. In fiction, the writer is in charge of writing the story that appeals to him/her, and the reader is in charge of choosing what to read...whatever that may be. Of course, in school it's possible to force readers to read works they don't want to read, and don't enjoy while reading (a major cause of people quitting on fiction and poetry...teachers can insist that reading something unpleasant (whether boring or repulsive) is good for you...but their having the power to enforce that doesn't mean it's true.

Besides, fiction--even the simplest fiction--is inherently challenging (neurologically speaking) because it requires considerable reading skill (which utilizes multiple parts of the brain) to read well. The reader must enter into another's viewpoint--must be able to reproduce physical sensations from reading the words on the page, imagining the sights, smells, sounds, tastes, tactile and pressure sensations--must grasp the entire context of the story--psychological, social, cultural, historical. This is a challenge (and many people who are functionally literate do not read fiction because it's too hard...they find the need to understand motivation and interpersonal aspects of plot while building the whole context of the story and following the plot difficult to impossible.) Recent articles in the journal Science on teaching science literacy point out the difficulties of reading even nonfiction well.

Of course traditional elements of fantasy stories shouldn't be banished back to the nursery as suitable only for the naive and immature. There is something wrong with someone trying to build razor-wire barriers across imagination and label as disposable dreck, worthy only of being flushed into a sewer, those story-types they don't like. There's no real difference between a literary theorist saying that "generic fantasy" is a waste of time and even harmful, and a televangelist railing against books that he thinks are a waste of time and even harmful. Both are trying to censor; both are trying to control writers and readers...and Imagination with a capital I.

Do I think all fantasy is well-written? No. I also don't think all of any genre is well-written. Do I find all fantasy worth my time? No. Some highly-praised books and series (highly praised here as well) don't work for me--I read a few chapters and gave up on it, going on to something that did work for me. They don't have one something that I want...or they have something I don't want. But for any given book, my judgment that the book is or is not worth my time is valid only for me. It might be worth someone else's time. That other person may be (probably is) not like me--has a different background, is living in different circumstances, has different psychological needs than I do.

What bugs me is the polarization caused by the attempt to apply "should" and "ought" to the content (not the craft) of writing and reading...and the degree of smugness and condescension shown by those who are laying down the shoulds and oughts. (I do think there are shoulds and oughts to the craft: Don't bore your readers, being commandment #1. But they're all fluid...to a degree.)

 

[ElinIsabel]

There is something wrong with someone trying to build razor-wire barriers across imagination.

I like that. I'm going to hold on to that thought.

It seems like a lot of critical essays (including essays by people whose opinions I respect) will bemoan "there is so much horrible, bloated fantasy!" but then never really talk about what makes it so horrible, and the go on to talk about how "real" fantasy liberates the imagination.

::::shakes head in confusion::::

I like pushing and reaching for high standards, and I enjoy good criticism (I'll confess, I enjoy reading John Clute's essays even if he is a mean old curmudgeon, and I could read LeGuin's critical essays over and over), but I have a hard time with the idea that all BFF should forever condemned just because it has been Said So.

So, thanks. This "real" vs. "generic" thing has been bugging the crap out of me for awhile. Not just from this article, but other places...

 

[owlcroft]

Fantasy fiction is fiction.

It seems like a lot of critical essays (including essays by people whose opinions I respect) will bemoan "there is so much horrible, bloated fantasy!" but then never really talk about what makes it so horrible, and the go on to talk about how "real" fantasy liberates the imagination.

What makes lousy fantasy is mostly just what makes lousy fiction of any kind. What makes it horrible can be, in no special order:

• Horrible writing : an inability to say things with precision and elegance, which are the desiderata of language use.
  
• Horrible characterization : characters who are either unrealistically two-dimensional cardboard, or wildly untrue to any reasonable idea of what humans are and how they act, or both.
  
• Horrible plot : Actions without plausible motives; obvious things not done and/or bizarre, inexplicable things done; wild coincidences; happenings not truly accounted for and/or at odds with what has gone before; and others that I suppose most people can imagine.
  
• Horrible settings : That can mean an imagined world that is too sketchily presented or--far more often--one wildly over-presented, including details about the sexual lives of farm animals you wouldn't care to know about if you lived on a farm; worlds containing gross implausibilities (vast cities off in desert-ringed mountains and no economy in sight); and so on.

The first two horribles can be found in any form of fiction, but the third and especially the fourth are notably common characteristics of Extruded Fantasy Product. (A rather long essay on those and related matters can be found here.)

Matters such as "how 'real' fantasy liberates the imagination" are mostly, as young Frankenstein said of his grandfather's work, doo-doo. Speculative fiction uses the fantastical--whether "fantasy" or "science fiction"--to allow the author to more readily or better say something about Life, the Universe, and Everything than a mainstream tale might allow it to be said. The rest is window dressing and wallpaper.

 

[suciul]

Sorry for the interspersing below which I usually dislike, but I cannot resist

• Horrible writing : an inability to say things with precision and elegance, which are the desiderata of language use.
  
  whose desiderata may I wonder?
  
  
• Horrible characterization : characters who are either unrealistically two-dimensional cardboard, or wildly untrue to any reasonable idea of what humans are and how they act, or both.
  
  and what humans are and how do they act? any study of history or of current headlines should give a lie to any reasonable parametrization of such - how many times did you read this or that and thought "if this were fiction, it just would not have been believed..."
  
  even talking about "regular", "normal" humans - whatever that means - and the above is misleading considering our vast and complex history
  
  
• Horrible plot : Actions without plausible motives; obvious things not done and/or bizarre, inexplicable things done; wild coincidences; happenings not truly accounted for and/or at odds with what has gone before; and others that I suppose most people can imagine.
  
  
  kind of like real life maybe?
  
  
  Now here I agree that fiction in general *has to* make sense and I am with authors that argue that in fiction you can get away with one or two "out of character" acts and no more, but the above criticism while plausible depends on *your* definition of it to a large extent
  
  
• Horrible settings : That can mean an imagined world that is too sketchily presented or--far more often--one wildly over-presented, including details about the sexual lives of farm animals you wouldn't care to know about if you lived on a farm; worlds containing gross implausibilities (vast cities off in desert-ringed mountains and no economy in sight); and so on.
  
  the one valid criticism especially regarding settings that do not make sense economically or geographically and indeed one thing that tends to suspend my disbelief but again it's up to your mileage to a large extent and of what role does the setting play in the novel
  

 

[Jon Sprunk]

Fiction writers, reviewer, and critics are not literary physicians, qualified and licensed to diagnose what is wrong with readers and prescribe reading to fix it...and when they get on their soapbox and start declaiming, it's out of control issues as warped as any televangelist's. They want to be In Charge.

Here here!

I enjoy reviews that tell me what the reviewer thought about a book, not what he/she believes I should think.

 

[Irrelevant]

With a post that was 22 pages long, I couldn't read all of it, so I apologize if I repeat anything already said.

Fantasy is just like any other form of writing. It can be poignant, well-written, and act as a reflection of society as a whole. Proof of this can be found in at least 90% of the novels written by Terry Pratchett.

However, there are people who snort at Fantasy and these same people snort at science fiction. They group everything outside of "literature" into "genre fiction" as if the "literature" they enjoy doesn't belong to a genre.

I declare a name for this so called "non-genre." Oscarbaiter. Alternatively, Award-Baiters. It applies to any film trying to win an Oscar or any book trying to be adapted to a film that would be in the running for an Oscar.

So next time you read a book or watch a movie about a mentally challenged man trying to overcome his limitations or listen to a drawn out story about how hard it is to be a cattle ranger whilst being sexually attracted to men, remember the term, "Oscarbaiter." Cause that is what you are currently watching or reading. There is no deep message. There is no commentary on society. There is no point. It is simply following a formula that has been proven to win awards. In my opinion, that makes it the worst fiction of all.

 

[owlcroft]

New shipment of clever post titles due in soon . . . .

" . . .precision and elegance, which are the desiderata of language use." whose desiderata may I wonder? Those of every serious writer or speaker. Language is a tool with which one user of the language places thoughts in the mind of another such user; precision and elegance (in both senses of that word, but especially "the attribute of being unusually effective and simple") are the obvious desiderata of that use.

[...]

any study of history or of current headlines should give a lie to any reasonable parametrization of [what humans are and how do they act] - how many times did you read this or that and thought "if this were fiction, it just would not have been believed..." Not very often; nor, I think, do most people who have had much interaction with the world as it is. Cardboard stereotypes are invariably: one, obvious; and two, painful.

[...]

"Actions without plausible motives; obvious things not done and/or bizarre, inexplicable things done; wild coincidences; happenings not truly accounted for and/or at odds with what has gone before; and others that I suppose most people can imagine." kind of like real life maybe? Not the real life I and those I know lead, but perhaps your experience of it differs.

[...]

the one valid criticism especially regarding settings that do not make sense economically or geographically and indeed one thing that tends to suspend my disbelief but again it's up to your mileage to a large extent and of what role does the setting play in the novel

(I think you means tends to interfere with your suspension of disbelief.) It doesn't matter what role the incredible thing or things play, it only matters if they are incredible enough that the reader says "WTF?" It's the Law of Least Cervical Displacement: if the reader jerks his or her head up on reading about some circumstance, then very probably there's something seriously wrong with that circumstance.


More generally, I don't undertand the whole post. Are we supposed to take it that horribleness in language use, characterization, plot, and setting are immaterial to the quality of a fantasy tale? Or are we to take it that there are no such forms of horrible, and that it is all about the same in quality? Or are we to take it that the everyday, commonsense meanings of the terms are all wrong? None of those is remotely plausible, so you must have meant something substantially different from any of them: but what that something is remains opaque to me.

 

[ElinIsabel]

What makes lousy fantasy is mostly just what makes lousy fiction of any kind. What makes it horrible can be, in no special order:

Horrible writing : an inability to say things with precision and elegance, which are the desiderata of language use.

Horrible characterization : characters who are either unrealistically two-dimensional cardboard, or wildly untrue to any reasonable idea of what humans are and how they act, or both.

Horrible plot : Actions without plausible motives; obvious things not done and/or bizarre, inexplicable things done; wild coincidences; happenings not truly accounted for and/or at odds with what has gone before; and others that I suppose most people can imagine.

Horrible settings : That can mean an imagined world that is too sketchily presented or--far more often--one wildly over-presented, including details about the sexual lives of farm animals you wouldn't care to know about if you lived on a farm; worlds containing gross implausibilities (vast cities off in desert-ringed mountains and no economy in sight); and so on.
The first two horribles can be found in any form of fiction, but the third and especially the fourth are notably common characteristics of Extruded Fantasy Product. (A rather long essay on those and related matters can be found here.)

So does anyone have a hypothesis on why the last two might be common problems with BFF or EFP etc, and some ways to avoid those problems?

Also, the last one (setting) is something I've thought about. I have a question about it, but I'm going to start a new thread for it...

 

[owlcroft]

Sad to say . . . .

So does anyone have a hypothesis on why the last two {horrible plot, horrible settings} might be common problems with BFF or EFP etc, and some ways to avoid those problems?...

I fear that it is because an awful lot of fantasy writers wrongly take fantasy to mean that more or less anything goes. If you write a novel set in the streets of contemporary Los Angeles, there are things you just cannot do without getting a horselaugh; but set the tale in Somewheria and--so many feel--it can be as senseless as one pleases.

That is possible, of course, only because there is a corresponding readership, one that just wants its fix of what someone once called "teddy-bear worlds", where The Good Guys Win And The Bad Guys Lose. Authors are supplying suitably gift-wrapped sets of curtains and wallpaper for readers who (to mix a metaphor) smoke such stuff for their high.