For my second post as a full member of this blog I wanted to talk about A Penny for My Thoughts, another game of Evil Hat Productions which pushes the boundaries of the genre and is more like an exercise in creative writing than a traditional RPG.But I am sick now and have a violent cough, which means I can’t smoke, which, in turn, irritates me to no end. So let’s instead talk about something I hate, since negative emotions are the best cure to any illness known to me.
Let’s talk about Harry Potter Without Voldemort, or How I Learned That You Can’t Punch Ennui in the Face.
The Magicians are a deconstruction of Harry Potter and Narnia, by which I mean Grossman has no idea why either story (or stories in general, for that matter) works, but wants us to believe he has things to say about them and the nature of escapist fiction.
Look, ‘deconstruction’ has become a loaded word recently. Everything remotely dark or deviating from popular cliches is called deconstruction of the genre, which is simply wrong. I do, however, have respect for proper deconstructions that expose… how to say? Inhumanity inherent in some genres.
You see, some genres have started at a time when certain views we find offensive today were acceptable and even expected. Those views, naturally, bled into stories and sometimes created constructs persisting long after prejudices that gave them birth have become unacceptable. Always chaotic evil races is a good example of that. Such situations create a cognitive dissonance where the author doesn’t but into those offensive views and doesn’t present the characters as buing into it, either, but the story seemingly does.
Other genres are removed from reality either because they started like that, or became this way over time due to their target audience, mindless copying of ideas present in older and better works or some other factors. Comics are a good example of this in many ways, in particular a phenomenon called “The Joker’s Immunity.” The Joker can never die permanently not because it makes sense for him not to die, but because he is popular, and there always will be authors wanting to use him in their stories. That, too, often creates a cognitive dissonance since we, the readers, know he will survive no matter what one way or another, but the characters behave as if the Joker escaping death once again is something noteworthy instead of business as usual.
The purpose of a proper deconstruction is to expose such contradictions and bring the narrative closer to reality by giving the characters believable motivations for doing stuff common to the genre and having them face realistic consequences for their actions.
And that connection to reality, the underlying logic of characters and events being the same as the logic of our world is important because all fiction is ultimately written by people for people. The more removed a story is from reality, from we know and experience in our lives, the harder it is to empathize with the characters and care about what happens to them.
And the opposite, no matter how fantastic and surreal the world and the plot are, as long as the characters recognizably think and act like people, as long as I can see something of myself or the people I know in them, I can be invested in the story.
Deconstructions help us see where genres wrap themselves into a cozy bubble of nonsense logic that has nothing to do with reality familiar to us. They helps us see when characters become inhuman puppets dancing at the author’s tune with no reason or purpose.
As such, deconstructions are an absolutely crucial part of the evolution of fiction.
So, what does the above have to do with The Magicians? Well, the book tries to be a deconstruction and picks a very direct approach to it by removing the central element of Harry Potter and other fantasy books: the villain. There is none. When the protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, is accepted into the secret academy of magic, he goes there and studies. He also makes a few friends and starts dating. There is no magical adventure, no evil to battle, no conspiracy to uncover, nothing.
The idea here is to show that entering a magical world wouldn’t magically solve your problems. If you, like Quentin, were unsatisfied with your life before, chances are, you will continue to be unsatisfied with your life.
That anti-escapism message sounds intriguing for about one minute before you realize that no villain = no conflict.
I am simplifying, of course. A villain is but one source of conflict. It would actually be interesting to write a Harry Potter fanfic without Voldemort (and Dumbledore, while we are on it), where the evil of society isn’t personified in one man, but is integrated into the system, so to change it and fight, say, racism, the protagonists would need to challenge the society itself and force people to acknowledge the problem and do something about it.
The Magicians don’t do that, however. Neither do they introduce any other kind of meaningful conflict: Quentin doesn’t confront his flaws, aside from accepting that his life sucks in both worlds, while it’s implied that mages do have secret wars and such, he stays far away from them, using his power merely to cut corners in the mundane world, etc, etc. Every potential conflict is killed at the root by Quentin not being interested in it.
But surely there is always slice of life, right? I mean, not all stories need to be about high stakes and deathly battles. Sometimes you want a cute story about sloppy teenage make-outs. Well, yes, but you kinda need interesting characters for that, so the audience would be invested in their daily life. And Quentin, well, he’s an asshole who whines about things in his life he doesn’t like, but doesn’t do anything about. He’s not even an aggressive asshole, like, say, Matou Shinji, so I can’t even wish him to suffer. He’s just an unpleasant person I want to go away. Other characters are a bit more sympathetic, but there isn’t much going for them, either, and we are stuck in Quentin’s head anyway.
I think it’s all done for the sake of the anti-escapism point: Quentin is unpleasant because he’s an escapist unsatisfied with his life but waiting for a miracle to fix everything instead of doing anything himself. And even though he could have been involved in various conflicts, he isn’t for the same reason why his life was empty before. Which, OK, it’s a theme that can be explored, but the way it’s done demonstrates the biggest mistake Grossman makes as a storyteller: he forgets that stories – even deconstructions, for they are still stories, – must be entertaining. On some level, they must be interesting and engaging. You may have a great point to make or a moral to deliver, but if you fail to tell it in a manner that would keep readers’ attention, it doesn’t matter. You are better off just writing an essay.
Quentin is just some random asshole dicking around campus, and I don’t care about him. And that is the greatest sin a story can commit.
The second half of the story is only loosely connected to the first. The characters graduate from the academy, find a passage to Narnia and go there because they don’t have anything better to do with their life. Instead of making Narnia boring like Harry Potter, The Magicians instead portray it as hostile and incomprehensible. The characters have very little information about what’s going on, so they fly blind, engage in a dungeon crawl and lose a few members, with Quentin being separated from the rest, spending a few months living among centaur healers and learning that the whole plot of The Magicians was a time-travel gambit by a girl who traveled to Narnia before to kill another kid, who decided he’d rather stay in Narnia and made bargains with some dark powers to become a monster.
Also, Lewis was a pedophile.
While the approach is different, and there is a conflict finally and even a main villain, the result is the same: I don’t care. I didn’t care about the protagonists to begin with, and them not knowing much about the conflict means I didn’t know much, either, which made it pretty much impossible to get invested.
The identity of the villain is actually good, because yeah, the whole “Whelp, you were kings and queens of Narnia for thirty years, time to be kids in WWII England again!” thing is messed up, but other books did the same better. And the last-minute introduction of the time-travel plot feels lazy and makes me wonder why we didn’t follow that girl instead. She did stuff! I like stuff!
If there is one good thing I can say about The Magicians, it’s that the book is still better than The Name of the Wind. At least I can see Grossman thinking about what he’s doing and how stories are put together, even if he doesn’t really get what puts them in motion.
Otherwise, it’s an almost perfect example of how not to do a deconstruction.
That’s a shame. I really like deconstructions when they’re done right, but this sounds like it misses all key components.
You’re right about the girl! Her story sounds interesting and exciting. I’d much rather see what she was doing rather than some bored asshole complaining about how magic didn’t solve all his problems.
Yeah. She isn’t even the only character with a more interesting story to tell.
There was that other girl who didn’t make a cut for the magical academy, so her memories of it were erased. But not completely. She still had glimpses of the hidden reality and became obsessed with rediscovering it. So she’s searched the Web, found some bits and pieces of magical knowledge, met with other people in a similar situation.
Naturally, she had exactly one scene in the book.
She becomes a secondary main character in the 2nd book, but if you didn’t like The Magicians, you won’t like the sequel either. There’s also a pretty graphic rape scene too.
That’s good because smoking will kill you. Very painfully too, lung cancer gets ugly. The less you smoke, the better.
…
There’s a whole genre of asshole protagonist being an asshole and getting what’s coming to him, from Fawlty Towers to Deponia trilogy. It’s hard to fail at such a basic concept. Maybe he’s just bad at comedy?
It’s more that his brand of assholery doesn’t lead itself easily to any kind of interesting story. As I said, he isn’t really bad to the point you’d want to punch him. He’s just unpleasant.
So even when he suffers, there is no satisfaction from watching him get what he deserves. Mostly I just wish he’d go away so maybe some more interesting person can be a protagonist instead.
I have a friend who absolutely adores this book, and it’s getting difficult to me to keep from arguing when he waxes rhapsody about it. Like you said, it’s a deconstruction done wrong, and when the only protagonist I gave a shit about died and the useless lump that is Quentin lived, I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes. What a waste of time.
Doesn’t help it’s the first part of a trilogy. I haven’t read the other two, but based on what I’ve heard of them, I don’t want to.
I had to read this book for university and I hated it more than I have
ever hated a book. I am so glad this was a negative review, but you
barely began to touch on the trillion things wrong with it. And
of course I was surrounded by people saying how clever it was and a professor who had deemed it worthy of study. It’s the most
pretentious juvenile hackery that doesn’t even have the decency to do actual grimdark and as you say, fails so completely as a
deconstruction I don’t understand how anyone can call it that with a
straight face.
See, normally if I don’t like a book I will forget about it eventually.
This one I hated so much it burnt itself into my brain and I can
still remember all the little moments that fucked me off. So here
follows nigh-endless white hot rage, because I want to get this off
my chest.
First, I read this well before I was alert to misogyny in my media, and the simultaneously clingy and othering way Quentin talked about women still disgusted me. I remember he used the term ‘unpretty’ in the first chapter or so. I wanted to get in the book and kick him till he
cried, and that feeling never went away. How could it? He never
changed.
This is less Grossman’s fault, but the blurb of my edition implied the
usual “school has a dark secret and magic comes with a grim
price” bullshit. So I wait for magic’s grim price. Turns out,
you have to work really hard and practice a lot, almost like pretty
much every worthwhile activity known to humanity. Also, if you do the wrong thing there’s a slim chance you’ll die. Wow, that’s such a grim price for endless god-like power, except for the part where it isn’t a price at all because there’s a very good chance you won’t have to pay it. Then, after their graduation, the teacher takes them to do a special ritual, and I’m thinking, okay, they’ve graduated, this has to be the dark secret. And then the teacher announces they’re going to tattoo imprisoned demons into the main character’s backs, and I’m like ‘whoa, okay, that’s intense, can’t wait for that to backfire.’ WHICH IT NEVER FUCKING DOES IN THIS HARDCORE DECONSTRUCTION GETTING ANGRY DEMONS TATTOOED INTO YOUR BODY IS A TOTALLY CONVENIENT DEUS EX MACHINA WITH NO NEGATIVE SIDE EFFECTS! And then I realise this is all Grossman’s fault, because if he’d thought to have anything bad actually happen in his super hardcore book of ultra high seriousness, then the blurb writer wouldn’t have had to lie.
And you really didn’t get into how insulting the ‘lol btdubs my
Lewis-expy liked to molest little boys’ was. The antagonist already
had an excellent motivation; wanting to stay in the magical land was
enough. He did not need a Freudian excuse! And the whole “Why do you think he was climbing into a clock anyway? He was looking for somewhere to hide,” is so obviously meant to be a dun dun dun
revelation, when it makes no sense! Lewis-expy was their neighbour. If antagonist had been previously molested by him and wanted to avoid it happening again, why not just avoid going to the neighbour’s house? And getting into a clock is a. something a child would totally do without ulterior motives, and b. extremely unlikely to be a good hiding place. The more you think about this scenario the more ridiculous it becomes, albeit while being icky enough that I don’t want to elaborate further. But the worst part of this for me is that it’s obviously an attempt at grim-edgy ‘I touch on the subjects
Narnia would never go near’ when one of the Narnia books has avoiding rape as a child’s primary motivation. It isn’t handled particularly well, but at least it actually affects the story and isn’t just
thrown in for no conceivably decent reason.
Also, Lewis was a misogynistic racist ass who didn’t edit his books (the ultimate crime) and Ana Mardoll’s Narnia decon is grand good times, but still I find directly correlating him with a child molester to be incredibly bad taste. Of all his crimes against humanity that is not one of them, by any account I’ve ever heard. If Grossman so desperately wanted to reference Caroll and Barrie’s dubiousness he should have made his children’s author expy less blatantly Lewis.
The Harry Potter series and Narnia books have so many legitimate problems that could be examined, but Grossman clearly believes they are the light-hearted fun times people mistake them for. His whole attitude is “Escapism? That’s not what real life is really like. People don’t realise this, so to prove it I have written a book where bad things sometimes happen, but mostly everything sucks because I’ve given my protagonist severe crippling depression and he never enjoys anything ever. This shows that Narnia and Harry Potter do not accurately reflect reality, as I’ve decided people totally think they do.” And the idea that smart people are always inherently unhappy is ghastly romanticising that encourages depressed people to actively despise happiness. It’s a terrible unhealthy untrue trope and I am not here for it. Grossman is. Grossman is all about that damaging and insulting trope.
Okay. Deep breaths. I’m calmer now. The book remains my mortal enemy but at least someone else also thinks it sucks.
There is definitely a lot that can be said about this book. I just didn’t want to lose focus of how it fails to be a deconstruction.
I didn’t even touch the whole fox rape thing because honestly, it’s just so bizarre, I wouldn’t know where to start. I suspect it’s something Grossman wrote at 3 a.m. when all the worst ideas manifest in writers’ minds and forgot to edit the fuck out.
By which I mean, you should write a review of your own. There is definitely enough material for more than one rant.
EDIT: DQ ate a paragraph. Restored.
Eh, to write a proper review I’d have to read the book again, which I will not do unless cold cash money is involved.
And even I don’t know how to rant properly about the fox thing, though it’s integrated enough that I am very sure Grossman meant to do it. He probably thinks of it sometimes and goes “Ah, yes, my magnum opus, truly I am edgiest, now I go to watch videos of animals fucking.”
Which reminds me. Why didn’t Quentin stay a goddamn goose?
Oh, you’ve read The Name of the Wind? Would you be willing to do a review on it? /offtopic
I thought about it, but the book has defeated me. I couldn’t finish it, no matter how hard I tried (not very hard, grated), so I just read a readthrough.
The flaws of The Name of the Wind are actually similar to The Magicians: both are written by people who clearly don’t understand how stories work, but want to say something profound about them.
The big difference is that The Magicians are a honest attempt at deconstruction. It fails miserably and doesn’t say anything important, but at least I can see Grossman thinking about escapism and its underlying problems and trying to address them.
The Name of the Wind, on the other hand, is escapist power fantasy that only pretends to be intellectual. Its plot is your typical cliche about the Chosen One with mysterious powers losing his parents to the Big Bad and going on a journey to learn about his past and defeat the dark forces. It’s just hidden under piles and piles of details that are normally skipped in other stories because nobody cares.
I guess the author thought it was highly subversive of him to include those details and have the protagonist struggle to get money for tuition and such, but all it does is bloat the word count and slow the pacing down to a crawl.
I am fine with low-key fantasy books where the protagonist isn’t a big hero and instead of fighting dragons and dark wizards struggles with making ends meet, but it’s not the case here. Like, if Kvothe took a loan to pay for the academy, couldn’t pay it back and had to work for the loan shark, doing more and more morally ambiguous things, that would’ve been neat.
Instead, it’s just… Kvothe needs money, he makes money, next scene. Kvothe needs money again, he makes money some other way, next scene. It’s just padding, not a real plot. The real plot is your standard epic adventure, it just unfolds really, really slowly.
It doesn’t help that the book appears to be highly disjointed. Kvothe moves to a new place, and the old place is forgotten, never to be brought up again.
I once made a comment that the book reads like someone’s attempt to justify his ridiculous character build for a TRPG, and I still think that’s correct. The story is here to explain why Kvothe is awesome, everything else is just window dressing.
Its plot is your typical cliche about the Chosen One with mysterious powers losing his parents to the Big Bad and going on a journey to learn about his past and defeat the dark forces.
The worst part is that that’s not even true. I read through both books (because I have no life), and he’s still no closer to fulfilling his initial goal. The few times he’s advanced the supposedly overarching plot, it’s happened by almost pure coincidence, and it’s by baby steps at that. At this point I’m convinced that The Thrilling Tales of Poverty and Level Grinding is the real story, and the whole Chosen One business is just the lure plot.
For what it’s worth, I think the present-day sections are legitimately interesting and well-written, mainly because Kvothe is so depowered and actually fails at things. But everything else is exactly as you’ve said, and I have a suspicion that the endgame will involve him ~returning to his former glory~ so screw that.
Oh, it is the main plot, I think the author just wanted to make it more “grounded” by including stuff that’s normally skipped in other stories. In the end he just demonstrated by that stuff is skipped to begin with.
As for present day scenes, they aren’t that great, either. I mean, Kvothe’s secret identity is Kote. Subtle, man.
Plus they are responsible for the narration voice, which is a great sin in this book.
I think it is actually, Kote means disaster in another language, the engineering teacher says it after the fire. I liked the first book though it had its issues and could have been better (if Kvothe was less of a sue and acted intelligent as you said, for a lot of the book I wondered why doesnt he contact his fathers patron, Baron grayfallow and get financial assistance, or at least tell him theyre all dead, and the whole thing with ambrose was stupid, Kvothe had spent three years learning to be a vicious animal, he suffered rapes and beatings and became quite brutal he fucking covered another kid in fuel and set him on fire, for gods sake, he should have shivved ambrose the second he found out he’d been conned of a months wages) but the second had a huge drop in quality and was very dissapointing
Well he’s not saying that it’s a name with no foreshadowing. He’s saying that even if it means something else entirely in another language, it’s still two letters off from his real name and doesn’t sound that different. So you’d think this guy about Kvothe’s age with a name similiar to Kvothe and powers similiar to Kvothe (when he uses them) would get pretty well noticed.
I always thought it would sound a lot different. Kvothe is supposed to sound like quoth, and Kote could either sound like coat or as Siaru is a china/japan stand in (i think) it could be koh- tay, theres a lot wrong with the books, especially the second which contradicts canon (deoch is suddenly gay and quoth always knew that even though he previously went out with denna) and dont get me started on the adem (how can a culture/society not know where babies come from) i dont think this is eragon levels of bad with the name thing
Well, no one said it’s Eragon levels of bad, but “Quothe” and Kote are a “th” apart from each other.
Hmm I actually read the book and liked it, for the most part. Once I let myself glaze past all the elitist bullshit I felt like it was pretty decent. In the first book, anyway. I only liked parts of the second one.
Truth be told, my main problem with the book is that it was recommended for me as a book with a smart protagonist.
I like smart protagonists. Far too many stories are about people prevailing because they had unusual powers or just a lot of determination and a big heart. Nothing really wrong with either, but I do enjoy reading about someone who can formulate and execute an ingenious plan once in a while.
The problem is, Kvothe isn’t smart. He’s supernaturally talented. He doesn’t work all that much for his achievements, he doesn’t come up with clever plans, doesn’t exploit weaknesses in people and systems.
He learns skills in a day, then applies those skills directly to the problem.
And that’s… That’s just boring.
Once I’ve realized it, I felt betrayed. Which is probably unfair to the book, but I’m sticking with it.
I believe there are a few cases in the book that support Kvothe’s intelligence, but mostly you’re right. For all the book’s fans like to tell you he’s not a Mary Sue, he really is one.
Another thing that gets me is the way his challenges are presented – Kvothe isn’t rich or high up on the social ladder, but he’s ‘egalitarian’ and so treats them as badly as anyone else. It’s a really unfortunate way to bring conflict to a supernaturally gifted main character, because it’s declaring one privilege good and one bad, ignoring the fact that the good one is still a privilege.
Like, sure. We’re used to stories vilifying people for their casual abuse of money/power. In this case, though, the author completely disregards the fact that ability, natural or otherwise, is also a type of privilege. That’s the core of the elitism that galls me, because Kvothe abuses that shit all day without a care.
It reminds me a little of Ender’s Game, except OSC did it well. When Ender gets frustrated at the increasingly ‘unfair’ match-ups the directors pit him against, his handler rightly points out that dude, you’re a fuckin’ prodigy and that a fair fight on even terms is realistically impossible.
I wanted to see a scene like that in that book, and yeah, despite liking it, I know it’s not without its own issues.
EDIT: Forgot how to do spoilers. So sorry if I kept screwing up the comment.
(Here be spoilers for The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear)
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The story in the Kingkiller Chronicles becomes even more disjointed in Book Two (The Wise Man’s Fear). A quest gets put aside for over 100 pages just so Kvothe can learn how to fuck from a fairy woman, purple prose and all. She’s the MOST BEAUTIFUL woman in the world, and she puts men under mind control and fucks all her lovers to death, except Kvothe, because he’s just that SPECIAL. And despite being a virgin when he meets the beautiful fairy woman, she tells him he’s so good in bed that she didn’t consider he might have been a virgin. This goes on for ELEVEN CHAPTERS. There’s absolutely no impact on the rest of the story, except that Kvothe gets a magic gift from her and goes off prepared to get into other women’s underdrawers now that he’s maxed all his techniques in the job class of Panty-Dropping. It’s like the author realized that Kvothe didn’t have all the Gary Stu characteristics yet, so he had to make Kvothe become the most desired man in the land.
People have (rightly) criticized Stephenie Meyer and her imitators for using their fiction to indulge their sexual fantasies. However, no YA author has ever come close to this level of self-indulgence. Not even a little.
Something similar happens later when he learns how to fight from the best fighters in the world (of course, he’s awesome at it, quickly becomes a master, fucks some more hot women, and gets a free sword for being so awesome). It completely derails any semblance of a plot, and it does is make Kvothe more of a Gary Stu.
The Kingkiller Chronicles are a very selfish story, and that’s not just because of the books’ perspective – all the text amounts to building up Kvothe and giving him more and more special sparkles. Despite that, I’m still going to read the third book. I don’t know why, but I am. I loved The Magicians too, so I guess I like unsympathetic main characters and slow-moving stories.
[…]yeah, the whole “Whelp, you were kings and queens of Narnia for thirty
years, time to be kids in WWII England again!” thing is messed up[…]
They don’t really remember that time vividly, though, it’s more like recalling a dream than having actual memories.
And people are way too harsh on Lewis on the subject of Susan. Her mistake wasn’t that she wanted to be pretty, but that she turned her back on Narnia (and by extension, on Aslan, the allegorical – and often not-very-allegorical-at-all – Christ).
It’s a bit unclear how much they remember, though I would say that if it is a vivid dream for them, turning your back on it is perfectly reasonable.
I mean, I had a very vivid dream about the world ending, me floating in the darkness and emptiness and recreating the world from my memories out of fear of being stuck there forever. The dream ended with me waking up in my bed, and then I woke up for real.
It was pretty damn convincing, but I don’t go around demanding people worship me as their God.
Not that I would mind, just so you know.
Oh, I meant their time as ruling kings and queens of Narnia, specifically. The times after those, when they didn’t stay for so long, those they seem to remember just fine (which makes sense, since they didn’t have their ages reversed after returning to Earth).
That still can make a profound impact on a child, especially considering that the second time they went to Narnia they found it nearly destroyed by invaders.
So the desire to stay in the magical land forever works quite well.
As well as Susan’s desire to leave it all behind, since it must have been an emotional roller-coaster for her.
To be yanked back and forth between two worlds at a whim of a higher power, learning that your every friend in the magical land has died while you were away playing and going to school…
It’s pretty messed up even without the possibility of kids being adults in children’s bodies, and that is actually something worth addressing and deconstructing.
Too bad it’s tackled in the end and receives very little attention compared to Quentin’s angst over trivial things.
As well as Susan’s desire to leave it all behind, since it must have been an emotional roller-coaster for her.
At this point, you’re not deconstructing the “Narnia” books specifically, though. You might be deconstructing the “protagonist visits a fantastical world and returns to mundane life without any ill effects” trope as a whole, but not “Narnia” specifically.
And yes, I do think that’s an important distinction to make, since Grossman apparently depicted Lewis as a pedophile. If you’re going to make personal attacks, at least get things right!
Well, Narnia is guilty of that too, so it’s a fair criticism to make.
But yes, the book as a whole suffers greatly from making it very clearly about Narnia specifically rather than journeys to magical worlds in general (with Harry Potter you at least have some wiggle room since that part could actually apply to any story about a magical school full of adventures, not just to HP specifically. With Narnia… yeah, there is simply no way to interpret that part as something more general.).
Deconstructions should be above personal attacks, I believe, since their purpose is to ultimately revitalize the genre, which means addressing perpetuating problems rather than something that happened in one specific book (that’s what blogs like this are for).
Well, Narnia is guilty of that too, so it’s a fair criticism to make.
Only if you believe that trope is flawed, though.
Yes, Susan turned her back on Narnia, but Lewis is the one who picked her to do it and specifically associated this betrayal with adult femininity. People are not way too harsh about this.
I mean, a lot of the time it’s just people refusing to accept that if someone believes in the hell/heaven afterlife dichotomy as presented by most branches of Christianity, they do believe that a lot of good people are going to hell. So they think Lewis is completely condemning Susan’s moral character, when he’s actually illustrating that if you aren’t into Jesus, you aren’t welcome in heaven.
But it’s not coincidence he picked Susan to play Judas. He didn’t draw names out of hat, and people didn’t pick up the idea that Lewis hated women for trying to be pretty out of nowhere. Have you read “The Shoddy Lands?” The horrific climax of which is a giant naked woman in the center of her empty worthless mind admiring herself in a mirror? Which Lewis basically presents as a true story?
Good point. Far too often people object to criticism by saying, “But it makes sense for the characters to [contribute to negative stereotypes and other problems inherent to the media].”
And a lot of the time it’s true, it does make sense for the characters to be that way. With Susan, it makes sense for someone trying to distance herself from those weird magical adventures and craft a normal life to be interested in things her peers like. It would help her to connect to her peers, carve a new place in the world for herself.
But ultimately it was Lewis’ decision to have Susan specifically out of all kids who visited Narnia to turn away and do so in that specific way.
And that can definitely be criticized.
Also, I am now morbidly curious about The Shoddy Lands. What’s it about?
http://www.evageeks.org/ANF-Archive/images/57BN0DFKOVDHCVV7K6E1UQGSF-m26_C454_b.jpg
Is it like this? Please tell me it’s like this.
But ultimately it was Lewis’ decision to have Susan specifically out of
all kids who visited Narnia to turn away and do so in that specific way.
Just as it was his decision to have Lucy and Jill (who are closer to Susan’s age than Miss Polly) remain as “friends of Narnia”.
Because no misogynist has ever divided the world into acceptable women and unacceptable woman, there’s not a term for that or anything.
You’re reaching like whoa. The Narnia books are filled with mind-boggling awful and Susan’s fate is probably the least of it, but there are many valid reasons why people hate what happened to her, and Lucy and Jill existing is totally irrelevant to that.
Funny how your argument changed from an emphatic “people are not too harsh on [Susan’s fate]” to “Susan’s fate is probably the least awful of all the sexism in the ‘Narnia’ books… But there are plenty of other reasons to dislike it!”. Are you just going to keep moving the goalposts regardless of whatever argument I raise?
Because no misogynist has ever divided the world into acceptable women and unacceptable woman, there’s not a term for that or anything.
Please, do enlighten me! Apparently, I’m incapable of making so complex a distinction all by myself.
The tone of this comment is uncalled for. Soxy found the implications to be sexist. She’s the she here and the one with a personal stake in the manner, so it’s obvious it’s going to bother her more than it would you. Further, just because you liked the books does not mean it’s suddenly fine to spit venom at people who don’t feel that way about them. We can disagree politely here.
I know you’re above this.
Further, just because you liked the books[…]
I didn’t, actually. This was never about defending a book I liked.
Well, I am a fan of them, mostly because I read them all with my aunt. I don’t even mind the Christian agenda, either, just because you should have seen her disbelieving face when I read, “He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.”
And I can’t defend Susan being left out, either. I find it difficult to get angry about it or the ending simply because so many other people have been angry about it for 50 years and it just seems like there’s nothing new I can bring to the argument there. I can say, though, that it felt pointless, actually reading it. The characters never mention it again, and it might as well be left out. I have never heard anyone put up a good defense for it being in the book.
I do object to the statement Susan was left out of Aslan’s Country. She didn’t go to Aslan’s Country because she didn’t die. There was room for her to eventually find her way there.
I liked the stories well enough, but not so much the writing. There were a few moments I quite liked, but overall, I found them dull.
And I also disliked Susan being left out. She was one of the original four!
I thought the writing was one of the best aspects. I never understood why Roald Dahl used Matilda as a mouthpiece to voice his opinion that Lewis’s fatal flaw was not including any humor in his books because they were children’s books, and children love to laugh.
I have to wonder if Dahl ever read Lewis’s books, or if he had a clear memory of them at all. There are times Lewis’s style of wit and strange inclusion of himself as an omnipotent narrator mirrors Dahl’s own writing so closely I had Lewis pegged as one of his inspirations.
The Horse and His Boy was almost a comedy book, particularly in the end. There were a number of humorous asides (particularly with the Dufflepuds in Voyage of the Dawn Treader), too, and the writing was generally very lighthearted. You could tell Lewis saw writing as a lot of fun, not work. I can see how this could be a criticism, though. The books were actually written very quickly and whenever something was hard for him to describe, he just told the readers he did not want to describe it and gave an extended metaphor or comparison to get the idea across instead. This was probably a weakness disguised as whimsy, and only he only got away with it because he was writing children’s novels.
I can see how the first two could be considered dull, but from that point on there was genuine life and a sense of unpredictability. The Silver Chair was probably the best of the 7 (though my memory of The Magician’s Nephew is faint).
I’m not so sure it was weakness or whimsy, the nature of the indescribable was very important in a lot of medieval literature and not describing a thing or comparing it to something comprehensible or understood was a valid literary technique particularly when describing the monstrous or fantastic. Tolkien and many others have written several essays on it.
My comment about Susan’s fate being the least of it was not in terms of sexism in the Narnia books, it was in terms of flaws in the Narnia books. I am much more inclined to object to the way they are plot-hole ridden and have terrible characterisation. But I would never say people are too harsh on Susan’s fate. The fact that so many people object to what happens to her should indicate that to some people it was actually objectionable.
I probably should clarify that I personally don’t care about what happened to Susan. But a lot of people did, and you don’t get to go “Oh, they’re being too mean to Lewis, it’s so harsh the way they’ve concluded a certainly sexist man was a sexist because of that thing he wrote that a lot of people found sexist.”
And what’s with the tone, I mean, really? I brought up the Madonna-whore complex because you were making an argument that consisted of “Less objectionable women are allowed to exist in this book, therefore there is no problem with this thing that literally thousands of people have found alienating and awful.” Sorry if it seemed condescending, but your argument didn’t exactly fill me with respect.
“Less objectionable women are allowed to exist in this book, therefore
there is no problem with this thing that literally thousands of people
have found alienating and awful.”
It seems you missed what I said, then:
[…]and it’s not as if the “Narnia” books don’t have their share of
sexism… But I do think that people focus too much on the Susan issue,[…]
Bolded for emphasis.
Not once did I refute the existence of sexism in “Narnia”. I commented on a SPECIFIC issue, which is often taken to be an instance of sexism, an interpretation with which I disagree.* It was you who let your dislike of the books colour your further replies.
* And I don’t care how common that interpretation is. Many people also think Don Quixote is a story about an idealist daring to live his dream against all odds, as opposed to the satire it actually is; that doesn’t mean their interpretation is right.
This thing people have found to be alienating and awful is the Susan issue, that is what I was referring too. But, please continue to declare what is and isn’t sexism, and how people saying they personally found something to be sexist is exactly the same as misreading satire. It’s not as if you’re making me look bad.
Many people also personally found Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray to be romantic. Are you saying that as long as a sufficient number of people think something, we should just disregard textual interpretation?
Oh, no, you’ve trapped me with that brilliant piece of rhetoric no one has ever used before.
Lewis was not writing satire. He was writing religious propaganda for children. For a lot of christian children, the Narnia books were the only fantasy they were allowed to read. And thousands of little girls read this passage about Susan and found another reason to lie awake at night in fear of hell. This wasn’t some intellectual exercise for them, some debate on the internet, it was “I am going to burn in fire forever because I want to wear lipstick and be invited to parties.”
What Lewis intended to say is absolutely not the point. Ignoring that you absolutely cannot prove this wasn’t misogynistic in intent, and it almost certainly was, considering it maps exactly to Lewis’ personal pattern of misogyny, you’re original comment was “People are way too harsh on Lewis.” I don’t like the way so many men are so eager to give this dead man a benefit of the doubt to which he has forfeited all rights by telling actual living women who he hurt terribly to shut up because they read it wrong. My response was probably coloured by the fact that I’ve seen this argument a million times before, but I’m not going to apologies for that.
You can’t objectively prove it wasn’t misogynist. A whole bunch of women felt it was. At absolute best Lewis is a completely incompetent writer who hurt children by mistake, and I actually think it’s okay to be harsh on that.
A lot of people think Twilight is misogynistic, but Stephanie Meyer doesn’t. Should we privilege her intentions as a writer over the thousands of women who were disgusted by those books? She didn’t intend to depict an unhealthy relationship, so by your logic, it can’t have happened. What authors mean to say is so much more important than what they do say and what other people hear.
There is plenty of evidence for a misogynistic reading of that passage about Susan. You are saying that other people’s readings of the text are wrong not based on any actual evidence, but simply because you don’t agree with them. Because for some reason, it’s so important to you that in this one particular instance Lewis wasn’t indulging in his hatred of women that you can’t accept that the people actually affected by hatred of women might have a right to their own interpretation. That they aren’t being way too harsh on a dead man that despised them when they say he hurt their feelings.
I don’t know what the fuck your deal is here, but frankly it repulses me.
It’s a short story where the narrator enters the mind of his friend’s fiancee to find that the only real things in her thoughts are shops, pretty dresses, and the occasional hot dude. The title refers to her mind, which the narrator wanders through, condemning her taste in everything. He eventually finds her as a naked giant admiring herself, and realises she isn’t interested in being hot because men will like it. This is specifically mentioned as being part of what is so disgusting about her. Also, she has tan lines, which make the narrator want to throw up.
Then he hears a voice knocking on the side of her mind saying “Child, let me in before night comes.” Naturally we well-versed in horror know that nothing good could come of letting in someone who says that, but so far is Lewis is concerned, that’s Jesus. It’s an extremely creepy story, albeit not for the reasons Lewis intended it to be.
Speculation is that the woman in question was based on Edith Tolkien, who Lewis really didn’t like, though I don’t know what grounds people have for that speculation.
[…]and specifically associated this betrayal with adult femininity.
Did he?
“My sister Susan,” answered Peter shortly and gravely, “is no longer a friend of Narnia.”
“Yes,” said Eustace, “and whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says ‘What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.”
“Oh Susan!” said Jill, “she’s interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up.”
“Grown-up, indeed,” said the Lady Polly. “I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.
Emphases mine.
Susan’s sin isn’t the “nylons” and “lipstick” and “going to parties” – that’s mentioned almost in passing. Her sin (as seen by the narrative, which admittedly is even more of a Christian allegory than in other “Narnia” books) is that she gives too much importance to mundane and materialistic things as opposed to the more important spiritual matters (after all, in the context of the novels, Aslan is Jesus).
The only other thing by Lewis I’ve read is The Four Loves, so maybe his writing as a whole does have anti-feminist sentiments (although I’d be leery of classifying anything from the beauty industry as feminist), and it’s not as if the “Narnia” books don’t have their share of sexism… But I do think that people focus too much on the Susan issue, when it’s not really an issue of “femininity is bad”, but rather “materialism is bad”.
Yes, I acknowledged what Susan’s actual sin was supposed to be in one entire paragraph of my comment. The fact that nylons and lipstick and invitations are mentioned in passing as an interest that should be sneered at is still something people are allowed to be justifiably offended by.
The Shoddy Lands isn’t anti-feminist, it’s straight-up misogynist. It isn’t critiquing the beauty industry; it’s critiquing the empty shallow worthless vapid minds Lewis has decided certain women have. Like I said, the idea that Lewis hated women who expressed adult femininity in ways he deemed unacceptable did not come from nowhere. Much of his writing was philosophical, and ‘ew women’ was a big part of his philosophy.
I don’t know why people get so defensive about this. So the Narnia books reached the gender equality of a Famous Five story at best. Big whoop.
It isn’t critiquing the beauty industry;[…]
That was in reference to The Last Battle, actually. I have mentioned I’ve only read the “Narnia” books and The Four Loves.
Susan’s sin isn’t the “nylons” and “lipstick” and “going to parties” – that’s mentioned almost in passing. Her sin (as seen by the narrative, which admittedly is even more of a Christian allegory than in other “Narnia” books) is that she gives too much importance to mundane and materialistic things as opposed to the more important spiritual matters (after all, in the context of the novels, Aslan is Jesus).
I don’t see how you can say that. We’re told that she generally wanted to be grown-up and reject Aslan/Jesus, and the nylons and lipstick and parties and boys are what he gives as specifics. They are all he gives as specifics. He clearly meant them to be the same thing.
It’s misogynistic because it’s tying her rejection of God to specifically teenage femininity and sexuality. It’s not that she likes dressing up or pretty necklaces, but lipstick and nylons, both of which are about being attractive to boys. And at the same time we’re told this isn’t being grown-up and is actually just evidence of how stupid and childish every woman who concerns herself with those things is.
It has little or even nothing to do with being materialistic. It’s about wanting to be attractive to boys (that’s where the bit about staying the same age from now on comes in). CS Lewis was very open about writing these things as moral lessons. He didn’t pick those things lightly.
The people who get into heaven are all the boys, the prepubescent girl and post-menopause woman, both of whom condemn the rejected girl to make it clear they have no interest in those things.
And this is the final book of his series, the capstone of all the shitty treatment Susan got. A brief recap:
The problem in Narnia is that an evil woman has taken over. She is seductive and attractive, but dumber as well as less powerful than the true male ruler.
Father Christmas gives Peter a sword, then gives the girls a bow and a dagger while telling them they aren’t supposed to fight and should only use it as a last resort. Instead, Lucy gets the cordial so she can heal the injured who do fight, and Susan gets a horn that’ll summon her brother to save them when they’re attacked. (I believe she faints as well.)
All children are made rulers of Narnia, but it’s repeated over and over that Peter is High King. There is no High Queen. Also, Susan’s title is “gentle”, which bugged me from the very start, when I was a kid too young to read seeing it on TV. It has nothing to do with her character or anything she does, it’s just the generic “proper lady” term, and it sure seems like it’s because she’s right on the edge of adolescence, while Lucy is still young enough to be a kid.
Susan never gets to go back to Narnia because apparently she IS too grown-up for it, but we’ll see her again in the book about how Arabs are evil and disgusting, where her attractiveness is instrumental in causing a war. All other girls who get into Narnia are ones of Lucy’s age and type.
Later, we’ll learn such tidbits about the White Witch as “she’s bonus evil for disobeying God in eating an apple that’s right I said apple it’s in a garden” and “her fucked up society actually had women rulers all the time like wtf” and “she dresses like such a slut you have no idea”. A later book will have another sexy evil woman manipulating a rightful ruler. (In the real world, he also puts an incompetent woman in charge of the evil school that does such horrible things as “not teach religion” and “mix the sexes”, but hilariously, the evil atheist bitch sees Aslan bringing the kids back and gets kicked out for being hysterical when she tells people. Bonus fact: the actual place he was satirizing was run by a guy, but can’t let that get in the way of blaming everything on women.)
Furthermore! The repeated “sons of Adam, daughters of Eve”. The books do not say “children of Adam and Eve” and certainly never “daughters of Adam, sons of Eve”. From the first book, the boys are the children of the first human and the girls are the children of the second human who fucked it all up for everybody. It was obvious to an atheist-raised kid who couldn’t read yet that there was a division between the boys and girls there. I don’t think CS Lewis missed the implication.
He doesn’t like women, it’s obvious throughout the books, it’s most obvious in Susan, and therefore Susan is highlighted.
And this is the final book of his series, the capstone of all the shitty treatment Susan got. […] He doesn’t like women, it’s obvious throughout the books, it’s most obvious in Susan, and therefore Susan is highlighted.
Hmmm. Yeah, that makes sense.
Just out of curiosity, was the satirized institution Bertrand Russell’s?
My copy of this book had “Harry Potter for adults!” stamped on the front cover, which annoyed me no end. ‘X for adults’ isn’t just supposed to mean “we took out all of the whimsy and idealism and replaced it with cynicism, now it is Adult”. The book is just kind of empty misery.
Another aspect of the books that I noticed is the odd ‘wish-fulfilment for cynical capitalist young adults’ elements that kept showing up. Every single friendship group ended up acquiring lavish, ridiculous amounts of money when things were going well and living in huge fancy houses having expensive dinners. It started weirding me out a bit. The part in the second book about Julia’s group looking for God/gods was really interesting and a neat idea, but why did we also have to throw in that incidentally they live in a french chateau while they do this?
Okay, I’m sorry. I mistook you for a reasonable person. It won’t happen again, don’t worry.
“Personal stakes”, as Act put it, don’t give you the right to attack whomsoever you damn well please. And I’m not referring to Lewis, either.
That you can claim with an apparently straight “face” that you’ve been reasonable throughout this discussion shows an astounding amount of hypocrisy on your part.
Indeed, we don’t have anything worthwhile to discuss.
Hi there. Listen, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I felt personally attacked and instead of reasoning things out, I reacted in a much more aggressive manner than I should have. I apologize.