Amethyst posted:

I was maybe 14 when I read it. Just finished 5 David Eddings books and wanted something similar. Not sure why the guy in the book store gave me Rapist in Elf Land.

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

From what I've read it's apparently considered influential by other fantasy authors and issued in the best of GRIMDARK.

That said, I am 38% of the way through and am taking notes. Just gotta finish it and organize my thoughts coherently, which is hard because the book is thematically a mess with poor prose and Covenant is awful.

I might bring in some of these reviews too - I read a few to see if I was actually nuts or if it is how I remember.

A human heart posted:

just taking notes over here for my brilliant takedown of a book called 'lord foul's bane', because otherwise no one would know it was bad

pospysyl posted:

Honestly, Lord Foul the Despiser is a pretty great name for a fantasy villain, and he's got some great dialogue to boot. Imagine calling someone a "groveler" to their face. Foul definitely earns that title.

lofi posted:

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Allow me to explain why I have trouble with this argument. Let's go back to earlier where we were discussing Don Quijote. Don Quijote was a criticism of the cliches of a genre. I feel like you would go to Cervantes and say, "ha those cliches arent real because these stories dont have them."

It ends up being something impossible to argue because you are laying out a criteria that is wholly subjective and personal and demanding I explicitly meet it.

Bonaventure posted:

THE WEIRD MOUNTAINS
by China Mieville

It was on a Thursday when the Himalayan Mountains rearranged themselves in the shape of a brand logo. You would recognize the brand if I told you what it was. Everyone would. People more or less flipped out about it, because it was a pretty weird thing to happen.

“loving weird!” said Mabel.
“loving A-right,” Marcy replied.

I looked at Marcy. She saw the look I gave her. I could tell she understood.


They were lesbians, Mabel and Marcy—but that was only incidental, and not the weird part of the story. Lesbians are normal, just to make this clear. The weird part of the story was the part with the mountains.

At first everyone thought the brand was responsible for rearranging the mountains, but no one could prove it. Then, everyone blamed the monsters that had appeared en masse at the same time as the mountains’ rearrangement; but the monsters rightly pointed out that they don’t even like that brand. They were nice monsters. And so, it remained a weird mystery. Eventually, in the near future where this story is set, everyone got used to the Himalayas being in the shape of a brand logo, and the reaction was much more muted when the moon’s craters spelled out a sentence one day. The sentence was very meaningful, and I bet you wish you knew what it was.

I asked Mabel what she thought about the moon. She answered me.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked weirdly.

Nerdburger_Jansen posted:

So, I'm going to demonstrate that analyzing the Chronicles in terms of what themes it has is not an interesting critical enterprise, by showing what you would need to do for this to be coherent. Your solution to the problem that environmentalism isn't a consistent overarching theme in the Chronicles is to posit that it is one among many. Impotence is another. OK, fine, let's take that logic through to its conclusion.

What are the themes of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant?

Positive character traits without redemption
Covenant is a rapist. At no point is he ever forgiven for this, nor is it ever implied that any of his actions in the slightest pardon him for what he's done. In fact, each time he returns to the Land, he is faced with more and worse consequences of his initial actions. Nonetheless, it's simply a fact that he does a huge amount of good through what might be called a heroic effort. Can awful people still do heroic things, without in any way diminishing what they've done?

Impotence as strength
Covenant is impotent, both literally and metaphorically. He is cured of his literal impotence twice on entering the Land, but even this runs out on his third entry. Yet, it is precisely because he is incapable of so many things that he eventually ends up to be the person uniquely suited to solve the problems he's faced with, and it is part of why the man in the robe chooses him for his task. This is shown most obviously by his foil, Hile Troy, who possesses a certain kind of confidence and competence, the very exercising of which leads to his downfall. Covenant is able to escape these pitfalls because of his reticence and lack of power.

The relation between the metaphysical status of the world and ethics
This is the theme most explicitly spelt out by the author, in the note first given to Covenant: to test a man's moral mettle, see what he does when he thinks the world isn't real. Covenant shows one answer to this question when he rapes Lena, thinking she isn't real. He shows the other when he destroys Foul, even though he still isn't convinced the Land is real. What does it matter what you do, if the world isn't real? Does the metaphysical status of the world void ethical responsibilities?

The temptation to self-destruction
This is explored through the Ritual of Destruction, performed first in the mythical past by Kevin Landwaster, then contemplated by Mhoram and attempted by Lena's dad. It seems to mirror the desire to commit suicide by Covenant. As Covenant always finds a way not to kill himself even under the decay of his own body, the stewards of the Land always manage not to succumb to the temptation to destroy what they love when it is hurting. Is it possible that life can be worth living, and not abandoning, even when there is no particular part of it that is good?

The struggle between good and evil
A holdover from Tolkien, this is explored through Foul's attempt to destroy the land and its inhabitants. The Chronicles' villains are not gray; they are not anti-villains. They are not fleshed out with character arcs, they do not elicit sympathy from the reader, and they do not pull punches. Nor are their actions meant to be in any way alluring or tempting. They are just loving horrible, and kill, inhabit people's bodies, commit genocide, and destroy the countryside. They are evil because they are quasi-natural forces (as with the ravers) or because their character is thoroughly corrupt (as with foul). The Chronicles apparently affirm the presence of real, objective evil in the world and the possibility of curbing it through conscious effort.

The inversion of fantasy
Written in reaction to Tolkien at the start of fantasy as a mass-marketable commercial genre, the Chronicles loosely mirrors the structure of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but deliberately turns much of it on its head. It also explores what happens when one takes seriously the idea that a world like Middle Earth has 'real-world' inhabitants in it. And so Covenant comes off as more psychologically fleshed out than those surrounding him, who seem like wooden caricatures by contrast – this to show what would happen if someone from 1970's America actually conversed with a Tolkien character. What happens when you try to treat a fantasy world as if it were real is also demonstrated through the forced march of Hile Troy.

The question of the reality of the world
Covenant never resolves whether the Land is real – any reading of the book that claims it unequivocally is or isn't by the end of the story, or that Covenant holds to one of these two options, is missing something very basic. Covenant is able in part to succeed because he does not take the world seriously – he dispels the visage of Elena by affirming that she is not real. Yet he needs to take the world seriously as real in order to care about it enough to save it, and indeed it has to be real to the extent that it can be saved. Thus, Covenant's adventure only makes sense insofar as the world can both be given credence and doubted at the same time.

Homelessness
The giants are eternal wanderers, and left without a permanent home; they then lose their home away from home when they are all killed. The Bloodguard are also permanently displaced from their native lands. Covenant is likewise, and has nowhere to go back to.

The banality of literature
Covenant is an author of mainstream literary fiction, of the sort read by fashionable middle class (probably New Englander) women in book clubs in the 1970s. After his experiences with leprosy, his literary work comes to seem trite to him, despite its bestselling status, and he can no longer write. He is not a genre author; though living in the 1970's, he is apparently unaware of Tolkien, and never makes metafictional references to fantasy literature while living in a literal fantasy world. His experiences with writing are ultimately hollow and never help him, so much so that we never even know what it is he wrote about, nor does he reflect on this seriously as an aid to his adventures. Only a fantastical experience outside of his literary mode eventually gives him the ability to write again.

The (mis)treatment of nature
The Land is sick and dying, and needs to be made healthy again. Covenant acknowledges that in his own world, the 'environment' is treated basically as scenery. The inhabitants of the Land are fanatical in their devotion to this restoration, which acts as a foil to American apathy.

---

Our list is getting quite long, and we're not even close to done. Shall we keep going? How many hundreds could we list? But then, this is starting not to look like an interesting analysis of the book, because it misses what it fundamentally is.

Fundamentally, the book is like a person, a multifaceted creature with its own artistic form. It makes as little sense, then, to appreciate it through the lens of themes in this way, as it does to appreciate a person in this way. We can imagine 'personality traits' of people in retrospect, as a loose schematic way of understanding 'what they are like' or 'what they are about,' but this is not a serious way to understand or interact with a person. Likewise with a story – much of these things are there for no reason, many of them do not overlap or converge, and a good deal probably reflect whatever the author happened to be thinking about or happened to have grown up with. If asked 'what is the Chronicles about,' the list above, and the hundreds of entries I could continue with, are simply not that interesting.

And so I hold that any book that could be substantively described in such a way is similarly uninteresting.

If we take say The Worm Ouroboros as the work of fantasy par excellence, and ask what its themes are – this seems to be a very stupid question. And reading the book will make it clearer why.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

If I want to attack Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in Book Barn outside of this thread, I am obligated to say that I enjoyed some part of it.

Backhanded and sarcastic compliments to Hitler will be spotted

quote:

Hieronymus Alloy has given me a mod challenge that obligates me to praise racist and fascist artwork, because they think I'm being too negative. Please understand that I speak under coercion.

porfiria posted:

Why does everyone in TBB post like they're really stupid? Is this the "house style"?

pseudanonymous posted:

The loving angels' name is Moroni. That seems like it's beyond parody.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I genuinely want them to reflect on the priority world building takes in terms of the narrative and whether the excessive level of detail meant to create a more thorough "world" ultimately ends up sacrificing the integrity of the narrative itself

Like, I get that you can like world-building, and thats cool. I just want to start a dialog about world building in and of itself because its always tossed around as an essential element of good genre fiction and I am not sure thats actually true.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Home stuck. Similar to the Malazan diagram I posted, the creator made a magic system and plot so tortuously arcane and convoluted that you'd have to be some kind of maniac to get it to make sense.

The fans tried anyway.

Submarine Sandpaper posted:

Eric Bolling's son ODed and I enjoyed the Schadenfreude

Mel Mudkiper posted:

for what does this thread exist if not to push back against obsolete ideas

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Do we need to have a therapy session or something you have been really snippy recently

chernobyl kinsman posted:

its a really basic christian allegory and you're way overthinking it. she didnt come back to narnia because she consciously chose, as a rational being gifted with free will, not to go back to narnia. if she chooses to accept narnia - which she knows on some level is real - she can go back to narnia.


it doesnt matter whether she rejects narnia because she likes lipstick or racehorses or guns or resident evil 2, out now for the playstation 4 and xbox one. what matters is that she oriented herself towards the worldly rather than the spiritual, and (more importantly) that she rejected narnia. neither racehorses nor lipstick are inherently more worldly. choosing either over god removes you from his presence. but that's not really the point; the lipstick is only the outer sign of the inner movement (i.e., from Narnia-God).

cannot believe you've got me stanning for c. s. lewis, of all people, an author whom i do not and have never liked. y'all need to read something besides twitter.

Crimpolioni posted:

I remember enjoying the screwtape letters when I read them way back, but I'd love to hear some thoughtful, genuine criticism of them, if that's what you've got in mind.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Mount Olympus is essentially a divine trailer park

chernobyl kinsman posted:

neil gaiman's norse mythology makes me really irrationally angry because it doesn't need to exist. the prose edda is about 70 pages long and is available in a number of very good translations; just read that! why on earth would you want neil gaiman's take on snorri sturluson's take on the norse myths unless you are a literal child?

my bony fealty posted:

Gaiman defenders, show yourself

chernobyl kinsman posted:

the penguin classics one is good. it's by jesse byock, who's a real-deal norse scholar and has a couple of good books (Viking Language I and II) for teaching yourself old norse pretty easily

for the poetic edda, the lee hollander edition is difficult and not really aimed at nonspecialists. carolyne larrington's version is the one i'd go for; she's also a major scholar and i like her translation better. she also has a lot of good explanatory footnotes, and it's an Oxford World's Classics book, which is a publication line that have a high opinion of. i haven't read the penguin one (which is published under the older title of the elder edda but it's probably fine. penguin usually has fewer footnotes, tho, and i like footnotes

e: for some reason there's a hardcover of the Larrington edition coming out in july and that's the one that comes up on amazon first. it's like twice the price, so just get the paperback if you're gonna go with that one

pikachode posted:

fart rear end

lofi posted:

Does anyone else just kinda reflexively skip over lyrics in books? I think Tolkein might have instilled that in me.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Speaking of terrible sci-fi and fantasy

hoo boy anthem is terribly written on every level

pseudanonymous posted:

The Ayn Rand book? Does it have a map? Also, Ayn Rand is just a terrible loving writer, it goes without saying any book she wrote is terrible. I read the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged when I was younger wanting to see what all the fuss was about and man she's just an awful awful writer, aside from whether her ideas have any merit (they don't).

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

penis is good

chernobyl kinsman posted:

im gonna link you to it because im a kinder, better person than mel

for further reading you might be interested in wimsatt & beardsley's intentional fallacy

e: someone post that .jpg of the guy discussing the death of the author and concluding that "authors are here to stay"

CountFosco posted:

Death of the Author is a messed up essay. It is an assault on the concept of free will, and it substitutes how the ancient world thought of inspiration (as coming from daimons) with a materialist source (culture of the time). It's this incoherent mess which straddles this weird line between trying to be ultra-materialist while bordering on the mystical.

chernobyl kinsman posted:

and she's not even french

A human heart posted:

that thread is one of the only good places online to discuss actual books and you shouldn't direct book barn regulars to post there.

pikachode posted:

if i ever get my hands on mel so help me