The Rise and Triumph of Modern Fantasy
by rsbakker
Before I dig into the meat of the dispute I want to highlight what–for me, anyway–is the most extraordinary upshot of this entire affair: the way it seems to belong to heroic fantasy and heroic fantasy alone. The issues that are being argued here and in small pockets across the web are not only key to what could be the most troubling and profound aspects of modernity, they are almost entirely specific to a fictional subgenre that is firmly rooted at the very bottom of the cultural authority gradient. Here we see a symbolic analogue to why archaeologists cry out for joy when they uncover ancient midden heaps.
More often than not, the truth, whatever it is, likes to hide in the trashcan. So let me suggest, from the outset, that even though we may belong to the low paraliterati, we are actually engaging in an incredibly complex and timely debate, one which represents genuinely conflicting social interests, while the literati are simply disputing angels and pins amongst themselves.
Only in fantasy, folks. Which is why I have been self-consciously exploring these self-same issues throughout The Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor. These are literally the problems that I used to structure the metaphysics of the World and the Outside. I can’t help but feel a little bit of that delicious I-told-you-so tingle…
The latest salvo in the dour side of the debate is “The Decline and Fall of the Fantasy Novel,” which appeared on Black Gate just this past Sunday. In this essay, Theo breaks Grin’s lament down into four categories, so rescuing the argument from all the hyperbole and self-congratulatory in-group asides that so marred the original.
By way of caveats, I think its important to remember a few things, some obvious, others not so obvious. The first is that Frodo and Conan are not dead, though Tolkien and Howard are. It’s not as though there isn’t any earnest fantasy out there, it’s that there’s so very little new earnest fantasy out there. The second is that the ‘work’ is itself a fiction: stacks of ink and paper are just that, stacks of ink and paper, absent this or that particular human brain. So what we are talking about are readings and generalizations drawn from readings, not semantic objects hanging in some supernatural symbolic phase space. As far as I know, no evangelical Christian would want to argue that the Holy Ghost secures the Truth of their interpretations of The Lord of the Rings. Only the Holy Bible (where apparently, the Holy Ghost is of at least as many minds as there are denominations).
So then, Theo’s four categories:
1) Heroic inspiration versus anti-heroic discouragement
Theo’s suggestion seems to be that ‘heroic redemption’ is–or at least should be–a cornerstone of the genre. What he really means, it seems to me, is moral redemption, and a very specific one at that: the heroic overcoming of external threats. Why this should be the cornerstone of the genre, or anything beyond a statement of personal taste, is quite beyond me. Think of Achilles and his paralyzing melancholy, or Odysseus and his manipulative craft. Even the ancients had a taste for things more complicated.
2) Moral certainty versus relativistic confusion
As Theo writes:
“there is no such thing as “good” or “evil” per se in most modern fantasy. All is more or less relative, which is why modern writers are so often forced to manipulate the reader’s emotional responses with “shocking” scenes of dead children and raped women in order to provide an artificial facsimile of a moral sensibility.”
Theo poses this as a descriptive point, even though rhetoric like ‘artificial facsimile of a moral sensibility’ shouts otherwise. The idea seems to be that ‘moral relativism’ has some kind of ‘moral dampening effect,’ which in turn forces the author to reach deeper to achieve moral effects. I’m not so sure this makes much sense.
Consider what happens when we change the beginning of the above quote to “there is no such thing as obvious good and obvious evil per se in most modern fantasy. All is more or less confused, which is why modern writers are so often forced…”
Now this makes more sense: when everything is confused, then you have to reach for those deep intuitions to conjure a sense of moral clarity. This is what I do in my own works, quite self-consciously, but certainly not to provide ‘artificial fascimile’ of moral intuitions. I’m not even sure what an ‘artificial intuition’ would look like!
But this simply underscores the Great Straw Man that underwrites the censure that permeates both Grin’s and Theo’s pieces: the imputation of a metaphysical position, namely ‘moral relativism,’ to their apparent aesthetic antagonists. Like Grin (and maybe Theo) I see relativism as a nihilistic dodge, I’m just not as inclined to think my moral intuitions are the intuitions as they seem to be. In my works, what they would likely call ‘relativism’ is nothing of the sort. It’s actually moral realism that we’re talking about. Moral ambiguity and confusion are simply a fact of the human condition, one which in no way speaks to the metaphysical truth of morality. In The Second Apocalypse, the big question is simply one of what people make of this situation. Some instrumentalize it. Some flounder. Some perpetually struggle. And some–like Grin and Theo, apparently–think they have seen through the confusion. Just like the real world.
Just as genre fiction tends to offer wish-fulfilment heroes, much of it offers wish-fulfilment moral certainty as well. What distinguishes heroic fantasy is the wholesale way this morality informs the metaphysics of the secondary worlds created. This, I think, is really what these guys are complaining about: that there is a special generic relationship between heroic fantasy and moral certainty.
I agree. I just don’t see why this relationship has to be a simple one.
3) Organic consistency versus moral anachronism
Okay. This part I understand:
“When both morality and religion have been methodically excised from the beliefs of the characters and as well as from the environment in which they are found, especially in a quasi-medieval setting, the overall effect is bound to ring as false to the intelligent reader as providing the conventional low fantasy protagonist with a ray gun and a battery powered gene-splicing device would be.”
I have always found secular sensibilities in premodern contexts to be anachronistic and off-putting, all the moreso when they reek of ‘political correctness.’ This is the insertion of a certain modern moral certainty (more wish-fulfilment) into premodern story contexts. The bulk of the controversy my books have caused, I think, has to do with my refusal to pander to the readers’ modern moral sensibilities, particularly with regards to gender.
What I don’t understand in Theo’s recap is the apparent presumption that individuals in ancient contexts were not morally conflicted: of course they were, insofar as the complexity of our moral environment always outruns the simplicity of our moral precepts and intuitions as a fact of the human condition. You don’t need to study ancient Greek drama to appreciate this: humans always have been pinched by moral dilemmas. It’s one of the reasons why we have the history of violence that we do. Why would doubt be so vilified and certainty so prized, if the ancients didn’t find themselves trapped in ancient versions of the moral quandaries that continually plague our souls, collectively and otherwise?
Once again, he seems to be conflating moral realism with metaphysical relativism, which he then assigns to a certain political sensibility. I just don’t see what warrants any of these moves.
4) Moral cowardice
I found this the muddiest of Theo’s recapitulations, so I’m not entirely confident of my interpretation. The idea seems to be that for all the ‘shades of moral grey,’ a kind of obvious moral cowardice motivates the representations of moral conflict in recent fantasy. As he writes, “Their work isn’t the least bit daring or dangerous, it is entirely predictable as they only attack the targets of the past now deemed safe by modern sensibilities.” In other words, they only go through the motions of challenging the reader.
Since Theo is advocating the apologetic, reaffirming form of the genre, his charge has to be one of hypocrisy (your defections from the code achieve none of the things you claim they achieve) because ‘challenging’ is not an artistic value for him, at least as far as fantasy is concerned. Since I always thought Joe Abercrombie was blessedly free of my pretentious ambitions, I never thought he was ‘trying to rewrite the genre’ or anything like that. Either way, Theo seems to be almost entirely blind to the irony of what he’s saying, since he himself was obviously ‘challenged’ or ‘provoked’ enough to write an entire essay in an attempt to make his unflattering evaluations stick. I think writers like Joe, Steve, and George are actually tweaking millions of readers.
I also think that this is precisely what Grin and Theo don’t like, given that they have supposedly isolated a ‘liberal bias’ in these three writers. Especially with Grin, the problem is that these guys are challenging the reader in the wrong way.
As for me, well…
I hesitate because I always hesitate when I think I find catastrophically horrible arguments. I gotta be missing something…
Diagnosis
As I hope should be clear by this point, Theo’s four recapitulations of Grin’s points are really different spins of the same complaint: modern fantasy is a moral failure. To me, these essays reek of rationalization, the attempt to dress up a certain yen for certain narrative problems resolved in certain narrative ways in certain narrative circumstances in ‘reasons.’ The resulting arguments are well nigh incoherent.
The charge of ‘moral anachronism’ is the only one that seems to have bite: insofar as historical consistency is accepted as a common standard, inserting politically correct intuitions into ancient contexts is a ‘spell breaker.’ It is for me, but I’m not sure it is for many other readers. Does that make me a better reader? I’m not so sure.
Otherwise the strategy consists of equivocating moral realism (the fact that moral confusion and conundrums are part of the human condition) with moral relativism, which is then conflated with modern liberalism. This way, any moral uncertainty in heroic fantasy becomes a kind of anachronistic betrayal, as well as an insidious attempt to politically indoctrinate. Mammon is everywhere.
But as we have seen moral realism is no way historically inconsistent. The moral confusion they take exception to is as true of our ancestors as it is for us. It certainly characterized the foment of the time period I use to model my world. The primary difference is that we no longer possess the institutions and ignorance required to enforce an official moral consensus. With the dawn of science and capitalism, the State had no choice but to get out of the moral solidarity business. As Iran’s theo-political class is discovering, the repression required to enforce moral uniformity tends to undermine legitimacy, which is a necessary condition of long-term social stability and prosperity.
Theo and Grin are arguing that a certain family of wish-fulfilment moralities is the only one appropriate to fantasy as it should be. It’s a kind of critique that I have more than a little passing familiarity with, since it shares the same form as many of the arguments used by those who accuse me or my works of misogyny. The insurmountable problem for them is that they use realism, ‘fidelity to the times,’ as their critical yardstick.
In other words, they argue for a certain fantastic fantasy morality by claiming that the kinds of moralities you find in much modern fantasy are not ‘realistic.’ Not an easy circle to square.
Three Pound Brain 
I think the lack of responses so far is because it would pretty much be a whole page of “Yeah, right on brah.”
I mean, what else is there to say? These guys want fantasy literature to regress back to where moral complexity would be equivalent to a Saturday morning cartoon.
[…] The response to which is best left to R. Scott Bakker: […]
I’m interested your out of hand dislike of ‘anachronistic’ ‘modern’ moral sensibilities in fantasy.
Are you somehow imputing that second world fantasy can’t diverge from an Earth’s timeline? Or are you complaining that none of the fantasies with modern moralities do any legwork to justify the existence of those beliefs?
Theo lost me at the implication that ye olde fantasy was somehow heroic and heartening. Tolkien has never struck me as heartening. It reeked of a world in decline, and that was part of the book’s appeal for me. The copycats that came after always seemed to lose the serious melancholy that Lord of the Rings had. I had got really frustrated with fantasy before Ian Irvine/Joe Abercrombie and of course Scott (though those aren’t the only) came in and started making noise.
Mr. Bakker, I think someone else has already come up with the “exact kind of story” you are trying to portray. Except, he was a rapper and it came out in song form instead. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgWyNO4uTNA
Please check it out!
To be honest, all I know is that all we REALLY know is that the universe started expanding from a single point about 13.7 whatever billion years ago and has been “expanding” since. Knowing that “true randomness” could not be truly random based on this specific amount of time, who’s to say if there is really a god or not? I guess what I want to know now is how all these atheists are so convinced these days? To be honest I think it comes down to the most basic level: the individual, and the most important thing people need to remember is that most people are only really unhappy because the people immediately around them “just don’t understand.” Of course, with the Internet too, everyone just sees everyone feeling “lonely” or “depressed” and tend to write the whole world off as a whole because of it. I’ve been trying to be more optimistic to everyone around me and have only gotten positive results thus far.
Well, as much as your convinced odin doesn’t exist, the athiests are equally convinced.
“To be honest, all I know is that all we REALLY know is that the universe started expanding from a single point about 13.7 whatever billion years ago and has been “expanding” since.”
But we don’t really know this, do we? I mean, scientist infer and theorize, but they have not been able to prove that the universe began from a single point 13.7 billion years ago, have they?
We know close enough to know fucking better. We know that “around” that time the universe started expanding from a single point, so who really gives a shit what we know because we know true randomness can’t really be possible on a set amount of time. Go look that up and prove it to yourself if it makes you feel better. To be honest, I think aliens do exist. Why the fuck would everyone try to convince everyone else otherwise? The Fermi Paradox, Drake Equation… I think Carl Sagan realized this shit forever ago and “opted” out of seeing the UFOs in person, and instead focused on trying to get humanity to realize this, in the best way he could. But I just think it doesn’t really matter whether god exists right now, that’s the thing the atheists need to realize. Of course, religion is fucked up too. DUH! They obviously chose that over science because they finally realized “they couldn’t really explain it” and just accepted whatever the closest religion was that they agreed with.
I see relativism as a nihilistic dodge
Because it couldn’t be anything else?
I dunno – when I started thinking about evil, all I could find is where people conflict against their own values (knowingly or otherwise). The more conflict, the more up the evil scale. I suspect the idea of evil is a kind of grasp of something being corrupting – passing on the self conflicting position.
I think that the entire point of Grin’s argument has been completely missed and/or misconstrued. It isn’t just the nihilism he decried, but the foulness of language and content, the explicitness of sex and graphic depictions of violence and gore.
I agree with Grin, but up to a point. See, I’ve not read everything that’s been cited. But I’ve read some of it. And no, I’m quite sick and tired of Tolkien knock-offs, like Terry Brooks’ Shannara books. I do believe fantasy needs to evolve and progress, just like any other genre or medium. However, that doesn’t excuse poor writing or unimaginative prose.
“The fighting madness of his race was upon him, and with a red mist of unreasoning fury wavering before his blazing eyes, he cleft skulls, smashed breasts, severed limbs, ripped out entrails, and littered the deck like a shambles with a ghastly harvest of brains and blood.” –Robert E. Howard, “Queen of the Black Coast”
Wow. Is this what Grin is crying about? Well, yes and no. Grin (and Theo) both make the huge mistake of overstating Robert E. Howard’s stuff as “heroic.” Well, in the ancient Greek/Homeric sense of ἥρως, yeah, Robert E. Howard’s characters are often the epitome of the hero, the pre-slave-revolt-of-morality (thanks Nietzsche) sort of man who makes his own way and good is equated with “beauty” and “physical prowess.” Awesome.
And Howard’s excerpt is loaded with gore and purple prose, but he’s got something that Grin can’t really put his finger on, something that lots of the guys about whom he complains lack. Howard’s got panache. He’s a skillful writer who can scrawl a yarn that is both fast-paced and purple in its prose without becoming too schlocky.
What Grin loses in hyperbole and what Theo fails to grasp in his defense of Grin is the fact that these common writers don’t have the literary skill that Howard does. Their books are full of turgid descriptions of viscera, scatology, rape, murder, dismemberment, and all of it without a real point. That, or they’re trying to push some kind of agenda, and they’re utilizing all of this grotesque imagery and vulgar language in order to make their work seem “relevant” and “modern.”
Now, I’ve read Henry Miller, and beneath all of the sex and foul language, there’s something there in his work. He’s writing a path through an experience. Can one really say the same about Joe Abercrombie, for example? I’ve not read any of Abercrombie’s stuff, so I am asking this as a genuine query.
I also really enjoy the works of George R.R. Martin a great deal. The “Red Wedding” in A Storm of Swords was terrible, but it was amazing and perfect and powerful because of how horrific it was. Martin professed to having difficulty writing it because it was so upsetting for him, and when you read through it, you should be upset by it as well. The violence and horror has a point.
Right now I’m reading Bernard Cornwell’s The Burning Land and there’s a scene in which the Dane Harald tries to force Uhtred to give back his captured wife Skade. When Uhtred refuses, Harald orders a line of Saxon women and children out of the forest and nods to one of his men, who splits the first woman’s head in half with a war-axe. Blood gouts like a fountain and soaks her screaming daughter. The killer moves to the next in line. Uhtred gives up Skade, and the Saxons are whisked offscreen. –Brian Murphy, Realism Does Not Equal Adult Followup
What the hell purpose does that kind of violence serve? Yeah, that happened a lot in the 8th century. Do I need to revel in it? I’m a historian, I read about this sort of thing on a regular basis. If I wanted to read about this sort of thing, I’d go read The Rape of Nanking.
And don’t get me wrong. I love Blood Meridian. Christ, the book just blew my mind. I find the prose to be absolutely fantastic as well, which helps a great deal. But that’s the thing–the violence and horror in McCarthy’s book has a point. The character of Judge Holden has a point. Its not there just to shock and awe, because after a while the shock wears off, and there never was any awe to begin with. If all you have is sex and violence, well… You’re not doing it right. You’re just selling copies and taking up shelf space and people are reading your lackluster book when they could be reading something else–hopefully something better that actually gets them to think about the human condition.
Not all books are equal, and yeah, some are definitely lacking in certain areas. But if you’re going to write a potboiler fantasy and stock it with lots of gore and sex, don’t complain when people come out and call it sub-par compared to the likes of Howard or Tolkien.
On the other hand, if you’ve got something to say about the human condition, knock yourself out. Do what you need to do in order to illustrate your point. That’s literature. I don’t complain about what I’ve read in Blood Meridian, Tropic of Cancer, or anything by James Ellroy. But I also don’t feel like I’m being beaten over the head by some myopic agenda-driven spiel either. Real literature doesn’t try to spoon-feed you some morality tale (or, in this case, perhaps, anti-morality tale). That’s why works like Philip Pullman’s fail for me–the author can’t see past his own hatred for religion. Kudos to him for writing and publishing, but the fact is, Tolkien’s part of the literary canon and Pullman will likely never join him because his work is so damn myopic.
So, what is my point, after all that?
That Grin and Theo have a point, although I do agree their argument is flawed. Something is missing from all of the stuff they’re reading, and something has been added with which they’re uncomfortable. What’s missing is the literaryness, the exploration of a facet (or facets) of the human experience/human condition. What’s replaced it is an over-reliance on shock, sex, and fart jokes, coupled with a politically/philosophically driven agenda (be it feminism, postmodernism, anti-religion, Marxism, whatever) that is crammed down the reader’s throat.
And on that, I wholeheartedly agree with them. I always considered Bakker’s stuff to be literary because I never felt like he was force-feeding me an agenda. Yeah, he’s shaking things up, yeah his stuff is violent, and yeah he turns the heat up on a lot of assumptions people have. But I always took Prince of Nothing‘s world to be a huge thought-experiment–let’s explore some themes and set up some rules to see where these assumptions and where these ideas will go if we let them. The conclusions you draw are your own, like all good literature.
If I’ve misinterpreted Bakker’s work… well, fuck me.
Gratuity and inconsistency are your central complaints, Dave, but for both Grin and Theo they are symptomatic of something more central, and yes, easier to knock down. But that does not a straw man make. Liberal relativism is their primary target by their own admission.
I had the same inkling you had in my first rebuttal, and I do suspect that they are simply foisting rationalizations (using the closest ideological tools at hand) about what is in fact a far different problem. But I don’t think it has much to do with ‘literary quality’ so much as with a certain kind of ‘epic attitude.’
The scriptural voice… I’ve been planning to post on this for several days now.
PoN is a thought experiment, but it’s also kind of a tract; about free will, the nature of the soul, and how we make moral judgments. I found Neuropath to be a good companion piece because I could see overlapping themes and motifs.
“Tolkien’s part of the literary canon and Pullman will likely never join him because his work is so damn myopic.”
Pullman will never join him (or CS Lewis, which is a more apt comparison) because his ENDING SUCKED. Golden Compass and Subtle Knife were OK, but Amber Spyglass was just atrocious. I agree though that his agenda was perhaps too transparent in the prose, and that didn’t help at all.
I see you, Jorge, but I think Pullman’s ending notwithstanding, his book spoon-feeds the entire point to you. The moral is: “Religion is bad, m’kay?” One could argue the ending of Moby-Dick sucked, but it’s still part of the literary canon (if you subscribe to the existence of a canon, by-the-by). Melville didn’t spoon-feed us any moral. And no, the moral isn’t “revenge is bad” or “you can’t defeat nature” or anything of the sort. It’s supposed to make you think about vengeance, nature, and the Will of Man, not force some sort of moral down your throat.
PoN is a thought experiment, but it’s also kind of a tract; about free will, the nature of the soul, and how we make moral judgments. I found Neuropath to be a good companion piece because I could see overlapping themes and motifs.
Yeah, but I don’t feel that Bakker is jamming some agenda down my throat. If he wants me to think about free will, the soul, and moral judgments, awesome. But I don’t think he’s feeding me any conclusions but letting me draw my own. To me, that’s the difference between literature and, well, fiction in general.
I seriously have got to read Neuropath, and soon. My reading list is back-logged as it is. Christ, and I’m waiting for White-Luck Warrior to come out, too.
You know, I actually felt that TOO much. He was so not feeding an agenda down my throat it was at the point where I wondered if he gave a shit (past thrills) about the stuff at all? Like was the book just the equivalent of a snuff movie?
There’s leaving someone to their own conclusions, and there’s just a product was made with no care about conclusions (a snuff movie is an example – it’s about the thrill or something. Or would someone argue even snuff movies are about reflection and perhaps change in real life habit? I’m open to hearing evidence on that, genuinely)
As I’ve said, it was Akka that carried me through. Indeed why did I bother trying to find posts by Scott, like at this blog? Cause I had to know if he gave a shit or not. Like what the fuck was he thinking, or was it all a long snuff movie that I’d sat through thinking something else was on the bill?
Because it’s like that bit in deciple of the dog, where Manning calls himself a sociopath because even though he cares, if his actions are no different from a sociopath, are you different? If something reads as a snuff movie, what is it? Indeed I could have done with some of that Manning ‘turn to the camera/author turns to the reader and speaks directly for a moment’ stuff, at the time. If fantasy has to proclude such things, I’m not sure I’m so sure fantasy is such a triumph. I wouldn’t think fantasy has to proclude that, though, myself.
What bothers me most about their argument is how they keep telling what is proper for fantasy genre and what is not. I, for one, don’t care whether something fits well into a category. In fact, a lot of most intriguing works i’ve read (or watched) transcended traditional genre boundaries. Sure, genre classification serves purpose, but it’s definitely not a positive effect if a writer has to mind those illusory and blurry lines that divide genre, just to fit in “correctly”.
A well-conceived retort, RSB…not that the original authors/dumbasses are likely willing/able to ponder the intracacies of your argument.
And to be overly blunt, the depth of introspection and allowance of moral uncertainty present in this and others of your posts really makes all the more glaring the oversimplification in the “Republicans bad! Unions good!” post. I find it surprising that you took that approach…on the other hand, our political leanings are likely pretty deeply entrenched within us from many years of indoctrination, and they tend to generate a visceral reaction. I’ve noticed personally as a former republican, that when someone begins to impugn someone/something on the political right that my hackles start getting raised, EVEN WHEN the impugning turns out to be something from which the impugner will get no disagreement from me, e.g. pointing out the idiocy of the idiots that have grabbed hold of the party. (“You can’t make fun of us! Only WE can make fun of us!”) So I suppose it’s natural to indulge our political leanings, but put up against your more heady (and dare I say intellectually honest) posts, it is a stark contrast.
You have to be more specific about what you think ‘dishonest’ in that post.
Just for the record, I typically regret everything I say here. I sometimes feel like I have to write quickly just to say anything definitive at all!
Sorry, I probably posted that last one a little too intensely… I have a tendency to do that…
If you are referring to your reply to my comments, no worries.
I guess my panties get in a bunch when theory is stated as fact. Personally, I don’t think that we can ever know how the universe began (nor do I think it is really that important).
Bakker: Gratuity and inconsistency are your central complaints, Dave, but for both Grin and Theo they are symptomatic of something more central, and yes, easier to knock down.
*sigh* And that’s where, I think they make their biggest mistake. If these writers Grin and Theo discuss are jamming some “liberal agenda” down our throats, the myopic and overly didactic nature of their work will naturally limit its appeal. But I do not see the writers’ politics as the cause of bad writing.
Callan S.: He was so not feeding an agenda down my throat it was at the point where I wondered if he gave a shit (past thrills) about the stuff at all? Like was the book just the equivalent of a snuff movie?
Whatever you do, do not read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.
… No, on second thought, definitely read Blood Meridian!
I think I’ll pass on that, thanks, Dave! 🙂
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/the_lord_of_the_rings/index.html?story=/books/feature/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation
Let those guys wallow in the mire of their own disillusionment, while those of us who can tell opinion from fact ask the burning question: when is the Prince of Nothing RPG coming out?! ; )
Try checking out the riddle of steel RPG, Drance. It has both single hit decapitations possible, as well as mechanical support for character motivations.
But as we have seen moral realism is no way historically inconsistent. The moral confusion they take exception to is as true of our ancestors as it is for us.
Oh come on. What you are calling moral realism is two thirds political correctness, one third nihilism, neither of which you will find in Homer or Xenophon.
Both of these are very very specific to our particular era, our particular culture, and thus tend to destroy the fantasy as much as cell phone would.
Moral confusion is PC? You haven’t read my books, have you, Jim?
Let us imagine a modern author having his hero present Xenophon’s compelling and persuasive justification for raping, looting, and burning his way across Asia.
Now that is moral complexity – and if you tried it in a modern novel, you would likely suffer more severe reprisals than if your blondes were feather brained and your blacks were stupid, violent, and dishonest. Far from modern readers having a taste for moral complexity, modern readers, or rather most modern publishers, are horrified and outraged by moral complexity.
I think that’s a bit tricky, James. I mean, your refering to compelling and persuasive as if they are physical actions. Like if you push my shoulder, I’ll stagger to the side – indeed, most people will. That a physical action will apply to everyone. But here the justification you call compelling amd persuasive – they wont apply to everyone equally.
I think it’s a bit unfair to only call it moral complexity when it happened to be compelling and persuasive not in a global sense, but instead compelling and persuasive to you. I mean, Kellhus is raping, looting and burning his way across the three seas – perhaps moral complexity is to see that what is persuasive and compelling (Kellhus) can be something so very different underneath the veneer?
Okay, so I’m a month late to the game, but I feel I need to add a comment about the misogyny in your books.
I am, like pretty much every fan of fantasy these days, a huge fan of GRRM. He managed to write a world that is rife with misogyny, and yet, when you read parts from the POV of his female characters, it becomes absolutely clear that these characters are just as human as the male ones.
This is not something I get from your books. The females are debased by the world they live in. Fine, that works, that’s real. But they’re also debased by the authorial voice. They’re not humans. They’re defined by their debased nature.
Now, when I was reading these books for myself, I assumed that the author was a misogynist. Having read you arguments to the contrary, I don’t think this anymore. In fact, the concept of a world where moral absolutism is, essentially, a part of the fabric of reality is actually a pretty cool one. And cool ideas are pretty much the foundation of fantasy.
But I’d argue that in your efforts to get this across, you’ve allowed the attitude of the World to seep into the attitude of the writing. And thus, the books themselves _are_ misogynistic, even if you are not.
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