Friday, August 05, 2011
Thursday, August 04, 2011
ADwD: Separate Peaces follow-up
*Thanks to Sean's kind words and linkage, the Westeros message board has taken up an interesting thread discussing issues of peace and its relation to war in ADwD.
*To clarify another point Sean touched on, although I do think two more doorstop volumes should leave ample room for Martin to resolve everything he needs to, I'd just ask why anyone thinks it necessarily must be done in the two named, planned volumes. Suppose he cranks out another 1500 pages, only to realize that he's less than halfway into Winds of Winter. His agent and publisher are probably praying for just such an eventuality. As if anyone would say, "No, goose, I want only two more golden eggs from you, and not a single golden egg more!!!" I don't know--has Martin himself said he refuses to let it drag out past two more volumes?
*To touch again on the question of whether the Others can be established as satisfying antagonists within whatever allotted timeframe, when Sean says that Martin "has to root us and the characters alike in the conflict with the Others," my own sense is that Martin doesn't want either us or the characters to be ready for the Others when they finally attack in force. To cite a bit more comics "junk" (which I haven't even read, for good measure!), I suspect it will look something like this:
*Where do I even begin with the Pink Letter? It deserves its own post (or two?), and that's what I'll tackle next. Stay tuned, and stay groovy!
*To clarify another point Sean touched on, although I do think two more doorstop volumes should leave ample room for Martin to resolve everything he needs to, I'd just ask why anyone thinks it necessarily must be done in the two named, planned volumes. Suppose he cranks out another 1500 pages, only to realize that he's less than halfway into Winds of Winter. His agent and publisher are probably praying for just such an eventuality. As if anyone would say, "No, goose, I want only two more golden eggs from you, and not a single golden egg more!!!" I don't know--has Martin himself said he refuses to let it drag out past two more volumes?
*To touch again on the question of whether the Others can be established as satisfying antagonists within whatever allotted timeframe, when Sean says that Martin "has to root us and the characters alike in the conflict with the Others," my own sense is that Martin doesn't want either us or the characters to be ready for the Others when they finally attack in force. To cite a bit more comics "junk" (which I haven't even read, for good measure!), I suspect it will look something like this:
In a special What If by David Hine and Mico Suayan, the Annihilation Wave reaches Earth in the climactic battle of the super hero Civil War. Nova is outraged the heroes are fighting over secret identities when such a massive threat is coming.In this case, as I imagine it, Civil War translates to Westeros's Game of Thrones (which is slowly but surely reducing the entire realm to a macrocosmic Reek), and the Annihilation Wave translates to the Others. That's a too-geeky-by-half way of saying Westeros will have everything but Others on its collective mind on the day the Wall falls. Everyone will be utterly knocked on their ass by it--including us readers, I hope!--and everyone who isn't Night's Watch will almost certainly be caught in the middle of some other situation that seemed dire enough already.
*Where do I even begin with the Pink Letter? It deserves its own post (or two?), and that's what I'll tackle next. Stay tuned, and stay groovy!
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
A DANCE WITH DRAGONS: Separate Peaces
*To begin most superficially, Jesus fuck I'm glad not to have to lug this thing around in my messenger bag any longer.
*From what I've gathered in my surfing of internets, there's some question whether Martin can bring everything to resolution within the two remaining planned volumes. That's just stupid. The entire publication history of the series to date has been one long study in letting this epic tale grow into what it needs to be. It was originally planned as a trilogy, but is now up to five volumes, with two more planned. And really, Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons were supposed to be a single volume, but again, sensible flexibility allowed the story to grow where it needed to. Let's not forget, either, that we're talking about thousand-page installments; there are whole series out there that don't weigh in at the page-count of a single ASoIaF novel. So, you know, a whole fucking lot can happen in a thousand pages. Let's not forget, either, what makes that even possible--Martin is employing sophisticated narrative structures and devices specifically designed to subvert and defer resolution in the traditional sense. Once he knocks that off and commences the "landing pattern" of action rising toward climax and denouement, I think we'll see the pieces come together very quickly. So ultimately, barring some catastrophic "author existence failure" (and please do note the trope-defining quote), I expect A Song of Ice and Fire to be exactly as long as it needs to be.
*Sean T. Collins puts a specific twist on this question in wondering whether the Others can be built up into satisfying antagonists within a single volume or two. I don't see why not--and I especially don't see why a seasoned superhero comics fan like Sean might have doubts on this point. Big Bads and their minions are constantly bubbling up from the "Cauldron of Story" on amazingly short notice to form some of the most satisfying and cathartic arcs in amazingly longstanding superhero series--arcs that can be collected into single volumes much less substantial (not just physically but narratively) than a typical ASoIaF novel. From the Black Queen/Dark Phoenix Saga to the Great Darkness Saga to the Death of Superman to Knightfall to Blackest Night, "it is known" to happen. Granted, I didn't find Blackest Night especially satisfying, but my quibbles come down to execution--the concept remains strong, and I expect the ultimate confrontation with the Others to be the ASoIaF universe's own Blackest Night, in Martin's much more capable hands. I doubt we have any idea yet which dead will rise to bedevil the living, but I'll be shocked if we don't see a motherfucking dragon with death-blackened wings and hauntingly blue eyes (you thought they were going to use a silly horn to bring the Wall down?).
*Whilst I'm speculating about dragons, I'll lay odds here that Bran the ultra-warg commandeers one for the final battle. Now that's what I call flying instead of walking!
*My biggest "oh shit!" moment came when, in the midst of marveling over what a huge set-piece Martin was staging to bring the wildlings through the Wall, something clicked for me and I realized it was the central set-piece of Dance with Dragons--this novel's equivalent of the Battle of Blackwater. And what's remarkable about that is, it's a scene, a spectacular one, of peace, of two civilizations riven by ancient hostilities at long last coming to uneasy terms with each other.
That really helped sharpen for me the thematic and tonal differences between Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons. Martin's aggressively unsentimental approach to depicting violence has gradually and unobtrusively assumed the contours of a meditation on violence and war (Sean T. Collins has touched repeatedly on this point, most recently here). It's a pretty damning one, and nowhere more so than in Feast for Crows, the very title of which evokes fields of corpses in the aftermath of battle. In particular, Brienne's wanderings through the smoking, blood-drenched ruins of Westeros serve as a grim kaleidoscope of post-apocalyptic, practically Infernal imagery.
By contrast, the strongest thematic thread in Dance with Dragons is the struggle for peace: Jon's with the wildlings in the north, and Dany's with the hostile factions that menace her people in Meereen. It's ambitious, even audacious to make these two peace processes the heart of a novel like this, in a series like this, and to try to dramatize them with all the gut-clenching tension of the violence that has characterized the series so far. The challenge Martin seems to be setting himself here is to ennoble peacemaking without sentimentalizing it. He seems to be trying to establish peace as a venue for heroism; the tightrope he must walk is to make it a flawed heroism (or it wouldn't be true to the series, or for that matter to life) without reinforcing the all-but-inevitable cliche that the flaw is naivete or weakness. The violence in the series always goes horribly awry or leads to ghastly blowback sooner or later, and so must the peace--but in a way that doesn't slip into the oft-evoked real-world religio-political narrative that striving for peace in the first place is stupid or contemptible and bound to fail, and that violence and war thus constitute the only strong and rational response to grievance or aggression. I'm reminded here of something else Sean said in another context:
*Whew! Probably more to come, as I turn my thoughts to other arcs and aspects . . .
*From what I've gathered in my surfing of internets, there's some question whether Martin can bring everything to resolution within the two remaining planned volumes. That's just stupid. The entire publication history of the series to date has been one long study in letting this epic tale grow into what it needs to be. It was originally planned as a trilogy, but is now up to five volumes, with two more planned. And really, Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons were supposed to be a single volume, but again, sensible flexibility allowed the story to grow where it needed to. Let's not forget, either, that we're talking about thousand-page installments; there are whole series out there that don't weigh in at the page-count of a single ASoIaF novel. So, you know, a whole fucking lot can happen in a thousand pages. Let's not forget, either, what makes that even possible--Martin is employing sophisticated narrative structures and devices specifically designed to subvert and defer resolution in the traditional sense. Once he knocks that off and commences the "landing pattern" of action rising toward climax and denouement, I think we'll see the pieces come together very quickly. So ultimately, barring some catastrophic "author existence failure" (and please do note the trope-defining quote), I expect A Song of Ice and Fire to be exactly as long as it needs to be.
*Sean T. Collins puts a specific twist on this question in wondering whether the Others can be built up into satisfying antagonists within a single volume or two. I don't see why not--and I especially don't see why a seasoned superhero comics fan like Sean might have doubts on this point. Big Bads and their minions are constantly bubbling up from the "Cauldron of Story" on amazingly short notice to form some of the most satisfying and cathartic arcs in amazingly longstanding superhero series--arcs that can be collected into single volumes much less substantial (not just physically but narratively) than a typical ASoIaF novel. From the Black Queen/Dark Phoenix Saga to the Great Darkness Saga to the Death of Superman to Knightfall to Blackest Night, "it is known" to happen. Granted, I didn't find Blackest Night especially satisfying, but my quibbles come down to execution--the concept remains strong, and I expect the ultimate confrontation with the Others to be the ASoIaF universe's own Blackest Night, in Martin's much more capable hands. I doubt we have any idea yet which dead will rise to bedevil the living, but I'll be shocked if we don't see a motherfucking dragon with death-blackened wings and hauntingly blue eyes (you thought they were going to use a silly horn to bring the Wall down?).
*Whilst I'm speculating about dragons, I'll lay odds here that Bran the ultra-warg commandeers one for the final battle. Now that's what I call flying instead of walking!
*My biggest "oh shit!" moment came when, in the midst of marveling over what a huge set-piece Martin was staging to bring the wildlings through the Wall, something clicked for me and I realized it was the central set-piece of Dance with Dragons--this novel's equivalent of the Battle of Blackwater. And what's remarkable about that is, it's a scene, a spectacular one, of peace, of two civilizations riven by ancient hostilities at long last coming to uneasy terms with each other.
That really helped sharpen for me the thematic and tonal differences between Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons. Martin's aggressively unsentimental approach to depicting violence has gradually and unobtrusively assumed the contours of a meditation on violence and war (Sean T. Collins has touched repeatedly on this point, most recently here). It's a pretty damning one, and nowhere more so than in Feast for Crows, the very title of which evokes fields of corpses in the aftermath of battle. In particular, Brienne's wanderings through the smoking, blood-drenched ruins of Westeros serve as a grim kaleidoscope of post-apocalyptic, practically Infernal imagery.
By contrast, the strongest thematic thread in Dance with Dragons is the struggle for peace: Jon's with the wildlings in the north, and Dany's with the hostile factions that menace her people in Meereen. It's ambitious, even audacious to make these two peace processes the heart of a novel like this, in a series like this, and to try to dramatize them with all the gut-clenching tension of the violence that has characterized the series so far. The challenge Martin seems to be setting himself here is to ennoble peacemaking without sentimentalizing it. He seems to be trying to establish peace as a venue for heroism; the tightrope he must walk is to make it a flawed heroism (or it wouldn't be true to the series, or for that matter to life) without reinforcing the all-but-inevitable cliche that the flaw is naivete or weakness. The violence in the series always goes horribly awry or leads to ghastly blowback sooner or later, and so must the peace--but in a way that doesn't slip into the oft-evoked real-world religio-political narrative that striving for peace in the first place is stupid or contemptible and bound to fail, and that violence and war thus constitute the only strong and rational response to grievance or aggression. I'm reminded here of something else Sean said in another context:
But what I learned [from reading Ian Kershaw's Hitler: A Biography] is that the actions of Chamberlain and the other European governments prior to the war had nothing to do with being giant pussies who didn’t have the balls to go kill them some Nazis and defend human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. What it had to do with was remembering how around 20 years earlier, the nations of Europe had collectively fed themselves into a nightmarish meat grinder, and could we please try to avoid slaughtering tens of millions of our children in the near future. After reading Kershaw’s book, I don’t get the sense that Chamberlain’s appeasement at Munich had anything to do with a moral defect on the part of Chamberlain or anyone else, anyone else but Hitler that is.I really had the sense that Martin was trying to get something like that across, but even more, to make the scenes depicting it as exciting and moving as all the preceding scenes of violence. If that indeed was his aim, I'd say he played a losing hand about as well as anyone could have. After all of the above, it might sound strange for me to call it a "losing hand," but let's face it--conflict is the heart of story, and violence is the most spectacular and dramatic expression of conflict. The Wall set-piece is beautiful, even awesome . . . but ultimately, it didn't have the punch to knock me on my ass the way Martin's violent set-pieces almost always do.
*Whew! Probably more to come, as I turn my thoughts to other arcs and aspects . . .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)