A Dizzy Whore 1804

Yesterday I read a manuscript by a writer who may, in fact, be more obsessed with piss and shit than even James Joyce. And I love that pretentious emo dead Irish bastard. (Me and about three other people: my friend Kristine, my houseguest Russ–who is now famous on the internet, and Lou Reed Girlfriend.)

In attempt help to reduce the stack of requested partials for my friend and fellow intern Jess, I went through and picked out a few to read. The agent she works for represents primarily science-fiction and fantasy (with a lot of fantastic authors whom I adore), so it was nice to read in a genre other than thrillers or literary fiction for a change. Jess gave me my pick of the stack and as I scanned the queries attached, I found myself almost involuntarily “automatically” skipping anything “high fantasy.”

What exactly is “high fantasy?” I’ve blogged before about my fatigue with urban fantasy, but apparently my boredom with high fantasy is much greater. Anyone can recognise the tropes: high fantasy is usually set in a secondary world similar to ours, generally analogous to our world anywhen from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and populated with a multitude of magical races like elves and hobbits and dwarves and wizards. There is also usually a “quest” of some sort to fulfill, and there may or may not be a prophecy laid on the protagonists. Examples include THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien, THE PRYDAIN CHRONICLES by Lloyd Alexander, THE LIONESS QUARTET by Tamora Pierce, KUSHIEL’S LEGACY by Jacqueline Carey, and the HARRY POTTER series by J. K. Rowling (all favourites of mine). HARRY POTTER is admittedly a little off-the-beaten path, but it still fulfills many of the tropes: a prophecy, a quest, wizards, elves, dwarves–see why HARRY POTTER is brilliant in so many ways? (I could go on for days about why I think HARRY POTTER is genius–not only does it transcend all reading ages, but it also cleverly takes established tropes and executes them in a way that makes us believe we haven’t seen it before.)

Philip Pullman once claimed that HIS DARK MATERIALS was a work of “stark realism and not fantasy” despite the proliferation of supernatural, otherworldly, and fantastical elements like angels, daemons, witches, and talking armored bears. His reasoning was because the human emotions contained within his epic are real, that their motivations are real, and not “trivial” (as he has famously called Tolkien). Now I love Pullman to bits (the position of Magical Uncle has been filled, but Storytelling Grandpa is open!) but I think he has a huge disdain for fantasy as a genre that he isn’t quite able to conceal. (For such a mild-mannered teacher, he’s really quite incendiary.) I’m also not sure whether or not he’s aware that fantasy has moved beyond “elves and hobbits and magical creatures and quests.”

But I think I can understand him a little. A good high fantasy is hard to find these days, in much the same way that I can’t find urban fantasy I like: tropes overshadow the story. People have often accused fantasy books of being “formulaic” and the queries I read yesterday would only reinforce their opinions. A poor farmer boy discovers he is destined for greatness and has a prophecy to fulfill! Wizards! A Quest! Many Things That Must Be Capitalized To Disguise Their Shallowness! The reason Pullman defines his work as “stark realism” is because the motivations behind his characters are personal. Lyra embarks on a journey to the North to rescue her best friend. Will discovers a new world while searching for his father. Their paths cross and the consequences of their previous actions affect and change what they want: Lyra’s vow to rescue Roger and Will’s desire to find his father take them all the way to the world of the dead and beyond. Despite the epic events, in the end HIS DARK MATERIALS comes down to a story about first love and the inevitability and rightness of growing up and losing innocence. (I. Fucking. Wish. I. Wrote. These. Books. I could write a bazillion academic papers about them.) We know from the start to the end why we should care about Will and Lyra’s “quest”–it’s because they care.

For that reason I would say that Tolkien is not trivial; for all the tropes, we still care about the Fellowship and their quest. We don’t care about Frodo because he’s a hobbit; we care because he knows he needs to destroy The One Ring despite the fact that every fibre of his being wants to keep it for himself. We don’t care about Luke Skywalker because he’s a poor orphan moisture-farmboy destined to restore glory to the Jedi; we care because he never turns to the Dark Side despite multiple temptations.

For example, if Tolkien had sent me a query that read like this:

Dear JJ:

Please consider representing my fantasy novel titled THE LORD OF THE RINGS, complete at 1,000,000 words.

Frodo Baggins is a hobbit (a sort of short, chubby, hairy midget) living a happy, buccolic life in the Shire. When Gandalf the wizard tells him he needs to destroy The One Ring or Sauron the Dark Lord will take over Middle-Earth, he sets out on a quest to Mount Doom with a Fellowship to assist him. In the Fellowship is Gandalf, Frodo’s gardener Sam and friends Merry and Pippin, an Elf named Legolas Greenleaf, a Dwarf named Gimli, and two Men: Boromir son of Denethor and Aragorn, who is actually secretly the King of Gondor. In the end, the Ring is destroyed and Aragorn restores glory to the race of Men.

I am a philologist and a the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford University. My previous publication credits include scholarly papers and a children’s fantasy novel called THE HOBBIT, which is a prequel to THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

Sincerely,

J.R.R. Tolkien

I would have immediately passed. Remember what I said about vagueness? Now, if Tolkien had sent me a query that read like this:

Dear JJ:

Please consider representing my fantasy novel titled THE LORD OF THE RINGS, complete at 1,000,000 words.

When his eccentric “uncle” Bilbo Baggins disappears in a calculated stunt on his eleventy-first birthday, young Frodo Baggins of the Shire comes into a large fortune, including his cousin’s luxurious home Bag End and one small, seemingly insignificant golden ring. Little does he know, it is The One Ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron many aeons ago to channel his power. Sauron was defeated by The Last Alliance of Men and Elves many generations ago, but the One Ring was never destroyed. Now Sauron is once more gathering forces in the East to take over Middle Earth and it is up to Frodo and a Fellowship of his fellow hobbits, Men, Elves, and Dwarves to journey to the edge of the fiery Mount Doom to destroy it.

But Frodo does not reckon on the Ring’s malicious and corrupting influence, which casts its siren spell over the members of the Fellowship, who each want the Ring for different reasons. When he is attacked by Boromir for possession of the Ring, he decides to break off the Fellowship and go to Mount Doom alone, bringing only his trusted gardner and best friend Sam. Aragorn and the remainder of the Fellowship decide that their best course of action is to prepare for the coming war between Sauron and the Free Peoples of Middle Earth, despite knowing that victory would be dependent on Frodo successfully destroying the Ring.

Aragorn tries to rally others to fight, but in order to do so he must come to terms with his inheritance as the King of Gondor–the High King of the race of Men. Frodo struggles against his emotional dependence on the Ring on the trek through Mordor, caught between his steadfast Sam and greedy Gollum–a wretched creature twisted by the Ring–who serve as his conscience and his desire to possess the Ring respectively. In the end Sauron is defeated again and the Ring destroyed, bringing about the end of the Age of Elves and magic and heroic deeds to give way to the dawn of a new one: the Age of Men.

I am a philologist and a the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford University. My previous publication credits include scholarly papers and a children’s fantasy novel called THE HOBBIT, which is a prequel to THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

Sincerely,

J.R.R. Tolkien

…I probably still wouldn’t have requested it (admittedly it is a little long, but you try writing a query for all of THE LORD OF THE RINGS), but 65 years ago when it was first published, fantasy was still under the influence of fairy tales and Lord Dunsany and this was new and different, reminiscent more of the Volsungsaga than The Book of Wonder. I think it is because we are living in a post-post-Tolkien era of fantasy that I wouldn’t have asked to read it.

If I had requested it, I would have sent Tolkien an editorial letter that read like this:

Dear J.R.R. Tolkien:

Please to be speeding up the pace of your manuscript. Also consider weaving together more effectively the disparate narratives of Aragorn & Co. and Frodo, Sam, and Gollum. For reference I direct your attention to Peter Jackson’s adaptation of your work 50 years after its publication. In addition, please to be cutting down on the songs and poems as they bog up the novel.

Sincerely,
JJ

P.S. Why couldn’t you have Aragorn marry Éowyn? Who the fuck is this Arwen chick? Please to be including OTHER LOVE INTEREST sooner and imbue her with AWESOME instead of petty sewing skills. Kthx.

However, I still think high fantasy is a viable genre. (See list of books I adore above, a few of which are recent.) It’s learning how to sell that’s the hard part. But isn’t that true of all books not written by J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, or Dan Brown?

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