Nihilists at the Gates
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It's been a while since I've had anything substantial to say, but even the large, flaccid, and inert critters of nature can be provoked to roar and take action, as anyone who's witnessed a hippo attack will agree. And if I am the hippo in this tale, so be it: I will bellow and overturn canoes and send swimmers panicking for the shore as necessary.
What provoked this sudden action? Well, in my various wanderings around the web, a friend linked me to this musing on the "nihilism" of modern fantasy. Since I haven't read the work of any of the recent fantasists being discussed in it, I'm not able to assess the accuracy of Mr. Grin's assessments of Abercrombie, Stover, or Swanwich (though I do have to wonder how much he'd enjoy some of my favorite fantasists, such as Neil Gaiman, Mike Carey, and Roger Zelazny), and I have had little direct exposure to the work of one of the writers Grin calls a "genius," Robert E. Howard. We do, however, share one thing: a great fondness for the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. And it's that fondness for Tolkien's work that leads me to consider Mr. Grin's essay to be, at best, misguided, and at worst an attempt to justify his own reading preferences through a misguided appeal to authority.
First, I have to say that the initial premise of the essay strikes me as fundamentally silly. Sure, if you want to argue that current fantasy is a betrayal of the fantasy tradition, it's sensible to establish your definition of the fantasy tradition, but coming up with a good definition would seem like a basic necessity. And a definition of modern fantasy that rests on Tolkien and Robert E. Howard isn't really a good one.
Trying to link Tolkien and Howard as the Romulus and Remus of fantasy is kind of like trying to link Chuck Berry and Pat Boone as the twin founders of rock and roll, or celebrating those legendary founders of the Marvel Universe, the Fantastic Four and the Rawhide Kid. You can't really do it without hearing Prairie Dawn singing "One of these things is not like the other..." in the back of your head. Worse, Grin is trying to use both of these writers, simultaneously, as examples of The Way Fantasists Should Be, in spite of the fact that they are not at all the same Way.
One is a scholar of ancient works who borrowed liberally from them over a period of decades in order to populate a complex world that he carefully crafted as a playground for his own philological musings, an educator whose stroke of genius was adding to this world a population of "ordinary" characters whose view of the fantastic events surrounding them would give us a means of appreciating their grandeur, and a devout Catholic whose heroes are defined by their capacity for self-sacrifice. Victory is achieved in LOTR not through skill of arms--the very idea of defeating Mordor in open battle is consistently laughed at in the trilogy--but through suffering and sacrifice; Bilbo gives away his dearest treasure, Frodo his home, and Gandalf his life in order to save Middle-Earth. All the Sword That Was Broken can do is stave off the advance of evil long enough for the Ringbearer to reach his goal--and even then, the Quest is ultimately successful not because the hero takes action, but because the villain does so.
The other writer, meanwhile, is churning out ideas at a feverish rate in order to pay the bills, writing various lusty tales of adventure that rely on the fist, the gun, and especially the sword as the ultimate arbiter of what is right. Both authors were hugely influential, sure, but other than a certain Romantic nostalgia and a fondness for ancient weapons, I can't find a whole lot of similarities between them. What links Tolkien and Howard in Grin's mind is simply the fact that he likes both writers. What, then, links the other writers in this piece, other than the fact that he dislikes them?
Grin himself tips his hand a bit when he complains about "writers clearly bored with the classic mythic undertones of the genre, and who try to shake things up with what can best be described as postmodern blasphemies against our mythic heritage." (emphasis mine--ww) Let's first note that the word "blasphemy" requires the existence of something sacred, though I think neither Tolkien nor Howard would consider his work holy writ; it's a telling statement, however, in that we now know just how seriously Grin views his opinions of these writers, and how little tolerance he has for those who do not follow their example.
But the real red flag here is that "our mythic heritage" business. Frankly, whenever I see someone whipping out the first-person plural pronoun in a discussion of heritage, my first instinct is to think of Tonto's profound question, "What do you mean we, kemosabe?" My own mythic heritage includes some stuff that I suspect Grin would find pretty unpleasant, including such Greco-Roman elements as patricide, rape, and incest, a variety of Biblical tales of debauchery and murder, Shakespearean sagas of mutilation, fornication, and regicide, and a wealth of Norse tales involving mead, sex with animals, and one very funny and scatologically thorough tale about Thor, a cork, and a squirrel. What heritage is Grin claiming, exactly, that cannot handle the idea of Stover's protagonist Caine, paralyzed and bemoaning his fate by saying, “I am - right now, lying naked in a pool of a dead woman’s shit, chained to stone, gangrene eating my dead-meat legs….”?
But of course, Tolkien and Howard did not shy away from these themes either. Tolkien creates a dark saga of murder, betrayal, and incest in The Children of Hurin, while Conan is, by definition and by title, a barbarian, meaning he has no notable respect for orthodoxy or heritage, particularly if he can put a sword through it in order to get what he wants. Here's Conan's view of what civilization is worth:
"Did you deem yourself strong, because you were able to twist the heads off civilized folk, poor weaklings with muscles like rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you call yourself strong. I did that, before I was a full-grown man...!"
Here's a guy who, ultimately, seems to favor settling disputes through brute force rather than, say, the rule of law. It's not exactly a sweeping defense of civilization. Perhaps that's simply the character's viewpoint, or perhaps it suggests something about the writer's own view. As H.P. Lovecraft described him, Howard was "a lover of the simpler, older world of barbarian and pioneer days, when courage and strength took the place of subtlety and stratagem, and when a hardy, fearless race battled and bled..." That would make Howard a lot of things, but a defender of civilization against nihilism? I don't quite see it.
For that matter, though he was undoubtedly a conservative in temperament and politics, Tolkien's tale is not one of clinging obsessively to an established order. Indeed, in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo's quest is one that will, without doubt, destroy the existing order. If he succeeds, the beauties of Rivendell and Lothlorien will be no more, the Eldar will depart these shores forever, and even the ruling house of Gondor will be cast aside to make way for a foreigner. Tolkien is no nihilist--a new order will spring from the old, after all--but he displays no loyalty to the status quo, either. And considering what the founder of Tolkien's religion thought about the status quo of His day, that should come as no surprise.
In effect, then, Grin is trying to do with Tolkien and Howard what a great many folk out there attempt to do with Jesus: claim that He would share their opinions. Unfortunately, like many who make that claim, Grin seems to have ignored a great deal of what his heroes actually said. Grin's occasional disparaging references to "liberals" (especially "college-educated" liberals, which is a truly odd criticism when one obviously admires an Oxford professor so much) and such suggest that he's grinding a political axe here as much as a literary axe--the fact that he's writing on a Breitbart site is also a pretty powerful clue--but I find myself concerned less with his attempt to tar his enemies with a broad political brush than with his attempt to whitewash his heroes with an equally broad one. After all, one can certainly worship Christ, assuming that's what floats one's boat, but at the very least, I think it wise to remember that He spent much of his earthly life socializing with prostitutes and tax collectors, as well as challenging the self-proclaimed arbiters of orthodoxy. If there's one thing Christ had little use for, it was mythic heritage.
.
It's been a while since I've had anything substantial to say, but even the large, flaccid, and inert critters of nature can be provoked to roar and take action, as anyone who's witnessed a hippo attack will agree. And if I am the hippo in this tale, so be it: I will bellow and overturn canoes and send swimmers panicking for the shore as necessary.
What provoked this sudden action? Well, in my various wanderings around the web, a friend linked me to this musing on the "nihilism" of modern fantasy. Since I haven't read the work of any of the recent fantasists being discussed in it, I'm not able to assess the accuracy of Mr. Grin's assessments of Abercrombie, Stover, or Swanwich (though I do have to wonder how much he'd enjoy some of my favorite fantasists, such as Neil Gaiman, Mike Carey, and Roger Zelazny), and I have had little direct exposure to the work of one of the writers Grin calls a "genius," Robert E. Howard. We do, however, share one thing: a great fondness for the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. And it's that fondness for Tolkien's work that leads me to consider Mr. Grin's essay to be, at best, misguided, and at worst an attempt to justify his own reading preferences through a misguided appeal to authority.
First, I have to say that the initial premise of the essay strikes me as fundamentally silly. Sure, if you want to argue that current fantasy is a betrayal of the fantasy tradition, it's sensible to establish your definition of the fantasy tradition, but coming up with a good definition would seem like a basic necessity. And a definition of modern fantasy that rests on Tolkien and Robert E. Howard isn't really a good one.
Trying to link Tolkien and Howard as the Romulus and Remus of fantasy is kind of like trying to link Chuck Berry and Pat Boone as the twin founders of rock and roll, or celebrating those legendary founders of the Marvel Universe, the Fantastic Four and the Rawhide Kid. You can't really do it without hearing Prairie Dawn singing "One of these things is not like the other..." in the back of your head. Worse, Grin is trying to use both of these writers, simultaneously, as examples of The Way Fantasists Should Be, in spite of the fact that they are not at all the same Way.
One is a scholar of ancient works who borrowed liberally from them over a period of decades in order to populate a complex world that he carefully crafted as a playground for his own philological musings, an educator whose stroke of genius was adding to this world a population of "ordinary" characters whose view of the fantastic events surrounding them would give us a means of appreciating their grandeur, and a devout Catholic whose heroes are defined by their capacity for self-sacrifice. Victory is achieved in LOTR not through skill of arms--the very idea of defeating Mordor in open battle is consistently laughed at in the trilogy--but through suffering and sacrifice; Bilbo gives away his dearest treasure, Frodo his home, and Gandalf his life in order to save Middle-Earth. All the Sword That Was Broken can do is stave off the advance of evil long enough for the Ringbearer to reach his goal--and even then, the Quest is ultimately successful not because the hero takes action, but because the villain does so.
The other writer, meanwhile, is churning out ideas at a feverish rate in order to pay the bills, writing various lusty tales of adventure that rely on the fist, the gun, and especially the sword as the ultimate arbiter of what is right. Both authors were hugely influential, sure, but other than a certain Romantic nostalgia and a fondness for ancient weapons, I can't find a whole lot of similarities between them. What links Tolkien and Howard in Grin's mind is simply the fact that he likes both writers. What, then, links the other writers in this piece, other than the fact that he dislikes them?
Grin himself tips his hand a bit when he complains about "writers clearly bored with the classic mythic undertones of the genre, and who try to shake things up with what can best be described as postmodern blasphemies against our mythic heritage." (emphasis mine--ww) Let's first note that the word "blasphemy" requires the existence of something sacred, though I think neither Tolkien nor Howard would consider his work holy writ; it's a telling statement, however, in that we now know just how seriously Grin views his opinions of these writers, and how little tolerance he has for those who do not follow their example.
But the real red flag here is that "our mythic heritage" business. Frankly, whenever I see someone whipping out the first-person plural pronoun in a discussion of heritage, my first instinct is to think of Tonto's profound question, "What do you mean we, kemosabe?" My own mythic heritage includes some stuff that I suspect Grin would find pretty unpleasant, including such Greco-Roman elements as patricide, rape, and incest, a variety of Biblical tales of debauchery and murder, Shakespearean sagas of mutilation, fornication, and regicide, and a wealth of Norse tales involving mead, sex with animals, and one very funny and scatologically thorough tale about Thor, a cork, and a squirrel. What heritage is Grin claiming, exactly, that cannot handle the idea of Stover's protagonist Caine, paralyzed and bemoaning his fate by saying, “I am - right now, lying naked in a pool of a dead woman’s shit, chained to stone, gangrene eating my dead-meat legs….”?
But of course, Tolkien and Howard did not shy away from these themes either. Tolkien creates a dark saga of murder, betrayal, and incest in The Children of Hurin, while Conan is, by definition and by title, a barbarian, meaning he has no notable respect for orthodoxy or heritage, particularly if he can put a sword through it in order to get what he wants. Here's Conan's view of what civilization is worth:
"Did you deem yourself strong, because you were able to twist the heads off civilized folk, poor weaklings with muscles like rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you call yourself strong. I did that, before I was a full-grown man...!"
Here's a guy who, ultimately, seems to favor settling disputes through brute force rather than, say, the rule of law. It's not exactly a sweeping defense of civilization. Perhaps that's simply the character's viewpoint, or perhaps it suggests something about the writer's own view. As H.P. Lovecraft described him, Howard was "a lover of the simpler, older world of barbarian and pioneer days, when courage and strength took the place of subtlety and stratagem, and when a hardy, fearless race battled and bled..." That would make Howard a lot of things, but a defender of civilization against nihilism? I don't quite see it.
For that matter, though he was undoubtedly a conservative in temperament and politics, Tolkien's tale is not one of clinging obsessively to an established order. Indeed, in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo's quest is one that will, without doubt, destroy the existing order. If he succeeds, the beauties of Rivendell and Lothlorien will be no more, the Eldar will depart these shores forever, and even the ruling house of Gondor will be cast aside to make way for a foreigner. Tolkien is no nihilist--a new order will spring from the old, after all--but he displays no loyalty to the status quo, either. And considering what the founder of Tolkien's religion thought about the status quo of His day, that should come as no surprise.
In effect, then, Grin is trying to do with Tolkien and Howard what a great many folk out there attempt to do with Jesus: claim that He would share their opinions. Unfortunately, like many who make that claim, Grin seems to have ignored a great deal of what his heroes actually said. Grin's occasional disparaging references to "liberals" (especially "college-educated" liberals, which is a truly odd criticism when one obviously admires an Oxford professor so much) and such suggest that he's grinding a political axe here as much as a literary axe--the fact that he's writing on a Breitbart site is also a pretty powerful clue--but I find myself concerned less with his attempt to tar his enemies with a broad political brush than with his attempt to whitewash his heroes with an equally broad one. After all, one can certainly worship Christ, assuming that's what floats one's boat, but at the very least, I think it wise to remember that He spent much of his earthly life socializing with prostitutes and tax collectors, as well as challenging the self-proclaimed arbiters of orthodoxy. If there's one thing Christ had little use for, it was mythic heritage.
.