flyingskull (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flyingskull) wrote2007-09-17 04:50 pm
flyingskull) wrote2007-09-17 04:50 pm
Reading the Classics
Sorry for the absence. Part of it was work, part of it was a bit of sex, but most of it was that I was thinking and trying to understand a thing that's been irritating me: why is it so hard to use decent reading comprehension when faced with the classics?
Take Romeo and Juliet for example. Everybody and their mother-in-law are dissing it right, left and centre because the protagonists are eejits and there's such a simple solution to their problem and also that's not love, that's hormones talking. Which would be alright if the actual text didn't say something completely different from 'see how tragic this immortal love story is?'.
What the actual text says is that murderous hatred and family feuds are killers; that they blind people to logic, reason and good sense. It says that the adults have lost all sense of responsibility and social values, not that the children are cretins. The children - he's sixteen and she's fourteen - have good social values, the children are open to dialogue, the children fall in and out of love and lust and, if they don't respect their parents so much, they fear them enough and love them enough to be willing victims to the adults' whims. That's what the tragedy is all about, y'know? The love - lust, hormones... doesn't make a difference - of the young protagonists is just a symbol of the hope for reconciliation, a thing that happens only after their death. The children are the scapegoats and sacrificial lambs.
They are also real human teens and so they are passionate, willful, confused, arrogant and timid. What's wrong with that? Why should we think Shakespeare (henceforth Will) endorses all their actions? He doesn't. He thinks the marriage is imprudent, he thinks Romeo's a butterfly, he thinks Mercutio's too hot-tempered for his own good, he thinks Juliet is a blancmange... He also clearly thinks that, if the families hadn't been so fucking blind, the whole thing wouldn't have been a problem at all. Romeo is a very good parti for Juliet, surname apart, after all.
Got sidetracked. I had another very good rant on Hamlet, but it can be summarised thus: Hamlet does most emphatically NOT want to kill anyone. He especially doesn't want to go "I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." for a father he didn't even like all that much and who always put him down. He does NOT want to be in Denmark and reign, he wants to be in Wittenberg and stude and frolic with Horatio. He does NOT want to marry Ophelia. Yet he's supposed to do all those things and he balks. A LOT. But external forces (as for Romeo and Juliet) force him to a bloody end. Which is all very well, but is utterly not to the point.
What I meant to say is: the protagonist is just the cardea, the hinge around which all actions turn. The author doesn't have to endorse the protagonist's character or actions, one can write about a person one despises, but if s/he is pivotal for all actions and events, then s/he is the protagonist of the novel, drama, whatever. I think it's the same problem I was trying to analyse in singing the praise of the Bastard Hero. There's a cultural trend today I rather hate. If someone is the protagonist, then s/he must be our paragon of virtues. Readers often mistake 'protagonist' for 'hero/ine'. Back to Will, look at Macbeth. Is he a hero? Nah. Is he a protagonist? Hell yes. Did Will endorse Macbeth's actions? 'Course not. BUT he was an interesting person to write about, an interesting person to analyse and condemn, not praise. Will wanted the audience to understand villains and what makes them tick. Because, y'know? he was an author, not a propagandist.
To jump a few centuries, look a Heatcliff. I mean, just look at what he does. He's the protagonist, no doubt, but a Hero? The man's a sociopath! I mean, he has reasons, but they are just reasons why he is what he is, they are not authorial endorsement of his actions. Emily was clearly fascinated by the character - mostly because it was based on her brother whom she loved far too much - but she never once endorses his actions, even if she endorses his passions and his love.
Why should the protagonist be a role model for readers? What has given birth to this monstrous attitude? I grant you it's easier to write this way than to risk readers' bad reactions if you try and tell the story of a villain protagonist; but why doesn't anyone try anymore? Well, no, I tell a lie. I know that authors who have a host of protagonists write some of them 'good', others 'bad' and others 'grey', but that's because the story doesn't have one protagonist. An epic fresco where several characters are all pivotal to a swirl or action. That's lovely and also quite satisfying to read, but that's always been true of epics. I was more focused on the single-protagonist story because I think it's there that the confusion between protagonist and hero happens most frequently for contemporary readers.
Made a hash of things as usual, haven't I? Sorry all. Shouldn't blather when at work, too many telephone calls and things.
ETA - I decided to let it stand, warts and all. Heh...
Take Romeo and Juliet for example. Everybody and their mother-in-law are dissing it right, left and centre because the protagonists are eejits and there's such a simple solution to their problem and also that's not love, that's hormones talking. Which would be alright if the actual text didn't say something completely different from 'see how tragic this immortal love story is?'.
What the actual text says is that murderous hatred and family feuds are killers; that they blind people to logic, reason and good sense. It says that the adults have lost all sense of responsibility and social values, not that the children are cretins. The children - he's sixteen and she's fourteen - have good social values, the children are open to dialogue, the children fall in and out of love and lust and, if they don't respect their parents so much, they fear them enough and love them enough to be willing victims to the adults' whims. That's what the tragedy is all about, y'know? The love - lust, hormones... doesn't make a difference - of the young protagonists is just a symbol of the hope for reconciliation, a thing that happens only after their death. The children are the scapegoats and sacrificial lambs.
They are also real human teens and so they are passionate, willful, confused, arrogant and timid. What's wrong with that? Why should we think Shakespeare (henceforth Will) endorses all their actions? He doesn't. He thinks the marriage is imprudent, he thinks Romeo's a butterfly, he thinks Mercutio's too hot-tempered for his own good, he thinks Juliet is a blancmange... He also clearly thinks that, if the families hadn't been so fucking blind, the whole thing wouldn't have been a problem at all. Romeo is a very good parti for Juliet, surname apart, after all.
Got sidetracked. I had another very good rant on Hamlet, but it can be summarised thus: Hamlet does most emphatically NOT want to kill anyone. He especially doesn't want to go "I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." for a father he didn't even like all that much and who always put him down. He does NOT want to be in Denmark and reign, he wants to be in Wittenberg and stude and frolic with Horatio. He does NOT want to marry Ophelia. Yet he's supposed to do all those things and he balks. A LOT. But external forces (as for Romeo and Juliet) force him to a bloody end. Which is all very well, but is utterly not to the point.
What I meant to say is: the protagonist is just the cardea, the hinge around which all actions turn. The author doesn't have to endorse the protagonist's character or actions, one can write about a person one despises, but if s/he is pivotal for all actions and events, then s/he is the protagonist of the novel, drama, whatever. I think it's the same problem I was trying to analyse in singing the praise of the Bastard Hero. There's a cultural trend today I rather hate. If someone is the protagonist, then s/he must be our paragon of virtues. Readers often mistake 'protagonist' for 'hero/ine'. Back to Will, look at Macbeth. Is he a hero? Nah. Is he a protagonist? Hell yes. Did Will endorse Macbeth's actions? 'Course not. BUT he was an interesting person to write about, an interesting person to analyse and condemn, not praise. Will wanted the audience to understand villains and what makes them tick. Because, y'know? he was an author, not a propagandist.
To jump a few centuries, look a Heatcliff. I mean, just look at what he does. He's the protagonist, no doubt, but a Hero? The man's a sociopath! I mean, he has reasons, but they are just reasons why he is what he is, they are not authorial endorsement of his actions. Emily was clearly fascinated by the character - mostly because it was based on her brother whom she loved far too much - but she never once endorses his actions, even if she endorses his passions and his love.
Why should the protagonist be a role model for readers? What has given birth to this monstrous attitude? I grant you it's easier to write this way than to risk readers' bad reactions if you try and tell the story of a villain protagonist; but why doesn't anyone try anymore? Well, no, I tell a lie. I know that authors who have a host of protagonists write some of them 'good', others 'bad' and others 'grey', but that's because the story doesn't have one protagonist. An epic fresco where several characters are all pivotal to a swirl or action. That's lovely and also quite satisfying to read, but that's always been true of epics. I was more focused on the single-protagonist story because I think it's there that the confusion between protagonist and hero happens most frequently for contemporary readers.
Made a hash of things as usual, haven't I? Sorry all. Shouldn't blather when at work, too many telephone calls and things.
ETA - I decided to let it stand, warts and all. Heh...
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Vorbis is most certainly a villain like few others. And that's impressive, considering that he never does anything. He just talks, and all around him the world gets that much more horrible, people that much less human. There's something deeply horrific about someone who can do that much damage just by existing.
I've never thought about it, but I guess you're right - there's a real shortage of villains who're unbelievably bad, but in a quiet way. You read about Vorbis and it's all very calm, very matter-of-fact, you don't get upset about it - and then you put the book down for a moment and start to actually think about what you just read about Vorbis doing, and it suddenly dawns on you just how majorly fucked up it is. =] Now that's art, that is.
Pratchett is like an onion of awesomeness. Every time I think I understand his books I peel back another layer and realise that they're even better than I thought. :D And it also makes me realise just how much I've yet to learn about writing.
Hmmm... krig is obviously war. Is fredens peace? What a very odd etimos.
"Fred" means "peace," yes. I guess "fredens" would literally mean "the peace's." =]
The name refers to the fact that before the events in this book, the world had been caught in a sort of clichéd fantasy loop - there was always a King on the throne who was backed by one divine power and a rebel leader who was backed by another divine power, and the moment the King managed to destroy the rebel leader or the rebel leader managed to overthrow the King and assume the throne himself, a new rebel leader appeared, backed by whichever power had just lost its champion. After this book (which is a prequel to three others) one of the powers got exiled from the world, so there was a thousand years of peace.
Of course, it's also meant as a sort of irony - after this war, there was peace, but only because instead of two sides fighting, a single tyrant now ruled supreme. Ordered tyranny is certainly better than endless war - even a very hard-working tyrant can't personally tyrannise everyone in his kingdom, so a lot of people will be left to mind their own business, whereas war tends to become everyone's business =] - but still, it's not the happy scenario that it sounds like and that people in the story are trying to tell themselves that it is.
Funnily enough, I have now encountered another book where the character who elicits the most sympathy is definitely a nasty piece of work, and it's a prose superhero story. ^_^; Soon I'll Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. I'll post a full review once I've finished it, but I'm completely charmed by the miserable, ingenious, troubled supervillain protagonist. He's definitely bad, and I don't think he's even capable of reforming. Trying to conquer the world is just what he does, and it seems to be the only thing that makes him even slightly happy. I kind of want him to succeed, actually, though I know perfectly well why he can't. He just seems to want it so badly. =]
Other than that... well, there are a couple of villainous protagonists that show up on short stories, like Gaiman's horrible Mr Smith. =] But it's sort of scarce in longer works.
Funnily enough, I tried to write a novel like that once - it was supposed to be a retelling of Egyptian mythology, told from the perspective of Set. It didn't turn out very well, alas... but I still have fond memories of my Set and how insufferably stupid and clueless Osiris seemed to him. (Osiris was an idiot. Anyone who screws his brother's wife and then doesn't get the teensiest bit suspicious when said brother tells him to get into a coffin is officially Too Stupid To Live! =])
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I don't think it's exactly about writing, though, of course, you have to have a masterful technique to pull such things off; I think it's about how Pterry thinks. Layered writing is partly unconscious, I'm sure. I mean, look at Murakami... alright, alright, am a bit fixated, but only because I'm peeling her onion and I keep finding new layers, y'know?, after ten or twelve readings. I mean Pterry knows and Maki knows what he/she's doing, that's quite clear, you don't get to write so subtly and well on an early-morning whim, but at the same time I think it's the way they think that creates a lot of involuntary layers... or maybe cracks in the wall the readers can see things through. Not always things in perfect focus, but clear enough that one is forced to think about lots of apparently unrealted things and THEN one re-reads and all the apparently unrelated things are not unrelated at all, they're just part of the tapestry, or onion, or whatever.
To give you an example that will maybe make the above mess a bit clearer. Murakami does what appears to be a direct quote from Hamlet in her Gravitation comic the "that one can smile and smile and be a villain" thing. Her villains (few and peculiar) are inveterate smilers: obsessive smilers one could say. Now I think she hasn't necessarily heard of Hamlet - let alone read it - but I also think she thinks like Will at times. Two different minds, two different cultures (I got your email and will answer ASAP, that is, when I come back after this weekend-from-hell trip to right the wrongs done to my tourists) and two different styles and media, yet the note on human behaviour and the mind noting it are so similar you can use one to illustrate the other.
Well 'krig' is from a German root, bur 'fred' seems to come from Gaelic or Pelasgian which is why I'm so fascinated. Would you mind very much consulting a dictionary and telling me the etimology of 'fred'. It also sounds silly to me, but that's an arrogant Empire-spawned Brit for you. :P
Set... I rather love the Winter King better than the Summer King. Set and Osiris were twins who hated each other inside mummy's womb - I'm resisting a bad Egyptian mummy pun here - a story that is told in many many cultures. Osiris is child-making, wheat-thriving sex and Set is brains. So yeh, Osiris is stupid, he's just a pecker with a pretty face. Set is NOT a villain, though, he just does what's necessary to insure the land is fertile more than once. He is also an organised person who can't help being forever in love with Isis the Virgin-Mother-Crone. Nice story. *sigh*
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I will get to Murakami, never fear, though right now I am now reading Dark Lord of Derkholme. It's as I suspected - I was too young and stupid last time I read Jones, I couldn't appreciate it properly. =] This is very, very good. I love Derk, clueless, well-meaning ass that he is. He's a good guy, sort of, but he thinks nothing of bringing new species into being for no better reason than that he likes doing it... =]
Though actually, my favourite character so far is that fat High Priest guy. I mean, he's at least nominally on the villain's side, but there's something so sad about how he believes (with good reason, one feels) that he is unworthy in the eyes of his god.
Would you mind very much consulting a dictionary and telling me the etimology of 'fred'.
It would appear that "fred" is from a German root too - it's related to "Friede."
I rather love the Winter King better than the Summer King.
*laughs in surprise* It's odd thinking about Set as the Winter King, since he's all about scorching heat... but now that you mention it, the principle is the same, isn't it? The land is barren and the night is full of things that wants to eat you, so you have to be smart and adaptive to survive. Whereas the Summer King is, the land is fertile and everything is peaceful, so what we need is a whole bunch of obedient little worker bees to bring in the harvest. =] Works for winter and summer; also works for the desert and the Nile Valley.
But as for sex, I've always gotten the impression that Osiris was fertility without the sex (certain bits of him having been eaten by fishes and all - Horus' birth was a "virgin birth" that predated a certain twit of a carpenter with quite a few centuries ;) ), and Set was sex without the fertility. =]
He is also an organised person who can't help being forever in love with Isis the Virgin-Mother-Crone.
So I'm not the only one who thought there was something there? =] (and how weird is it that I have a OTP in Egyptian mythology? ^_^; ) I always imagined that Isis and Set frequently hated each other, but also that they got each other much more than anyone else. Osiris never does anything and Horus just kills things - Isis is the one who actually plans, who thinks, who acts the most like Set. Osiris is a prize she chases after and Horus is a weapon she uses - it's she who's Set's real arch-nemesis. =] And there's at least one mythological story where her loyalties did seem a little divided.
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YES! I knew you'd understand my muddy scribbles. It's also about being able to see all points of view at the same time. A bit like the multiverse, innit?
Dark Lord is one of my eternal loves. I can honestly state that there's nothing I don't like in it. One of the things I adore about Dark Lord is the way Diana uses power and magic. It's there, there's an awful lot of it, everyone uses it, it could smash the universe... and it's ultimately useless. :-D
Ah, yes. Winter King, so called because he was killed on the Winter Solstice (not unlike the Hogfather) and his so-called reign started on the Summer Soltice, so Set MUST be scorching hot (in every sense of the word *G*) Of course both twins were in love with their mother-sister-granny; the sun is constantly in love with the moon. Your intuitive spurts are quite spot-on.
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I liked the magic in Derkland too. :) It felt... well, "realistic" might not be the right word, but it did feel like Jones took the bubblegum-fantasy version of magic (whereby a wizard can do almost anything by waving his hands) and brought it to its logical conclusion. So magic is potentially very powerful and useful, but wizards frequently mess up spells because they get distracted, or because they're tired, or because they just can't get the hang of the particular brand of magic they're trying to use. I dunno about "useless," but magic certainly doesn't solve the wizard's problems for him, it just gives him an extra set of tools.
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About DWJ's Dark Lord, to me it feels like magic is not a tool, magic is what those people ARE. Like sight or hearing or the ability to think. That's why it's useless as magic in the - as you rightly call it - bubblegum fantasy sense. You can only do the best you can do with yourself and most of the time nobody really even tries to do the best of themselves. Witness the confusion the griffins have about their own abilities. They don't know exactly what they can do and often limit themselves needlessly.
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I'm somewhat surprised to realise, actually, that tertiary characters are almost the most challenging. The main characters have the whole story on them to show off their personalities - even if it doesn't become clear right away what they're all about, the reader is going to catch on eventually. Characters who just show up in a scene or two has to have a personality right there and then, because there won't be any more chances. And I'd really rather not have any empty character-shaped spaces in my story... =]
Good point about the magic. In fact, now that I think about it, talent seems to be a major theme of the book. Derk is so hostile to the wizarding university because they never showed any respect for his unique talents. Blade's and Kit's talents are going to waste for lack of schooling. Shona, at a certain point, is also prevented from achieving the life she has an aptitude from. And, yes, the griffins are all a bit uncertain of just what their assets and limitations are. Interesting. I didn't notice that before...
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