Babel Clash

In the small blurb to this two week guest blog it mentions that I wanted to discuss ‘defending fantasy’. I worry that, stated so baldly, this sounds either pretentious or silly (or both). Why should the genre need defending?

I approach this from various angles and, again, a blog post (not an essay) doesn’t allow proper treatment. But part of what I’ve argued is this: Dan Brown and Ian McEwan both write contemporary fiction but no one (no sensible person) measures their achievement by the same criteria, and no one diminishes the ‘value’ of contemporary fiction as a serious form by pointing to The Da Vinci Code a way of reducing the artistic legitimacy of Atonement.

But this sort of thing happens all the time with genres, fantasy and sf included. There is absolutely and emphatically nothing wrong or debased about authors aspiring only to offer ‘entertainment’ (or films or television doing the same). What is ‘wrong’ is when an entire form is disparaged or reflexively dismissed by people (usually not reading it) who are only aware of the most commercial, pop culture exemplars of the form.

My quarrel has been along these lines, my defending the genre is the same. Last year, John Mullan, a judge of the Man Booker Prize that year (England’s most important literary award), offered an example of the sort of flat-out silliness I most dislike. After first noting that he was “not aware of science fiction” (which might normally preclude going on to comment) he proceeded assert that it was “bought by a special kind of person who has special weird things they go to and meet each other.”

It is against comments like this that I find myself taking up arms, or keyboard, or whatever. This is where the genres need clarification, elaboration, defending.

On the other hand, there’s another angle to this: genre readers need to be at least willing to allow themselves and their genre to stretch. That’s a part of what literature does, what it is about, surely? Not always ‘more of the same’ and not always popcorn. Art and entertainment have a complex relationship, this isn’t particular to fantasy (or history) writing, or even to literature, it runs right through all forms, and it is always worth discussing and thinking about – and sometimes rethinking.

An entertaining comment to yesterday’s post from ‘George’ who makes a good deal of sense as to why Argentina got thumped (a style of ‘go out and play beautifully’ collided with a rare combo of youthful legs/speed and discipline).

George, as another sports fan, references the chariot races in the Sarantium books. As a note that might interest, I have always said that the second race (in Lord of Emperors) was one of the hardest scenes I’ve ever written in any book. The problem was this: I knew I needed a second race, in the second book, chariot racing was too central to my presentation of Sarantium, but I also knew the first race had ‘worked’, had been a scene that did things I wanted it to. (Action revealing character is a key for me.) So my growing apprehension as I approached the point where I’d have to do another race was how to top the first one, or at the very least equal it. The sense of let-down that would follow from a weaker, shallower race scene would deeply undermine the second novel … or so I felt. The solution (I won’t give it away) only came to me very, very close to the point where the scene began.

As for that larger issue - using the action scenes to do and be more than just action scenes … I’ve taken that as a talismanic element of my approach to fiction from the start. If I were to name a scene in a book that sets the bar as high as it gets, it would be the rooftop race in Queen’s Play by the incomparable Dorothy Dunnett. It is an aspect of writing that is utterly critical to those of us working to develop character and texture while still keeping the story moving with some verve.

The World Cup is proving a distraction, as it does every four years. I’ve been a fan of the Dutch for a long time, and no changes this year.

But shifting more on-topic, here’s a question: what can fantasy do, in treating ‘history’ that straightforward historical fiction can’t, or tends not to? I’ve argued this at length for years, but a couple of quick points here might work as a kind of Sparks Notes version.

Spinning history slightly to fantasy can work to universalize a story. Take it out of very specific context and permit the reader to ‘see’ the themes and motifs as more widely applicable. (This also operates, sometimes, to reduce the limiting effects of prejudice or assumptions about a given culture.)

Fantasy removes what I have argued is an ethical problem in treating real lives as fodder for fiction. The idea that because it is ‘just a novel’ the author can do whatever he or she wants with real people, or chronology, or cultures. The fantasy spin offers an up-front declaration that the real setting and characters are inspiring the novel, but the book doesn’t pretend to tell us what Anne or Mary Boleyn or Empress Theodora was like (or liked) in bed.

In this way, I argue, using the screen or prism of the fantastic shows respect for the actual people and culture.

Finally (as I mentioned briefly in an earlier post) fantasy permits the writer to present the world of the story as if it really is the way the characters believe it to be. This can shake us free of the complacent smugness often embedded in presentations of what people once believed. In straight historical fiction the reader might be amused, or made to feel superior, by seeing characters seek magical aid from talismans or tablets, or believing there are faeries or pagan powers in the forest. In a fantasy novel that gives value to these beliefs, the world view is respected and the reader might come to understand it more comprehensively.

Though understanding how Argentina lost 4-0 today will be a little harder.

So, jet lag isn’t readily conducive to lucid blog posts. Am I the first to notice this? Still in post-China mode, emailing contacts back there with follow-ups. I wrapped up the Bright Weavings tour journal yesterday … I had said that China would end the touring and thus the journal. So I am only here right now.

Insofar as, in currently hazy state, I am anywhere.

I continue to have some ambivalence about the degree to which book marketing these days is expected to be the author’s task, and I wonder about the degree to which promotion is also turning on the personality of the writer and not the merits of the work. There isn’t a lot that is going to happen to change in this regard, not in the short run. Publishers have drastically reduced budgets and our society is very much a cult of personality one. Things come together and create trends and patterns (that’s one thing history teaches).

And I suppose it is worth teasing me (go ahead) that here I am, blogging on a Borders site, discussing the promotion of my new book (and thereby marketing it?), and worrying about authors and promotion. Welcome to my glass house? But the reality, it seems to me, is that we all need to work towards finding our own balance in these matters, a comfort zone, a mix of accessibility and the withdrawal required to create.

In fact, I’ve already told a couple of friends today that, with the Under heaven journal wrapped it starts to feel as if a page needs to be turned … which means starting to figure out the next book.

Ouch.

The China tour ended with visits on the last day to the Lama Temple (Buddhist) and the nearby Confucian Temple in Beijing. Last photo was of the statue of Confucius: I’d try not to be that clichéd in a book, but it was a good last shot (photo of a woman photographing it).

A bit punchy this morning, and awake before 5, with the 12 hour time difference. If it really does take a day an hour to adjust, I’m in trouble.

Here’s a thought, though, about using the fantastic. I’ve often told the story of meeting a Polish magazine editor late one night at Worldcon in The Hague, many years ago. Many of us were drinking vodka in the hotel lobby after hours, when he began lamenting how he was going to lose writers and readers in the next year or two. The reason was that under Communist control writers had used sf or fantasy to screen their political and social commentary, and readers knew this was what was happening, they decoded it effortlessly. With censorship vanishing, his view was that many writers would stop using the screens and write ‘mainstream’ fictions. There are a lot of elements to this, and it can be discussed in many different ways, but try this, as a parallel.

In the Tang Dynasty of China (and not just then) the literary device or tradition for poets was established that to comment socially or politically on one’s own time and emperor or court, one used the screen of setting the poem in an earlier time (usually the Han Dynasty of many hundred years before). The ‘fantasy’ events and ideas would serve the same function sf and fantasy did in late 20^th century Poland.

One of the many things I like about this was how immediately those writers and scholars I spoke with (and journalists too, actually) in China about how I use fantasy to address history … just ‘got it’ based on a similar set of writings in their own ancient (and also recent) tradition.

Remind me, before I finish here next week, that I want to also bring up a core point about real people in fiction. Remind me to make some more jokes, too, soon as jet lag passes a little. (It is sometimes easier to be serious than funny, you know … the famous actors’ line: dying is easy, comedy is hard.)

This will be a marker post, more than anything. Having a painful time loading the site from over here and fixing yesterday’s half-post was irritating in the extreme. So let me just pop in to mention how ‘universal’ some elements of interviews can be.

I spoke this afternoon with a smart reporter from a major Chinese-language daily. Language was no issue, though I’ll be curious how what I said ‘plays’ when translated into Chinese. She said she’d translate the piece back into English and send it to me. There’s a game some of us play with Google translator, where we take a passage and run it through a few languages then back to English, to see what emerges form this variant of ‘broken telephone’. (I know, writers are so sophisticated.)

But the minbor point of this minor post is just how ‘normal’ the main lines of questioning were, given that I’ve been doing so many interviews in person and online in English for the past 3 months. She wanted to know about Tolkien and my connection there, about who I read, about history and what lessons it has to teach, about writing methods (launched my sound bite about how my answer is only to be understood as applying to my own work, not in any way prescriptive for other writes…)

It was almost unsettlingly of a piece with an interview I might have given in Vancouver or online with an sf magazine. Yet we were drinking iced tea that was made with actual ice cream in it (!) in a hotel bar in Beijing, and earlier today I walked the grounds of Empress CiXi’s Summer Palace and saw the spectacular, full size stone boat (marble, and wood painted to look like marble) that was extravagantly constructed for her amusement out of money raised to equip the real navy.

Not sure what to make of this.

I’m really not trying to do a travelogue here but getting on to the Great Wall (at Mutianyu) in the year I released a book that frequently references it (I call it the Long Wall in Under Heaven) is pretty cool. I’ll also say, for the record, that the Sacred Way, approaching the Ming Dynasty Tombs is just beautiful. Serene, exquisite, elegant. We were there just at closing, and walked it pretty much alone with a reddened sun west, and it will be a lasting memory.

I wanted to talk about fantasy and history here. One of the arguments I’ve made is that when I spin a historical setting slightly to the fantastic (a quarter turn, as Robert Wiersema put it in a review) I believe I am showing respect for the actual events and people. I am not pretending I understand the characters of Justinian and Theodora, or El Cid, or the Tang Dynasty poet, Li Bai. The reader and I share, right off the top, an awareness that all writing about history (however well researched) involves invention and imagination, especially when it comes to real people and their thoughts and words, or invented deeds.

It might be argued (it has been argued) that ‘it’s just a novel’ or ‘it is just a movie’ are out clauses from these issues. When it comes to books I’m uneasy with the self-disparagement implied in a writer saying that about his or her own work, or about the art form of fiction. What is so limited about writing fiction?

More subtly, some have said that the idea that invention has to be involved is implicit in writing about Henry VIII or Genghis Khan, or offering the inner life of Marilyn Monroe, as Joyce Carol Oates did a few years back. The readers all know, the claim then goes, that this is all made up.

Maybe. But I sense some duplicity in this claim, too. Books about famous Tudor women sleeping with just about every Tudor man in reach are trying to have it both ways (no pun intended), seems to me. There’s a real celebrity culture aspect here … the writers gain readers and attention from the frisson that comes from the well-known saying and doing licentious things. Agents will say that the historical fiction market turns these days on just that: books about invented characters simply don’t do as well as those featuring the celebrated or notorious … and this applies even more to film and television. “The Tudors” is now being followed by “The Borgias” as a series. Can one even imagine what poor Lucrezia will get up to?

So I will freely declare that I find working with the past through the screen/prism/filter of the fantastic, characters inspired by but clearly not identical to the real people feels both liberating and ethical at the same time.

Another end of post query: how much do book reviews matter to you? I ask because everyone surrounding Under Heaven is very upbeat this week because Michael Dirda in the Washington Post, and Laura Miller (of Salon magazine) on NPR radio both said exceptionally generous things about the book on Sunday. They’ll likely both end up on the paperback jacket next year. Whether they were heard or read this week, I don’t know. Did anyone catch either? Did they signify? Or does a comment from a trusted friend mean more?

A genuinely enjoyable morning at Beijing Normal University, where my Chinese publishers (SFW) organized a session of scholarly papers, critics and writers responding to my work in Chinese, and then a ‘response’ from the author (me) with a very hard-working translator at my elbow the whole way. The meeting was chaired, graciously, by Professor Wu of the university literature department. I was touched that academics and other novelists had already read the two books now translated (Tigana and Lions of Al-Rassan) because they just came out a month ago (Song for Arbonne is next month) and found the time to shape thoughts and write about them.

As for Under Heaven, when discussion turned to that (just general, it isn’t in Chinese yet) there was some bemusement expressed as to whether western readers would know enough about the Tang Dynasty to be interested. I fear I pointed out that western readers tend not to know a whole lot about Byzantium in Late Antiquity, or medieval Provence, either. In other words, the ‘strangeness’ has tended not to be an issue with my work. The past is always strange, in a sense - and fascinating for some of us.

There were questions (in Chinese) about Tolkien, about creating vivid female characters, and about how to balance generality of theme with specificity of character – which was amazingly akin to a question two nights ago in “The Bookworm” at the English-language meeting. (No, not the same person.)

Over lunch, about fourteen of us, the steady recurrence of toasts (in a generous, and formal culture) framed discussion that covered which western writers and books have ‘hit’ in China (Twilight is here, too, and for the same teen market. Harry Potter, of course. Scott Card’s Ender books did well…), my own preference as to a director for my work (discretion ruled), views of films like “Red Cliff” and “Raise the Red Lantern” (commercial success for the formal, less-so critically here, thumbs up everywhere for the latter), and a brief digression where I was so pleased to be right about something:

In Under Heaven, I made use of learning that the strong emergence of tea and its rituals in China are associated with the Tang. I have a minor military officer in a border fort inordinately proud of himself for ‘keeping up’ with trends in the capital, because he’s ordered tea and the associated implements. It is the sort of small detail I absolutely love to work with, designed to help shape the character of that secondary figure.

But in “Red Cliff”, set many hundred years before, a major scene (delaying a battle) turns on a woman showing an enemy general the arcane rituals of tea … I thought either the film had to be wrong, or my research was. I asked about it. A roomful of academics and writers and my agents and publishers all agreed the film had ‘shifted history’ a few hundred years for the delay-the-battle scene.

Sometimes you do get it right as an author. Question: how much does it matter? Easy answer is to say ‘of course it does’ but in truth these things register only with a very few readers, taken one by one. My own feeling is that when we do know something about the issue and the writer is way off, it undermines our confidence in other areas. If a novelist has people meeting at the corner of Park and Madison Avenue in New York … they can lose us.

Aside from this, some of us are truly writing for ourselves, for our own sense of shaping something as carefully as we can … and so it had been bothering me that I might have been off on the tea.

I will now reward myself with a drink before dinner (not scotch, too hot) for not being wrong. (What are people’s favourite summer cocktails, by the way. I’m open to ideas. It really is hot here.)

I had a really nice reading and conversation event last night at “The Bookworm” here in Beijing. One of the interesting aspects of doing book-related appearances in other countries is to see what doesn’t change among readers - and what does. So, one woman asked why Under Heaven isn’t going to be a series … which is so common an issue to come up among genre fans these days. Someone asked, as they do everywhere, about how I find a balance between fantasy and history. On the other hand, one man wanted to know if I’d read Jonathan Spence (who has written about more recent periods in Chinese history) and another wanted to discuss the interplay of trying to use a fantasy setting to universalize themes (which I do) and aspiring towards extreme specificity in period and character detail (a great question, I accused him of making me think).

This morning was a very early interview with the “China Times” newspaper then a longish meeting with my two agents here guiding me through a conversation with a publishing house interested in Fionavar.

It was a fascinating back-and-forth and I liked them a lot. One thing that came up, and I confess I inwardly smote myself on the brow for not having considered it before, was when I suddenly realized that for an edition of the trilogy in Chinese it would be just about mandatory that I (or someone) write a brief treatment of the Arthurian story. It is so central to the three books, but will be so alien to this culture (and to many others where the books are already translated – which is why I did the virtual brow-smite). I told them I’d be happy to write one and everyone nodded agreement (and perhaps relief). One of my agents said she’d studied the legends in university (which is interesting in itself) but – as expected – most people would have little or no idea of them.

This is going to make me do some thinking (damn!) about other cases where I’m drawing upon very specific aspects of a culture, and readers from another might have no notion of what’s at work. On the other hand, with Under Heaven, Chinese readers know all about Li Bai, the An Lushan Rebellion, the ‘lichee express’ … and some people will know Byzantine chariot racing, or the Provençal courts of love … maybe it is over-worrying to try to fill in too many blanks.

History as a whole is mysterious to most. That’s one reason why I write what I write.

What do people think? Would they want an explanation of the underlying historical elements in one of the novels? Say, in an Afterword? I admit it feels borderline pedantic to me to do it routinely. I even try to keep the bibliographies in the books down, to avoid sounding too academic (or pretentious).

Wednesday morning here in Shanghai, to the airport in 90 minutes.

One of the downsides of a long book tour is that you can get jaded, tired, find it hard to be psyched-up for an event. Most of us can put on our ‘game face’ but it can take some doing after a while on the road.

But I admit I’m looking forward to tonight at The Bookworm. The staff have been helpful, enthused, organized, and they played a major role (along with my agents here and Penguin China) in setting up media. A few of the journalists have said they’ll be there, too, for drinks after. This is all such a different market (even at an English-language event) that the sensa wunder comes right back.

One big issue for me, with every book, is how the country I am using as the inspiration, the foundation for my ‘quarter turn to the fantastic’ (as one reviewer put it) will react to the book. It is easy to see how readers or writers could be suspicious of an outsider not only addressing aspects of their history but also ‘spinning’ that history into a fantasy setting.

This isn’t at all unique to China. It has come up before for me, as well. But the early questions I’ve received here, and my first meeting with a publisher about Under Heaven have made me optimistic that there might be some intuitive understanding here of my process. (I’m going to try to do a post later about China and the fantastic. Someone remind me.) I’m intrigued to see how this plays out, for publishers, for possible film rights.

Off travel, back to substance. I’m going to try to do these discussion posts by ear, go with what comes back at me. One person commented on my magic realism throwaway yesterday. I ‘commented’ back, but in essence, I wasn’t saying that is a definition (or non-definition) of magical realism, I was saying that’s how the term is too-often used/abused … to support a critic’s unexpected liking of a fantasy. (This, by the way, is not a steady view of all well-known reviewers. Michael Dirda of the Washington Post gave Under Heaven a hugely generous review Sunday, and Dirda has long been open to and sympathetic towards ambitious fantasy. There are others, too.)

Here’s a bit more on the main point, though. I have argued for years, probably since The Sarantine Mosaic, that one way to honourably treat the past and the worldview of people long ago, is to present the world of the story as if what the people believed to be true was true. This shakes us (modern readers) out of our smug, amused, patronizing attitude to earlier beliefs. I’ve done this very deliberately in my last several books and have spoken and written on the point.

So, here’s what I read in a review of the most recent biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the best-known of the magical realists. The biographer offers a definition (I said I get to it): Magic realism, he writes, “presents the world as the characters believe it to be without any indication from the author that this world-view is quaint, folkloric or superstitious.”

Well, I’m not about to quarrel, obviously. But I have never been accused of being part of or slotted into the camp of those writing magical realism and I hate categories enough to have hated this one if it happened. My point is that if this is the definition offered from at or near the source … it applies far, far beyond … and is pretty much word for word what I’ve been arguing as a strength of fantasy for treating history.

More from Beijing tomorrow. Forecast is sunny, hot, and very humid. That may affect my tone here!