Final Statement - Revision of 'The Magicians' Post

The Magicians was an interesting read, especially for someone who grew up reading the Harry Potter series. Grossman has brought a dose of realism to fantasy. The whole mood of his book betrays what I would expect from a normal Fantasy novel. There are no real triumphant moments, or ecstatic highs from their adventures. And though there are mysterious nothing in the magical world is quite so wondrous as is usually represented in the fables from our youth. Every new discovery only disappoints Quentin, failing to ever fill him up. A particularly brilliant part in the book, I felt, was their arrival to Fillory for the first time. Everything about the place - from the nude woman resting in freezing water to the overgrown talking animals who were anticipated to be adorable - was way too eerie to enjoy. What Quentin thought would be perfection is really just weird and kind of scary. In a new and bizarre world with its own foreign rules we should probably expect nothing less. Fillory is a bit like adulthood. As children we dream of the freedom adulthood offers, the magic carpet ride. But coming out of adolescences and seeing the world for what it is can be a let down, and our sense of wonder is replaced with anxieties.

There was also no mission, or “Greater Calling” if you will, that thrusts the protagonists into any necessary heroic action. It’s the boredom of their new adult lives that causes them to seek out thrills in the land of Fillory. Again, this is more true to life than traditional fantasies. None of us are “The Chosen Ones” with a simple black and white goal laid out in front of us. We have to make our own choices in life and risk facing the unknowns ahead of our decisions.

I suppose one could argue from an Existentialist point of view this aspect of freewill makes Quentin more heroic than Harry Potter. Still, Quentin was unable to rescue anyone himself, he cost a girl her life to Martin “The Beast” Chatwin due to a bit of carelessness, and it was his girlfriend, not he, who in the end made the ultimate sacrifice. Yet in the end he’s changed by his experiences, and while he may not be happier when it’s all over he is a more content, more mature person. As an edifying fairytale, The Magicians is a redemption story, not a tale of good versus evil or about how power corrupts.

Admittedly, I don’t read an awful lot of fantasy but the genre seems to have put itself in a rut since Tolkein. To see Grossman shake up the genre is exciting. I definitely want to read the sequel, The Magician King, although I wouldn’t expect it to be very similar to the first novel, if at all alike. Quentin’s time with the Centaur’s has ostensibly made him an infinitely more mature person, and that much more likeable. With everyone grown and out of Brakebills somehow Grossman will have to find a way to use the magic of Fillory to comment on adulthood instead of adolescence.

Bizarro Fiction

For Bizarro fiction Channel Zero wasn’t as bizarre as I thought it would be. Compared to other dystopian works I don’t see the concept of it standing out in weirdness. The style the artwork was done in, however, was weird.

The book did make me wonder how probable it could be that the US would pass something like a “Clean Act” and I completely agree with how Brian Wood see’s the numbing effects of television on the country. Only the news media in Channel Zero had a state TV kind of bias but at least they were actually talking about relevant global issues. Whenever I see what some daft station like CNN or its sister station HLN is talking about it’s usually something like celebrity gossip or a “story” equally un-newsworthy. But it was mentioned in Channel Zero how everyone is to busy watching Seinfeld re-runs to care about any important political issues. I see this sort of apathy as a real problem, with the occupy movement getting bashed for causing inconvenience and getting relatively little attention from the mainstream news media.

TiMER was definitely bizarre, and while I am inclined to avoid the romantic comedy genre, I actually ended up enjoying this one quite a bit. At first I thought it was a critique of the idea of soul mates but wards the end of the film I was no longer sure of that. My own take on soul mates has been expressed by the brilliant Tim Minchin in his comedic song “If I Didn’t Have You”. That is: we’re not made to be with any one person, we just make the decision to work on strengthening a relationship with a particular fish in the see. And that really, so many marriages fail because we expect to find a perfect soul mate, so the relationship is easy. This seemed to be what the movie was going for at first as the Emma was going to give Mikey a chance. But then she was indecisive about whether or not to stay with him even though she wanted to she thought it was fated to end in disaster, which may be why a lot of the younger generations hesitate to marry.

Whether it was the writer's or director's intent or not, the idea of TiMER's came across as very strange, but really only because it makes the idea of soul mates look that much stranger.

Sci-Fi Shorts and Ray Bradbury

The first short story I read this week for the science fiction genre was the one about the giant: JG Ballard’s The Drowned Giant. It was quite descriptive for a short story but it didn’t move anywhere fast for me. In fact it was a little difficult to discern the point of it all. It was sad how the washed up giant was treated but the anticipation for something more made the read somewhat of a disappointment. In reflecting upon it though I can see its purpose was to make the reader think about all that could be out there and all that is. It’s also unfortunate to consider how we react to surprises like the giant without much empathy.

The other short story I read was Come to Venus Melancholy by Thomas Disch. The beginning was confusing, but as the talking building, who is our narrator, began to reveal more and more about who she is and how she came to be the story became really intriguing and the unexplained gaps turned wondrous. I think the experimental narration works because it involves the reader in the story. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a work of fiction that talked to me. Probably not since Dr. Seuss. But I liked seeing it here and wouldn’t mind seeing it more in adult fiction. Although it might get annoying if the scenario is always kept as mysterious as it is kept in Come to Venus Melancholy. It’s fun because it’s experimental and you don’t know what the narrator is going to explain to you next, either about herself and her own history, or about who you are and how you got here, locked inside of a talking cyborg/building. By the time it concluded not everything was answered, which kept me living inside of the world Disch had created for a while after having read it, still trying to make up answers for myself.

The personality Disch created for the talking building seemed very realistic and convincingly average, and perhaps for that reason also rather annoying. She had a gift of gab and if it weren’t for her being a human turned into a sentient room capable of locking its own doors I don’t know that she would have been interesting enough a narrator to listen to. I’d imagine it’s hard as an author to get away with literally telling your reader every so often “wait, don’t leave!”

It’s tough to compare either of these sci-fi stories to the Ray Bradbury movie. Bradbury creates a dystopian world where books are outlawed and explains to you how the society functions, so it isn’t experimental in that sense but I can see how Bradbury was using the genre to explore big ideas. Bradbury’s idea od a dystopia being a world without books may come across as a bit corny at first but for some reason the idea of “becoming” a book, like the Book People, would truly give me a greater sense of purpose in their situation. It’s a fascinating way of reminding us how much a well-written story can mean to us, and how, as a form of communication, it’s a way of connecting with people.

Anansi Boys - Being John Malkovich

Neil Gaiman’s humorous writing style made Anansi Boys fun to read. Though I’m not greatly familiar with him, I’ve noticed that Gaiman appears to have a deeply rooted interest in spiders, shape-shifters, and mythology in general. In the sort of way that his friend Alan Moore will write in praise of writing as an art form, I found Anansi Boys to be a sort of ode to storytelling and, of course, song. The whole story celebrates itself and the other many tales it’s based off of.

It’s a bit interesting that Charlie remained uncool even after discovering he was the son of a god. There are a number of books and films that spring to mind where the main character starts off as a social misfit or normal everyman but after learning that they are the son of Poseidon or nephew of Santa Claus they travel to Mount Olympus or the North Paul and find their sense of belonging. I suppose Fat Charlie does find his sense of belonging, but it takes him longer; all the way to the end of the book. Which, by the way, I wasn’t expecting such a happy ending from Gaiman. In a way it was a let down, because the book had a consistent tone of humor and irony and everything that happened to Fat Charlie was chaotic madness. To end on a key of a perfect “happily ever after” betrays the spirit of the Anansi tales.

What I appreciate most about having read this book is learning about the Anansi stories. As a child I was read to about the Br’er Rabbit, so it’s very interesting to find out from Neil Gaiman that it was actually an Anansi Spider fable repackaged.  

It’s easy to see similarities between Anansi Boys and Charlie Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich. If Being John Malkovich is magical realism then Anansi Boys is mythical realism. They’re both whimsical, witty and surreal, but otherwise take place in normal everyday life.

Kaufman’s film drove home the theme of identity and the crisis of identity, not just with a magical portal that lets you escape into someone else’s mind but also with a protagonist who is an ardent puppeteer. I thought that was rather brilliant for two reasons. The most obvious being how he talked about living through the puppets. He ended up treating people the same way as he did his puppets, by trying to manipulate them and, literally in John’s case, trying to live through them. But the second reason making the main character an unlikeable puppeteer seems so genius is because of how obscure puppets have become. Of course he wouldn’t feel comfortable in his own skin, no one appreciates what it is he does, or rather – as it goes when you become so engrossed with what you do – what he is. He’s a puppeteer, and of what relevancy are those these days? It’s the perfect person to portray that existential meltdown that may be looming in the backs of every one of the seven billion minds travelling on this little blue dot. I fell in love with film. 

Warbreaker - The Color of Magic

I didn’t make it all the way through Warbreaker. Novels with elaborate fantasy worlds, like the one created in Warbreaker, are difficult for me to get interested in because learning all these rules and terms of the world, along with the unusual names, is like learning a new language. By the time the distinction from a Hedwig and a Hagrid, or a Vasher and a Vahr has sunk in the book is nearly over. Maybe that’s why fantasy tends to be so long; so we don’t feel cheated for having learned all this new information.

The story becomes that much more difficult for me if it involves kingdoms and princesses, only because they seem a bit banal. But Biochromatic Breath is an interesting idea, and I enjoyed the use of color in the story. Color is life and life is magic. The fear of color that is portrayed in the novel seems like a fear of living out of the concern that the life and color will only fall prey to those who take it away.

It made me think about the connection of color to magic in other works of fantasy. I don’t know if it is particularly common in this sub-genre of fantasy but there’s an obvious one in The Color of Magic, even though, apart from the title, I couldn’t make out anything outstandingly significant about magic having its own color in the TV show. It’s not until the second episode when Rincewind mentions it and even the spells that various wizards cast were shown to have different colors of light – as in Harry Potter. Each color in Harry Potter more or less represents a unique power, and while it maintains to be true in Warbreaker that every color has its own property, color in general represents a power as opposed to colorlessness.

Despite the feudalism structure there’s a lot of political commentary in Warbreaker that is relevant to today. The story starts with a Cold War feel to it, and all the complexities of foreign affairs are dramatized nicely. It’s perfect how the king of Idris, being the commander in chief he is, is essentially willing to sacrifice his least favorite daughter not to prevent war, but to knowingly delay it so he would have a better chance at victory. His leadership isn’t really looking for the most humane solution but the most strategic. I think that’s a fairly accurate depiction of the types of world leaders in the real world. 

The Magicians

The Magicians was an interesting read, especially for someone who grew up reading the Harry Potter series. Grossman has brought a dose of realism to fantasy. The whole mood betrays what I would expect from a normal Fantasy novel. There are no real triumphant moments, or marked ecstatic highs from their adventures. Every new discovery only disappoints Quentin, failing to ever fill him up. A particularly brilliant part in the book, I felt, was their arrival to Fillory for the first time, and how everything about the place, down to the overgrown talking animals, was way too eerie to enjoy. What Quentin thought would be perfection is really just weird and kind of scary. And in a new and bizarre world with its own foreign rules we should actually expect nothing less. Fillory is a bit like adulthood. As children we dream of freedom adulthood offers, but coming out of adolescences and seeing the world for what it is can be a let down.

There was also no mission, or “Greater Calling” if you will, that thrusts the protagonists into necessary heroic action. It’s the boredom of their new adult lives that causes them to seek out thrills in Fillory. Again, this is more true to life than traditional fantasies. None of us are “The Chosen Ones” with a simple black and white goal laid out in front of us, for us. We have to make our own choices in life and risk facing the unknowns ahead of our decisions.

In an existential way I suppose one could argue this makes Quentin more heroic than Harry Potter. Still, Quentin was unable to rescue anyone himself, he cost a girl her life to Martin “The Beast” Chatwin due to a bit of carelessness, and it was his girlfriend, not him, who in the end made the ultimate sacrifice. As an edifying fairytale, The Magicians is a redemption story, not a tale of good versus evil; about how power corrupts.

I don’t read an awful lot of fantasy but the genre seems to have put itself in a rut since Tolkein. To see Grossman shake up the genre is exciting. I definitely want to read the sequel, The Magician King, although I wouldn’t expect it to be too similar to the first novel. Quentin’s time with the Centaur’s has ostensibly made him an infinitely more mature person, and that much more likeable. With everyone grown and out of Brakebills somehow Grossman will have to find a way to use the magic of Fillory to comment on adulthood.

Kwaidan and Audition

There are numerous recurring motifs in Kwaidan: vengeful women of a supernatural beauty, cannibalism, wandering priests, unexplained mysteries, wise and foolish samurais, and heads and decapitation. An almost perfect example: the goblins, or Rokurokubi, were cannibals with necks long enough to lift their heads high up in the air, and the priest was able to take one of the heads off during a fight. All very strange, and I’m not sure what the significance of any of it is, but it’s very entertaining.

Often some information is withheld from the reader at the end of a story that adds to the otherworldliness of it. It’s unusual for a horror story to end with a mystery. Typically the mystery is introduced at the beginning and the reader learns more about it as the story progresses. Stephen King’s The Mist for example. Yet in Of A Mirror And A Bell the final sentence reads, “But no!-I really cannot tell you with what [the jar] was filled!”

Diplomacy is probably my favorite. It breaks all the rules of a horror story. The ending is anti-climactic and gives you the opposite of what you would expect, but it’s such an interesting explanation of why spirits are able to come back and haunt its victims that it is satisfying. It’s hard to think of another horror story where a main character’s confidence didn’t betray him/her and put his/her life in danger, but that happens more than once within the Kwaidan collection. There’s no deciphering if this is done to convey any particular message or if it’s simply meant to be a “strange tale”.

The Jikiniki reminds me of a vampire, in that he is required to eat human flesh (albeit dead humans) and it is considered to be a curse on him, which sort of distracts from or downplays the curse that has been placed on the village because of it. For a vengeful “curse” it’s not totally fair. Unlike a vampire he doesn’t take any thrill in this, only shame, but it is interesting to see the self-centered archetype portrayed as “damned” in both Western and Eastern fiction.  

It may be that the more recent Japanese horror has taken a turn from the whimsical horror such as in Kwaidan. Overall, the short stories of Kwaidan were more playful than the Audition movie, although they both dealt with concepts like vengeful women and the deceptiveness of beauty. Audition felt like it was a very slow and long build to one very gory scene. Even Kwaidan had descriptive moments of gore in its text but the dream like quality of the stories kept it always feeling quaint and never too serious. But Audition was hard to sit through at times, not just because of the gore, but I think because it dealt with more relevant and real horrors like child abuse.

From Hell

As a part of the additional/alternative reading I chose to read Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell. I found Alan Moore’s From Hell to be surprisingly slow paced for a horror novel. Especially so for a horror graphic novel. But it wasn’t at all disappointing since all of the information from the beginning – including Gull’s verbose conversation with Netley - tied together so well at the end.

Moore quite brilliantly uses the horror genre to comment on sexism and misogyny (perhaps even deliberately drawing attention its problem within the genre). The real Ripper may not have had as clear or as ambitious a vision for a male-dominated society as his fictional self, but he most certainly was a hater of women. Although it’s possible the horrors Moore’s fictional Ripper is really out to represent are the horrors of the twentieth century, the holocaust in particular. The only real suggestion of this is when Gull writes, “The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing,” and claims to have delivered the twentieth century, yet it is arguably the most memorable scene.

Despite this, Moore’s Ripper doesn’t come across as intrinsically evil but rather he simply lost touch with reality and humanity. His psychology is so different from everyone else, even those he’s working with, the queen and the freemasons. When he could have easily defended himself from Mr. Lee’s allegations he put up no effort to do so. It could be said that Moore is implying those who enabled the horrors of the twentieth century were not evil either, but rather the ideologies they adopted had - like the royal family’s – become self-serving and lost sight of humanity. Even the vicious beings around Gull, like the queen who requested he commit a mass murder, were at first appalled by his unashamed savagery. They simply enabled Gull with the power to do horrendous deeds and couldn’t stop him until it was too late.

The theme of time appears all throughout this book, not a typical subject for the horror genre but appropriate given the setting. If there’s anything we fear about time it’s the unknowns of the future, the finite quality of life, and the never-ending brutality in the world. And the Ripper portrays all of these very well, as he laments his dull visions of the industrial and technological twentieth century, attacks innocent women, and, although he may be literally immortal like a vampire, is still eternal in the sense that his story, mystery, and influence lives on. The “fourth dimension” has made the Ripper, and his crimes, immortal, which brings the dead seagull seen on the beach – an obvious symbol for Sir William Gull – in question. Was it only to say the Ripper is now physically dead? Or that the remnants of Jack the Ripper still remain? 

Monster Island

The first part of Monster Island was both thoroughly enjoyable and understandable. Everything had an explanation: we knew how Gary’s ingenuity saved his dead brain from brain damage and we knew just enough about the Epidemic to believe it was a widespread disease of some sort. The second and third parts I found to be rather bewildering. The novel jumped from being science-fiction based to fantastically magical. The rules became a bit unclear too. Gary, a zombie, “snacked” on mummy after it was explained that the dead hunger for life, explaining why they don’t eat each other. Nonetheless is was a fast paced format and kept you at the edge of your seat.  

Being animated corpses, I always thought of zombies as being primarily a mass personification of death. They show, in a way a single fictional being like the Grim Reaper can’t, the extent to which death claims the human race. Everything – or rather everyone - that would be buried six feet underground is now up and about walking before your eyes, reminding you of your own fate and what certain unfortunate friends and loved ones have become. But then it seems more and more zombies are distinguished not by the contradiction of their existence but by their hunger, lack of intelligence, or as it was described in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead: their trance-like state. Anyone of us can succumb to the masses by becoming something else, something unable of original thought or thinking for itself. This makes Wellington’s Gary character so interesting. Even though he preserved his intelligence he wasn’t able retain his most human qualities for long, as he eventually not only gave into his new cravings for human flesh, but also lost all sense of shame in such self-proclaimed evil doings. (Typically, comic-book-like villains who are openly evil are very flat and lacking a convincing personality, however, I think this works in Gary’s case given that he should be undergoing this psychological transformation into something less than human.) In the sense that Gary lost sight of himself, he became every bit as much a zombie and all they represent. By use of Gary, Wellington is able to how giving into the zombies can be easier and at times more appealing than constantly fighting them. Or alternatively, the arrogance that one can join life’s metaphorical zombies without also becoming one.

There’s no character quite like this in Night of the Living Dead nor any of the other (albeit few) zombie movies I’ve seen, so Wellington’s approach appears fresh. 

Frankenstein

The concept and story of Frankenstein itself is fairly powerful, but it is easy to see why Mary Shelley is not known for much else. Her writing style is a bit tedious and it got to the point I would mentally cringe every time I came across the word "endeavor". Still, a strong story.

To me, Frankenstein stands out from other horror fictions and perhaps it is due in part to the irreplicable monster Shelley has created. Unlike the vampires and werewolves and zombies, we know the origin of Frankenstein’s Monster so well his name has become symbiotic with his creator’s. Typically with werewolves, vampires and zombies, their existence is perpetually sustained through an action like biting their victims, and their inception is often kept as an unimportant mystery. It’s refreshing to have a monster we know everything about.

Really, the creation of the Monster is the most memorable event in the story - and probably the one constant in all of its pop-culture variants. In knowing his responsibility for having created the Monster, Victor’s story becomes a parable. The Monster is the product of a past deed that remains an unstoppable force. In real life nobody has much to fear from monsters, but shame and guilt are human experiences we have all dealt with. Perhaps it is this emotional resonance that has made Mary Shelley’s monster stand out over the years.

Because of Doctor Frankenstein’s wrong doing I think he functions more as a sort of anti-hero. As the Monster tells his story of wanting only love but getting only rejection, he is surprisingly easy to sympathize with. Whereas in much of the horror genre monsters may be found to be, at most, anti-heroes themselves. This “twist” of sympathizing with the Monster could only be shocking because of how he has been represented by our pop-culture over the years.  

There is an additional conflict in the book that goes largely ignored, however, I find it interesting: Frankenstein’s decision to not build the Monster a partner. Creating a partner for the Monster could have potentially resolved everything, yet Victor seemed genuinely convinced that his creation was an “abomination”. It would be fascinating to know whether the author herself would agree with this decision of Frankenstein’s, considering tone of the novel would suggest that there was something inherently wrong with wanting to create life in the first place.

Learning more about Mary Shelley’s life enriched the story of Frankenstein for me. It becomes a much more personal story rather than this phenomenon. 

Elements of Horror

• Stormy weather. Sound of thunder, flash of lightning at specific moments.
• Loud noises in general when something unexpected frightens a character. 
• Graveyard scene
• Monotone/dark 
• Creeping orchestra music
• Often takes place at night
• Images of the dead
• Setting often contains spider webs, dungeons, skulls, insects and rats, etc.
• Maniacal laughter, and shrieks and screams.
• Character finds him/herself alone in a room and is startled by their setting (often a false alarm).