The Magicians (Lev Grossman)
Jan. 11th, 2010 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnFirst, as a general public service announcement, I have been told that Lev Grossman is the brother of the sculptor mathematician Bathsheba Grossman, who I can without reservation say kicks total butt. Did I mention she is a mathematics sculptor? Swoon!
So, the book. I do believe this is the kind of book one cannot read (well, certainly not if one is me) without feeling the need to wave one's hands about wildly, pontificate about it for hours, and buttonhole random people to rant at about it... for while I had both good and bad feelings about it, they were pronounced feelings; no apathy here! (In this respect it was just about the opposite of Time Traveler's Wife, to which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
julianyap compared it, my reaction to which was "Eh.") It's Contemporary New York Bored Teenagers Meet Harry Potter and Narnia, which pretty much sums up the book. As for the book itself, I really very much liked the first half (okay, the geese? awesome!), I hated and despised the third quarter (I might actually have given up reading it at this point were it not for promising I'd finish it) and thought the last quarter just about made up for the third quarter (I must say I didn't see any of that coming), except where it ended a little too abruptly. So overall, that's a win, I'd say.
Quentin, the main character, although he has his moments, mostly (starting on page 2 or so) makes me want to scream and beat my head against the wall -- I know it's intentional, but Quentin's anvilicious tenth iteration of "Why am I unhappy? Is it me, or is it just that the world sucks?" MADE ME WANT TO PUNCH HIM. (Why, yes, Quentin, it's you; and all of us know it.) (It does not help that I was never the sort of kid who wanted to escape into Fantasyland; yes, I read some books obsessively, but actually live there? Uh, no.) Alice is awesome, and I found myself surprised to rather like the Physical Kids. Brakebills (the Hogwarts analogue) I rather like, and Fillory (the Narnia analogue) makes me want to beat my head against the wall and beat the book against it (not that I would) - this, I think, is the biggest flaw in the book.
Let me, in fact, say more about Brakebills and Fillory under a cut. The deconstruction Brakebills does of Hogwarts I find rather entertaining, but then I'm a total sucker for school/college books in general. The grouping of students based on discipline I found rather more convincing than Hogwarts' House system (though this may be because as an undergraduate I felt little-to-no identification with my House, but much more so with my major), and the Quidditch-analogue also made a great deal more sense (possibly because it was not explained in nearly as great detail). My feeling was rather that Grossman was trying to make a magical school that made sense to an American college kid (whereas Hogwarts really doesn't at all -- someday when I have infinite time I shall rant about the pedagogy system in HP, which makes me cringe every time the kids enter a classroom -- but even aside from that HP is not, let's say, anything much like the experience I had at either American boarding-high-school or college), and I think he pretty much succeeded.
Fillory is where the book just entirely fell down flat. It seems like Grossman wants to have his cake and eat it too-- that is, he wants to skewer fantasy-escapism and present a compelling fantasy world at the same time. Hint: this introduces a logical inconsistency, because to do the skewering you have to make your fantasy world twee and pathetic, and not compelling at all.
Look, there's a reason Narnia has the power it does over generations of kids, even though, yes, there is a lot of twee about it. And no, it's not because of the talking beavers or because it makes throwaway references to the Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time, as Grossman appears to believe. It's because the reference is itself based on a tradition and archetypes that are far, far older and more coherent than the specific reference itself: when C.S. Lewis talks about the Deep Magic, he's talking about sacrifice and substitution and betrayal and forgiveness and love and death -- fundamental things. (And yeah, you may disagree with him about how these things ought to fit together, and you can certainly object to his sources if you like, that's fine, but that doesn't dissolve the framework that he's using.)
(This is the case for most fantasy works that survive over, oh, more than a ten-year period. Even (say) Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which I personally cannot handle for more than about a quarter of a book without rolling my eyes and dropping the book, works for a lot of people because Jordan has constructed a mythos that is rooted in deeper ideas, of incarnation and humanity and gender (using, of course, scraps he dug from Tolkien and the Arthurian corpus and probably lots of other places-- but that's exactly my point; archetypes don't spring out of nowhere; they are, generally, made from other things). )
When Grossman tries to manufacture an ersatz Narnia, on the other hand, it's all fragmented and incoherent, borrowing superficial ideas from Narnia but without anything deep holding it together. One of the characters says that certain things don't work because of Higher Laws involving balance (so far so good), but in the absence of context (which there's really not), it's just a marked bid simply a) to make the plot work, and b) to Make A Point About Gods And Stuff. Let's just say that it didn't work when C.S. Lewis tried allegory by fiat either, in The Last Battle. Or: when was the last time you met a kid who was bowled over by C.S. Lewis's SF?
It really makes one wonder why the heck anyone, much less Quentin (who is presented as a self-absorbed twit, but not a stupid one by any means), would even finish a book set in this world, much less be obsessed with it. Which rather undercuts the whole point Grossman is trying to make.
Though again, the ending of the Fillory part of the book, with what it says about responsibility and abdication of same -- goes back to archetypes that the author himself believes and has carefully built up in the rest of the book (and I'm not even talking about the annoying Quentin's angst here, but more about, oh, Amanda) -- and almost, almost! brings the level of the whole thing up enough not to be irksome. And the ending -- well, you can read it in a number of ways (Abigail Nussbaum reads it quite negatively, in a way that had convinced me not to read it until julianyap encouraged it), but I'll choose to read it in a hopeful way: for me, symbolized by the redemption of (of all people) Eliot.
So, the book. I do believe this is the kind of book one cannot read (well, certainly not if one is me) without feeling the need to wave one's hands about wildly, pontificate about it for hours, and buttonhole random people to rant at about it... for while I had both good and bad feelings about it, they were pronounced feelings; no apathy here! (In this respect it was just about the opposite of Time Traveler's Wife, to which
julianyap compared it, my reaction to which was "Eh.") It's Contemporary New York Bored Teenagers Meet Harry Potter and Narnia, which pretty much sums up the book. As for the book itself, I really very much liked the first half (okay, the geese? awesome!), I hated and despised the third quarter (I might actually have given up reading it at this point were it not for promising I'd finish it) and thought the last quarter just about made up for the third quarter (I must say I didn't see any of that coming), except where it ended a little too abruptly. So overall, that's a win, I'd say.Quentin, the main character, although he has his moments, mostly (starting on page 2 or so) makes me want to scream and beat my head against the wall -- I know it's intentional, but Quentin's anvilicious tenth iteration of "Why am I unhappy? Is it me, or is it just that the world sucks?" MADE ME WANT TO PUNCH HIM. (Why, yes, Quentin, it's you; and all of us know it.) (It does not help that I was never the sort of kid who wanted to escape into Fantasyland; yes, I read some books obsessively, but actually live there? Uh, no.) Alice is awesome, and I found myself surprised to rather like the Physical Kids. Brakebills (the Hogwarts analogue) I rather like, and Fillory (the Narnia analogue) makes me want to beat my head against the wall and beat the book against it (not that I would) - this, I think, is the biggest flaw in the book.
Let me, in fact, say more about Brakebills and Fillory under a cut. The deconstruction Brakebills does of Hogwarts I find rather entertaining, but then I'm a total sucker for school/college books in general. The grouping of students based on discipline I found rather more convincing than Hogwarts' House system (though this may be because as an undergraduate I felt little-to-no identification with my House, but much more so with my major), and the Quidditch-analogue also made a great deal more sense (possibly because it was not explained in nearly as great detail). My feeling was rather that Grossman was trying to make a magical school that made sense to an American college kid (whereas Hogwarts really doesn't at all -- someday when I have infinite time I shall rant about the pedagogy system in HP, which makes me cringe every time the kids enter a classroom -- but even aside from that HP is not, let's say, anything much like the experience I had at either American boarding-high-school or college), and I think he pretty much succeeded.
Fillory is where the book just entirely fell down flat. It seems like Grossman wants to have his cake and eat it too-- that is, he wants to skewer fantasy-escapism and present a compelling fantasy world at the same time. Hint: this introduces a logical inconsistency, because to do the skewering you have to make your fantasy world twee and pathetic, and not compelling at all.
Look, there's a reason Narnia has the power it does over generations of kids, even though, yes, there is a lot of twee about it. And no, it's not because of the talking beavers or because it makes throwaway references to the Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time, as Grossman appears to believe. It's because the reference is itself based on a tradition and archetypes that are far, far older and more coherent than the specific reference itself: when C.S. Lewis talks about the Deep Magic, he's talking about sacrifice and substitution and betrayal and forgiveness and love and death -- fundamental things. (And yeah, you may disagree with him about how these things ought to fit together, and you can certainly object to his sources if you like, that's fine, but that doesn't dissolve the framework that he's using.)
(This is the case for most fantasy works that survive over, oh, more than a ten-year period. Even (say) Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which I personally cannot handle for more than about a quarter of a book without rolling my eyes and dropping the book, works for a lot of people because Jordan has constructed a mythos that is rooted in deeper ideas, of incarnation and humanity and gender (using, of course, scraps he dug from Tolkien and the Arthurian corpus and probably lots of other places-- but that's exactly my point; archetypes don't spring out of nowhere; they are, generally, made from other things). )
When Grossman tries to manufacture an ersatz Narnia, on the other hand, it's all fragmented and incoherent, borrowing superficial ideas from Narnia but without anything deep holding it together. One of the characters says that certain things don't work because of Higher Laws involving balance (so far so good), but in the absence of context (which there's really not), it's just a marked bid simply a) to make the plot work, and b) to Make A Point About Gods And Stuff. Let's just say that it didn't work when C.S. Lewis tried allegory by fiat either, in The Last Battle. Or: when was the last time you met a kid who was bowled over by C.S. Lewis's SF?
It really makes one wonder why the heck anyone, much less Quentin (who is presented as a self-absorbed twit, but not a stupid one by any means), would even finish a book set in this world, much less be obsessed with it. Which rather undercuts the whole point Grossman is trying to make.
Though again, the ending of the Fillory part of the book, with what it says about responsibility and abdication of same -- goes back to archetypes that the author himself believes and has carefully built up in the rest of the book (and I'm not even talking about the annoying Quentin's angst here, but more about, oh, Amanda) -- and almost, almost! brings the level of the whole thing up enough not to be irksome. And the ending -- well, you can read it in a number of ways (Abigail Nussbaum reads it quite negatively, in a way that had convinced me not to read it until julianyap encouraged it), but I'll choose to read it in a hopeful way: for me, symbolized by the redemption of (of all people) Eliot.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 01:17 am (UTC)But the first half is totally awesome.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-09 08:11 am (UTC)Very useful, as I only got access to Narnia books as an adult, so I was wondering ... and Fillory-awe not making sense DID baffle me (of course, as non-native English speaker, my expectations about literature do differ from the ones the Western native English speakers have. I have not had spoons to figure out how exactly, but they do differ)
So, thank you again for a thought provoking read!
PS: a random irrelevant wonder : "Why did Grossman pick up MY language as an example of random spell-writing one in the book? Was it just closing eyes and pointing a finger at a random language from the list of languages or was there something more?"
Yes - small nations can be very self-obsessed this way
no subject
Date: 2011-08-10 03:16 am (UTC)What language do you speak? It's been a while since I read it, so I don't remember exactly. I am sure it had someting to do with the bad Latin used in Harry Potter, but I couldn't say what exactly.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-10 07:15 am (UTC)http://elevenpointfive.blogspot.com/2010/08/such-great-book-but.html
Of course, for attentive strangers visiting there CAN be details they notice but cannot explain. I recall some Russian tourists complaining that Estonians have crooked language, because they write the word BANK (as financial institution) as they feel like - pank, pang, bank ...
The mistake came form the Swedish SWEDBANK not translating their signs and the way Estonian word endings change - pank, but panga-automaat (ATM)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-08 07:37 am (UTC)Sometimes I liked The Magicians for being an easy read and sometimes I had a very low opinion of its shortcuts. Perhaps if I were Quentin's age I'd empathize with him more? Or if I read more lit I'd find Grossman's themes more compelling? I have lots of feelings about the setup. For example, where is the Earthsea shoutout, to go with your archtypes?
no subject
Date: 2011-11-09 04:25 am (UTC)Perhaps if I were Quentin's age I'd empathize with him more?
...maybe? He just seems really whiny, even by adolescent standards.
Or if I read more lit I'd find Grossman's themes more compelling?
I don't think so. I think it's more likely to be the opposite -- if you read less fantasy you might find it more compelling (see below).
For example, where is the Earthsea shoutout, to go with your archtypes?
So I don't think that Grossman is out to skewer all of fantasy-land, really -- he's trying to skewer a particular sort of wish-fulfillment if only I could live there thing. Which is more likely to come out in Narnia or Harry Potter, which have a great deal more of the "hey look how cool this is!" than it is with Earthsea (um, by a great deal -- is there anyone who would want to live in Earthsea?) or even Middle-Earth.
But, like I said, I had sort of a low opinion of how he degraded Fillory in order to make fun of Narnia... it seems like there's something he's not quite getting. Though in Magician King, he demonstrates conclusively that he can write non-degraded fantasy pastiche, so there's that.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-09 07:42 am (UTC)That edge of if I could live there might explain why I want to flap my hands about the novel's genre and not about the story. I liked absorbing fantasy worlds, but moving there? That's what Mary Sues are for. Actually living in a pre-electric setting would drive me batty. Quentin is supposed to be smart, but he doesn't seem to have thought through the second-order consequences of Fillory/Narnia worldbuilding.
...it seems like there's something he's not quite getting.
Reading the bio on his website, and the last paragraph here, I'd guess there was a point when books failed to do what they usually did for him, and he had an emotional reaction that manifested as The Magicians. Maybe by The Magician King he was starting to get past that emotion-hump?
no subject
Date: 2011-11-10 04:25 am (UTC)Yes, exactly! I was never really eager to live in any fantasy setting. Fun to read about, but not so much to live in. Well, Narnia during its Golden Age might be okay, as long as they had magical analogues to electricity and showers...
You might check out (if you haven't already) The Short Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which engages with the same sort of "I wish I could live in fantasy-land" feeling, only... very differently. In my opinion it's really good; I actually don't have much to say about it, becaiuse it was good enough it didn't hit the rant-buttons like this book did, but there's a really good review here.
Maybe by The Magician King he was starting to get past that emotion-hump?
It really reads to me more as if he read the critiques of Magicians and said "hey, you think I wrote it that way because I can't do it your way? Fine, have it your way!" (My review of Magician King is here, if you don't mind mild spoilers, and may serve as a substitute for actually reading the book :) )