Not About Supernatural
So I just finished reading The Magicians by Lev Grossman yesterday, and I have thoughts about it.
Augh, this book. I’m conflicted. I really liked…some of it. The first half basically consists of Our Hero Protagonist Quentin spending five years at magic college learning magic. This is fairly entertaining, but I think Grossman was maybe kind of overly impressed by how Not Like Harry Potter he was being. When actually, yes, it’s magic college instead of magic high school, but the narrative is not vastly more mature or darker as a result. People drink more and are slightly more pretentious and jaded, and there’s more emphasis on what hard work magic is (it hurts your fingers! You develop bulging finger muscles!), but that’s about it. (They do turn into geese and fly to Antarctica, which is cooler than anything Harry Potter ever did, if you ask me.) But anyway, I think Grossman is maybe showing a certain lack of awareness about what fantasy authors have already done. There’s so much heavy-handed talk about how real life is not like Fillory, as if it’s such an innovation for fantasy not to be morally simplistic and full of talking bunnies and so forth.
In the second half of the book, the characters all graduate, become instantly much less likable by way of being totally aimless and dissolute (Oh woe is them! They have unlimited money and can do whatever the heck they want! Existential crisis! Life is meaningless, I tell you, meaningless!), then discover that the magical world of Not-Narnia, We Swear Fillory is real and go there. To me, this was a much more interesting story, although I’m not sure I could say why. I mean, they’re both sort of meta conversations about fantasy with other books in the genre-just now it’s Narnia instead of Harry Potter. To oversimplify. Anyway, seeing them actually go to Fillory after all the hype was pretty cool. My main reaction, honestly, was to wonder why it took them so long to get to that point, and why we'd been wasting so much time on other stuff. Anyway, Fillory is not quite what they expect (although there are lots of giant talking animals and trees, and they really do want random humans to become their leaders, so it’s not quite as subtle and well-developed as I was expecting), and eventually their actions have real consequences. I found this part of the book to be pretty affecting, although I still can’t decide whether it redeems all the stuff that came before. More on that in a bit.
The main problem with the story (apart from how heavy-handed it is about how This is Real Life, Not a Story, and Real Life is Meaningless, But You Should Enjoy it Anyway) is that Quentin is really not a very likable protagonist. Or, at least, I really did not like him at all. Supposedly, his redeeming qualities are that he's really smart and good at magic, but mostly he just seems like sort of an everyman character. Plus, he’s self-centered and oblivious to other people’s problems. He has an annoying tendency (though at least he sort of grows out of it over the course of the book) to see women as Objects He Can’t Have, Woe is Him. He’s astoundingly naïve about expecting his life to turn into a fairytale. Mostly, he’s just unhappy for no good reason, and clearly it’s an intentional character choice, because he has to stop expecting some better, more magical thing to come along and fix his life, but it’s incredibly frustrating to watch all these wonderful things happening through the eyes of a guy who, despite his initial excitement, seems basically incapable of appreciating them. I don’t know, maybe he’s clinically depressed and should try therapy? I just-he’s not even Harry Potter. He doesn’t have a lot to be upset about! He was not raised in a cupboard! One of the things that really grated on me was the complaining about his parents, when we were never shown anything particularly bad about them. They don’t pay enough attention to him, apparently-but for most of the book they have an enchantment cast on them so they won’t notice he’s going to a magic college, so it’s not even their fault. And Quentin has the nerve to compare their “atrocities” (I’m pretty sure he literally used the word “atrocities,” of which we saw exactly none ever) to those of his girlfriend Alice’s parents, who are eccentric to the point of maybe being mentally ill and are clearly neglectful and terrible at being parents.
Part of my issue may be that Alice is the best thing about the book, and I immediately glommed on to her and started overidentifying and being like, “Alice, why would you put up with this loser?” I seriously think the book would be fifty times better if it were just the story of Alice. (I also liked Eliot, who at least seems like he might have some legitimate reason to be unhappy about everything, and also has developed a more interesting persona to cope with it.) But Alice! Alice is awesome! She’s smart! She has a sad backstory with crappy parents and a dead brother and having to find her way to Brakebills all by herself without getting invited! She’s socially anxious! (This is a plus in my book, heh.) She’s a super talented magician! She’s not a moron like Quentin! And then…she dies, in this beautiful battle scene where we finally see just how powerful she is, before she sacrifices herself to kill the bad guy, and I am absolutely gutted and have to stop reading because I’m getting tears on the inside of my glasses and blurring them up.
All in all, I really liked the ending. I'm not sure that Quentin actually learned anything, but I thought it was moving that he went back to Fillory in the end. At least he decided to embrace the magic instead of hiding from it. And I like the idea of these damaged kids getting to become kings and queens-it’s almost like they get to go to heaven or something. It’s a salvation, a second chance. They ascend to the level of myth. Of course, it only works if you don’t then go and acknowledge all the drudgery of actually being kings and queens, and there is a sequel which I haven’t read which for all I know is all about that, so…I don't know. Maybe it’s just that it hit all these Narnia-nostalgia buttons for me.
Anyway. I want Alice fic now. Actually, I have a whole other line of thought about Alice and female characters and fandom, but that could go on for another ten pages, so maybe I should break it up.
Augh, this book. I’m conflicted. I really liked…some of it. The first half basically consists of Our Hero Protagonist Quentin spending five years at magic college learning magic. This is fairly entertaining, but I think Grossman was maybe kind of overly impressed by how Not Like Harry Potter he was being. When actually, yes, it’s magic college instead of magic high school, but the narrative is not vastly more mature or darker as a result. People drink more and are slightly more pretentious and jaded, and there’s more emphasis on what hard work magic is (it hurts your fingers! You develop bulging finger muscles!), but that’s about it. (They do turn into geese and fly to Antarctica, which is cooler than anything Harry Potter ever did, if you ask me.) But anyway, I think Grossman is maybe showing a certain lack of awareness about what fantasy authors have already done. There’s so much heavy-handed talk about how real life is not like Fillory, as if it’s such an innovation for fantasy not to be morally simplistic and full of talking bunnies and so forth.
In the second half of the book, the characters all graduate, become instantly much less likable by way of being totally aimless and dissolute (Oh woe is them! They have unlimited money and can do whatever the heck they want! Existential crisis! Life is meaningless, I tell you, meaningless!), then discover that the magical world of Not-Narnia, We Swear Fillory is real and go there. To me, this was a much more interesting story, although I’m not sure I could say why. I mean, they’re both sort of meta conversations about fantasy with other books in the genre-just now it’s Narnia instead of Harry Potter. To oversimplify. Anyway, seeing them actually go to Fillory after all the hype was pretty cool. My main reaction, honestly, was to wonder why it took them so long to get to that point, and why we'd been wasting so much time on other stuff. Anyway, Fillory is not quite what they expect (although there are lots of giant talking animals and trees, and they really do want random humans to become their leaders, so it’s not quite as subtle and well-developed as I was expecting), and eventually their actions have real consequences. I found this part of the book to be pretty affecting, although I still can’t decide whether it redeems all the stuff that came before. More on that in a bit.
The main problem with the story (apart from how heavy-handed it is about how This is Real Life, Not a Story, and Real Life is Meaningless, But You Should Enjoy it Anyway) is that Quentin is really not a very likable protagonist. Or, at least, I really did not like him at all. Supposedly, his redeeming qualities are that he's really smart and good at magic, but mostly he just seems like sort of an everyman character. Plus, he’s self-centered and oblivious to other people’s problems. He has an annoying tendency (though at least he sort of grows out of it over the course of the book) to see women as Objects He Can’t Have, Woe is Him. He’s astoundingly naïve about expecting his life to turn into a fairytale. Mostly, he’s just unhappy for no good reason, and clearly it’s an intentional character choice, because he has to stop expecting some better, more magical thing to come along and fix his life, but it’s incredibly frustrating to watch all these wonderful things happening through the eyes of a guy who, despite his initial excitement, seems basically incapable of appreciating them. I don’t know, maybe he’s clinically depressed and should try therapy? I just-he’s not even Harry Potter. He doesn’t have a lot to be upset about! He was not raised in a cupboard! One of the things that really grated on me was the complaining about his parents, when we were never shown anything particularly bad about them. They don’t pay enough attention to him, apparently-but for most of the book they have an enchantment cast on them so they won’t notice he’s going to a magic college, so it’s not even their fault. And Quentin has the nerve to compare their “atrocities” (I’m pretty sure he literally used the word “atrocities,” of which we saw exactly none ever) to those of his girlfriend Alice’s parents, who are eccentric to the point of maybe being mentally ill and are clearly neglectful and terrible at being parents.
Part of my issue may be that Alice is the best thing about the book, and I immediately glommed on to her and started overidentifying and being like, “Alice, why would you put up with this loser?” I seriously think the book would be fifty times better if it were just the story of Alice. (I also liked Eliot, who at least seems like he might have some legitimate reason to be unhappy about everything, and also has developed a more interesting persona to cope with it.) But Alice! Alice is awesome! She’s smart! She has a sad backstory with crappy parents and a dead brother and having to find her way to Brakebills all by herself without getting invited! She’s socially anxious! (This is a plus in my book, heh.) She’s a super talented magician! She’s not a moron like Quentin! And then…she dies, in this beautiful battle scene where we finally see just how powerful she is, before she sacrifices herself to kill the bad guy, and I am absolutely gutted and have to stop reading because I’m getting tears on the inside of my glasses and blurring them up.
All in all, I really liked the ending. I'm not sure that Quentin actually learned anything, but I thought it was moving that he went back to Fillory in the end. At least he decided to embrace the magic instead of hiding from it. And I like the idea of these damaged kids getting to become kings and queens-it’s almost like they get to go to heaven or something. It’s a salvation, a second chance. They ascend to the level of myth. Of course, it only works if you don’t then go and acknowledge all the drudgery of actually being kings and queens, and there is a sequel which I haven’t read which for all I know is all about that, so…I don't know. Maybe it’s just that it hit all these Narnia-nostalgia buttons for me.
Anyway. I want Alice fic now. Actually, I have a whole other line of thought about Alice and female characters and fandom, but that could go on for another ten pages, so maybe I should break it up.