Conservative Fantasy, the son of.

Back in February, I wrote a couple of articles that were attempts, by me, to get inside the head of a fantasy fan and understand what makes the difference between good fantasy and merely bad fantasy.  This little odyssey was necessary because I really quite profoundly dislike fantasy as a genre.  Whenever magic rears its ugly head I tend to lose interest and the presence of an elf or elf-analogue is enough for me to want to throw a book across a room.  In fact, it's remarkable that I still play Dungeons and Dragons from time to time once you think about it.

Anyway, in the wake of those articles R. Scott Bakker appeared and tore a strip or two of me for my reductive analysis and I kind of came to terms with the idea that I didn't get fantasy and concluded that, even if there was something worth getting, I probably wouldn't like it anyway.  However, this morning I noticed that my articles had been commented upon by Kit Whitfield, a newish face on the fantasy scene whose name is familiar to me even if her work isn't.

Whitfield directs her attention to my claim that fantasy is an inherently conservative genre and makes a couple of interesting points that I'll address one by one.

Firstly, Kit suggests that artistic conservatism can be found both in a slavish devotion to the tropes that make up the fantasy genre and in a reaction and rejection of those tropes.  She suggests a "third way" whereby the author sets out to write fantasy without having the laws and tropes of the genre in mind at all.  This is a deceptively complex approach to an age old question as it contains a number of interesting ideas.

On one level, this observation is obvious.  As has been pointed out to me, if you look at the shortlists for a big fantasy award such as the World Fantasy Award, you'll see a noted absence of elves and hobbits and wizard kings.  Instead you see weird and wonderful ideas expressed without the philosophical limitations imposed by a devotion to the scientific method and current scientific thinking.  Indeed, it's worth remembering that whereas SF artificially amplifies the importance of the "high-brow" award-winning novels to the point where they receive far more attention than their sales might suggest, the fantasy scene is unapologetically populist with its "low-brow", best-selling books getting far more attention than the perhaps more deserving and interesting books that only get picked up by critics and award bodies.  So Whitfield is quite correct... there is a well travelled path to decent fantasy that isn't all about traditional genre staples, I tend to forget this in my haste to spit bile at the likes of Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin and their legions of passive, sheep-like fans.  So point well taken Kit.

However, on another level, the remark is really quite a challenge as genres are defined by their tropes.  So is it possible to set out to write a fantasy novel without any of the genre's tropes in mind and if it were possible, would that work still be fantasy?  Magical Realism, for example, does not sit comfortably on the same shelf as Goodkind or Lynch and many critics have been uncharacteristically quick to defend the idea that McCarthy's The Road is in a different genre to Mad Max or A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Whitfield comes to this issue from an interesting perspective given that, according to Wikipedia :

"Bareback/Benighted is a thriller with a whodunit structure set in an alternative world where most of the population are werewolves - although the word is not used in the story - and concerns the minority status of those who are, because of adverse conditions at birth, born with a disability that prevents them from 'furring up' on full moon nights. The novel's genre is a debatable question, as it is published by the science fiction imprint Del Rey in the USA and the literary imprint Jonathan Cape in Britain, while being reviewed under various genre classifications including by crime reviewers, and the author has appeared in The Guardian stating her opposition to genre stereotypes as an overly constrictive way of thinking about literature."

In fact, Kit wrote an article for the Guardian that is all about books that break through literary boundaries.  Personally, I take this with a pinch of salt as while Whitfield's book clearly borrows from a number of different literary genres, I consider a degree of postmodernism and generic flexibility to be pretty much par for the course as far as contemporary fantasy is concerned.  Indeed, given the influence of Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman, it's difficult to think of a piece of contemporary fantasy that does stay within its traditional boundaries.  So Whitfield is quite correct that there's room for a healthier and more complex set of attitudes than being pro- or anti- traditional genre tropes but I don't think that there are as few options as three.

Secondly, Whitfield spins around my claim that fantasy is full of authoritarian thinking and argues that the problem is that authoritarians are prone to being fantasists.  This is an interesting idea  but I don't think it necessarily gets fantasy off the hook as it still suggests that there's a disturbing relationship between fantasy as a literary genre and political authoritarianism.  My favourite example of this, as I mention in the Aesthetics of Fantasy articles, is the case of Stark, in the first book of A Song of Fire and Ice, carrying out his executions himself.  Martin takes this to be proof that Stark does not sentence men to death lightly and takes the job so seriously that he carries it out himself personally but within that idea are the unexamined assumptions that capital punishment is necessary and that a willingness to kill someone yourself is somehow indicative of greater character than having an underling do it.  If Gordon Brown were to insist that he be allowed to behead people for their crimes, most people would think that he was some kind of sadistic sociopath, but in the context of a fantasy novel, most people don't even blink.

My problem with Whitfield's idea is that I'm not sure that I can see a plausible causal history there.  If I say that fantasy is inherently authoritarian then I am saying that the fantasy genre ultimately finds its roots in the political attitudes of a by-gone age that have since been rejected by society at large but remain largely unquestioned by lazy writers and passive readers.  Given the influence of Tolkien and the attitudes towards race and society that were prevalent at the time of his writing it is easy to see how attitudes from the 1930's and 1940's might still be kicking around in modern fat fantasy.  After all, if you can't be bothered to move away from elves and dwarves over a fifty year period, why should you be any less forgiving of casual racism and pro-status quo politics?  Indeed, once you flip the theory and try to see authoritarians as fantasists then the causal link becomes muddied.  Is Pat Robertson a big fan of Tad Williams? I think "authoritarians are fantasists" is a great line but at the same time I'm not sure if it's very much more.  After all, I'm sure they say the same thing about us liberals with our fantastical notions that TV doesn't corrupt the young and that pre-marital sex won't rot the eyes out of your head.

In fact, the only way I think you could make any real meat out of this idea is if you applies it to something like Christianity.  After all, the Bible is perhaps the most widely read description of a fictional world full of monsters and magical powers.  Indeed, Tolkien wrote LOTR in order to create a new mythology and Lewis' Narnia books are essentially christianity described through the medium of unconvincing fantasy.  It even has casual racism and misogyny.

So I think the question should really be, is it possible to write epic fantasy that isn't conservative?  China Mieville's Iron Council can be seen as an attempt to ground fantasy in real politics but as Mieville himself seems to discover, even real politics lead to bloodshed and authoritartianism in fantasyland.  I would argue that the very tropes of fantasy itself, with its reliance upon violence and moral simplicity, make it impossible to escape the whiff of authoritarianism.
thought where evil is more about distance from God than it is about equal sides slugging it out or balancing each other.  However, I'm not convinced that this

Comments

[Brahm]

Your point seems to be that fantasy should conform to modern ideas- doing so, you say, is a step forward towards what the genre should be like- modern and didactic. There is nothing inherently wrong with that- I can enjoy didactic fiction, and I respect that others can enjoy it to a greater degree than I can. But, as others have pointed out on the ASoIaF board, your problem seems to be that you want the genre to be something that you enjoy, and that anything that doesn't conform to this is immediately derivative and not worth reading, whose followers are mindless sheep (I take offense to the sheep comment- I am much more goatlike). I do believe telling people what they should write about is kind of dangerous territory, and not conducive to good ideas and writing. I dislike reading Jane Austen- I found Persuasion to be about as boring as anything I've ever read. That does not mean that Jane Austen was wrong to write about what she did- only that it doesn't appeal to me. I don't read Jane Austen anymore. Similarly, you don't like medieval fantasy- the solution is simple: Don't read it. There's plenty of other things in the genre.

"I ask because of the conflicting messages I'm getting from GRRM fans. On the one hand people seem to be saying that "Yeah he embraces authoritarianism... that's how the medieval world works!" but from you I'm getting "actually he doesn't embrace it, all that embracing is just lining up an attack".

I see nothing conflicting about these statements. George RR Martin embraces authoritarianism insofar as he's writing about an authoritarian medieval world, in which characters largely accept things as they are. He allows some of his characters, when it fits, to criticize the current infrastructure in a way that is consistent with their characterization and society. He's writing a story, and writing about different characters, who can hold different world views.

[Adam Whitehead]

"Adam -- Assuming that the story-lines you mention do what you suggest they do, how far does the critique go? For example, do they go so far as to suggest that the likes of Stark are morally corrupt?"

Yes, they do. The group that does reject the authority-driven nature of their society was actually sent out on its mission in Book 1 by Ned Stark, and their opinion of him and his family is somewhat scathing by the time they get to Book 3. Similarly, the actions of Ned's son are condemned as somewhat amoral in the later volumes of the series. The notion that the Stark armies bring as much misery to the common people as the Lannister ones is explored in Books 2-4 of the series, despite their apparent different goals and ideologies.

"I ask because of the conflicting messages I'm getting from GRRM fans. On the one hand people seem to be saying that "Yeah he embraces authoritarianism... that's how the medieval world works!" but from you I'm getting "actually he doesn't embrace it, all that embracing is just lining up an attack"."

He doesn't "embrace" it. That was how the medieval world worked and by working in the medieval mileu, he has to use that system in the series (if he doesn't, he's no longer working in that subgenre of medieval epic fantasy he wishes to work in). He questions and challenges it through various characters in the series, and it factors into the series' central theme of the use of, manipulation of and consequences of power and government.

"So who isn't getting it? does Martin's world operate on authoritarian principles or doesn't it? because if it doesn't then it follows that the rug is pulled quite sharply from underneath a lot of the early protagonists."

The world is authoritarian at the start. Two forces, the Brotherhood Without Banners (Book 3) and the Warriors of the Faith (Book 4), arise that challenge that order of things. Neither is likely to achieve any kind of revolution. They are merely the tools that GRRM employs to highlight the innate fallacy of the natural order of the medieval world.

For a book where GRRM rejects the notion of authoritarianism (in this particular case, the authority of the United States government of the 1960s and 1970s), I can heartily recommend The Armageddon Rag.

[Tom]

Stephenson's works are set during the Age of Reason, known for shaking off that medieval, authoritarian mindset. I have not seen many liberal interpretations of medieval history where the Magna Carta, at least, was not in play, thus not before the High Middle Ages.

But I agree that you cannot write a liberal epic fantasy - to change the traditional setting would simply create a new subgenre. Epic fantasy relies on monarchs and aristocrats and theocrats and an underclass. However, I do not think this is much of a criticism in itself. If you go further and criticize the stagnation, then you must criticize every genre. Genre writing relies on tropes, a genre cannot be identified without referring to its tropes, which makes genres stagnant; and the ideas played with in even the best works of genre turn out to be an uninspired adaptation of what has come before.

[Arilou]

Besides, calling even the Magna Carta "liberal" in the modern sense is a horrible distortion, only anglos do that, and usually motivated more or less by shallow nationalism.

[Larry]

I do not quite know how to approach this article, since it seems to shift and veer away from its presumed central thesis (that of "fantasy" being conservative). First, I have to ask: What do you mean by "fantasy"? You seem to have this set definition that flits and flutters around the edges of this article, but it's not quite spelled out. Before I can properly assess all of this, I'd have to know if you are conflating "epic" or "heroic" fantasy with "contemporary" fantasy (whatever that might be in turn), or are you arguing that the tropes typically used in these various types of fantasy are different...what are you trying to get at here?

Are you saying all "fantasy" is "conservative" (or later, "authoritarian" as based on your response to Whitfield's article), or just merely a subset of it?

As for the notion of "fantasy" (I'm going out on a limb here and presuming you are thinking of epic/fat fantasy here) being authoritarian in nature...I wonder what you'd make of Angélica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial, considering it was written/published during the days of Argentina's "Dirty War" and the junta that came to power. Or perhaps of Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris stories, considering it's a secondary-world fantasy that isn't exactly six of one and half-dozen of another.

I just don't think you can reduce "fantasy" into such set "flavors," although certainly there have been many market labels used in the past 30+ years for a few styles of it! And I'm still curious as to why you just casually dismiss the ambiguity of realismo mágico with just a passing thought. I think a helluva lot can be written about how such stylings deal with a very complex shading of very real social/political/cultural concerns within a "safer" context than a brutally-accurate mimetic fiction.

While there are some interesting arguments that seem to be on the cusp of being made and developed in this article, I just don't think they've been covered enough for me to be able to tell to which degree I'd agree and to which degree I'd disagree.

[Elio M. García, Jr.]

You know, to try and take the conversation out of Jonathan's chosen framing, why examine these books in terms of "authoritarinism" when in fact a more accurate term would be "pre-modern"?

"Pre-modern fantasy" (or pre-contemporary) has been an ancient habit, from the Iliad to Beowulf to A Midsummer's Night Dream and on and on. The basic trappings of the modern fantasy genre were selected by Tolkien in explicit emulation of the fantasies of the past. And while he may have been motivated in his pursuits and goals by an _actual_ authoritarian streak, this doesn't mean everyone else in the epic fantasy genre is doing the same. They may be benefitting from his reviving an ancient tradition, but why assume this means they're all slavishly following him in his authoritarian leanings, or contributing to anything like the "authoritarianism" of the genre? What they're buying into the idea that fantasy epics work best when set in pre-modern times -- that's about it, and that's been about it for nearly 3,000+ years. Framing it as an issue of authoritarnism merely recasts fantasy as if Tolkien were its root source.

I'll finish by quoting something GRRM recently said about his views on stories and genre:

"Myself, I think a story is a story is a story, and only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. Genre labels are marketing devices, no more. It has been said that I have "changed genres" several times during my career, but from where I sit, I haven't changed at all. I write the stories I want to write, and let the publishers and reviewers worry about what to call them. I plan on continuing to do that."

Make of it what you will.

[Green Gaidin]

I think mny of you are missing the point of what was originally said. I think Johnny McC's point was an indictment of the accepted convention of authoritarian politics being acceptable in Epic Fantasy, not whether or not Ned Stark was right to personally execute the deserter. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Look at it this way: GRRM and RJ and the other heavyweights can be Liberal or Conservative, Centrist or Anarchist as they see fit in their personal lives. But if their writing promotes a different point of view as perfectly acceptable, their writing has no business masquerading as the serious fiction their frothing legions of fans want it to be. Unless it's social satire, which we can agree none of the heavyweights are.

Orwell hated Communism yet set his most famous works (Animal Farm, 1984) in a Communist world. GRRM is a Liberal and professes to oppose strict Conservatism, and sets his most famous work in a Consertative world. Both writers wrote about worlds they say they hated, but Orwell's writings showed how terrible Communism was. GRRM's world promotes and celebrates political Conservatism. Oh sure, he may be Liberal, but that doesn't change the fact that Westeros is not, nor are its heroes.

So why does he give the thumbs up to Conservatism in his writing if he's so Liberal? Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's McC's point: GRRM is perpetuating the stereotypical notion of Fantasy-As-Authoritarian that started with Tolkien.

As an adise, someone above asked if we should criticize Homer because Achilles did something-or-other. You, sir, missed the point so completely it's a wonder you ever managed to rad Homer (unless you've just heard enough about him and The Iliad to repeat the gist of it). Criticizing Achilles in the same way as Stark is not acceptable because while we don't know much about Homer, we do know that his writing gave the thumbs up to the particular religious and political world view perpetuated during the time he lived. GRRM's writing does not reflect his personal views. It's actually hypocritical in a fundamental way. So thanks to McC for bringing this to light. Very thought provoking.

[Green Gaidin]

Oh, and to make it clear to Larry: we're talking about EPIC fantasy heavyweights since Tolkien, not Juan Suarez writing about corn farmers in an imaginary Antarctica. This was all set out pretty clearly in the original entry.

[Arilou]

"Look at it this way: GRRM and RJ and the other heavyweights can be Liberal or Conservative, Centrist or Anarchist as they see fit in their personal lives. But if their writing promotes a different point of view as perfectly acceptable, their writing has no business masquerading as the serious fiction their frothing legions of fans want it to be. Unless it's social satire, which we can agree none of the heavyweights are. "

What? That is an incredibly curious statement. (That an author cannot, in good faith, put forwards an opinion he does not himself hold, unless it is satirical)

It is an *extremely* odd statement. In fact, I think it really undermines the entire point of, y'know, fiction.

"GRRM's world promotes and celebrates political Conservatism."

Does it? I don't think it does. Not only is the Westerosi political system significantly different from any form of conservatism practiced today (conservatism is a term, mind, that does not become politically significant until the French Revolution) but GRRM does not accept the system uncritically (although many of his characters do)

" It's actually hypocritical in a fundamental way."

Did GRRM ever claim that ASOIAF would represent his personal views?

If not, it is not hypocritical.

[Brahm]

"Orwell hated Communism yet set his most famous works (Animal Farm, 1984) in a Communist world. GRRM is a Liberal and professes to oppose strict Conservatism, and sets his most famous work in a Consertative world. Both writers wrote about worlds they say they hated, but Orwell's writings showed how terrible Communism was. GRRM's world promotes and celebrates political Conservatism. Oh sure, he may be Liberal, but that doesn't change the fact that Westeros is not, nor are its heroes.

So why does he give the thumbs up to Conservatism in his writing if he's so Liberal? Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's McC's point: GRRM is perpetuating the stereotypical notion of Fantasy-As-Authoritarian that started with Tolkien."

As Arilou said, you seem to be missing the point of the term "fiction" (and confusing modern conservativism with medieval realism). Writing does not need to be didactic or satirical in order to be important or insightful- you seem to view the situation as that either Martin should be condemned because he supports the medieval feudalist system or that he should be damned because his work is not a satire and therefore meaningless. Why he can't simply write a story in a medieval world, that realistically shows the workings and limitations of the system as well as the mindsets of those that inhabit it, is beyond me.

"As an adise, someone above asked if we should criticize Homer because Achilles did something-or-other. You, sir, missed the point so completely it's a wonder you ever managed to rad Homer (unless you've just heard enough about him and The Iliad to repeat the gist of it). Criticizing Achilles in the same way as Stark is not acceptable because while we don't know much about Homer, we do know that his writing gave the thumbs up to the particular religious and political world view perpetuated during the time he lived. GRRM's writing does not reflect his personal views. It's actually hypocritical in a fundamental way. So thanks to McC for bringing this to light. Very thought provoking."

I think you missed the point of what I was trying to say (and to start with, the society of Homer, living in the Greek Dark Ages if he did live at all, would have been different from that of the bronze age, but I digress). In the Iliad, war is stripped of many of its glories- there is a large measure of horror and tragedy, methinks, in the death of Hector and in general, to the part of the Trojan war as described by Homer. Homer writes about Achilles and Hector and Ajax as they are within their societies- my point was that it makes as little sense to criticize GRRM because Ned supports capitol punishment as it does to criticize Achilles because he doesn't write philosophy instead of warring. These characters act in realistic ways with respect to their society- just because they're not forces of didactism does not make them worthless.

[Green Gaidin]

"What? That is an incredibly curious statement. (That an author cannot, in good faith, put forwards an opinion he does not himself hold, unless it is satirical) ... It is an *extremely* odd statement. In fact, I think it really undermines the entire point of, y'know, fiction."

Why is that odd? I thought that was more or less obvious. A normal, well adjusted human being can write about a murderer, for example, and not be one himself. But writers are known for and identified by the ideologies expressed in their writing. Ask Orwell, Steinbeck, or Camus what they think about life/politics, and they'd tell you more or less what they talk about in their books. It's written for a reason. Is fiction truly fiction? The obvious, hit-you-over-the-head answer is yes, but on a deeper level the best fiction talks about mankind's greatest truths. And so we come to the present issue: can a writer promote and celebrate the opposite of their ideology without being a hypocrite? The answer is the same for them as for all other human beings: no. I'd say that the only way to do so and avoid hypocrisy would be to write satire. And we can agree that GRRM isn't a satirist in any meaningful sense. Look at the above mentioned authors. Would Camus have written novels promoting thoughts/philosophies he did not hold as true? Would Orwell have written about how great Communism is with a straight face? Would Steinbeck have patted the rich and priviliged on the back? Of course not. Because if they had, it would have made them -- *all together now* -- hypocrites.

Wait. Oh my goodness. I just used Camus, Orwell, and Steinbeck to illustrate a point about GRRM. I must be completely insane to even group their names together in the same paragraph.

"Does it? I don't think it does. Not only is the Westerosi political system significantly different from any form of conservatism practiced today (conservatism is a term, mind, that does not become politically significant until the French Revolution) but GRRM does not accept the system uncritically (although many of his characters do)."

It's also not a Liberal system by any means. The modern Conservatism GRRM has shown paranoia over on his blog is more or less the realpolitik of Westeros. Whether the term or impersonal philosophy existed in real world societies during the Medieval period or not is irrelevant: it was still being practised. But I'm not going to delve too deeply into that. I try not to let others nitpick an argument to death. As Shakespeare wrote,

He that a fool doth very wisely hit
Doth very foolishly, although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob. If not,
The wise man’s folly is fully anatomized
Even by the squand’ring glances of the fool.

That said, let's stick to the topic at hand. ASoIaF has added yet another notch to the belt of authoritarian epic fantasy. GRRM's real life political affiliation really has nothing to do with the fact; it is only a curiousity that it also makes him hypocritical in a way. Call me guilty of thinking out loud.

[Green Gaidin]

"Why he can't simply write a story in a medieval world, that realistically shows the workings and limitations of the system as well as the mindsets of those that inhabit it, is beyond me."

Oh he can. I just don't think that it can be taken as serious literature if that's his intent. But once again, we're far from the original points raised by McC.

"My point was that it makes as little sense to criticize GRRM because Ned supports capitol punishment as it does to criticize Achilles because he doesn't write philosophy instead of warring."

I realize that. I was pointing out that you misread/misinterpreted what McC was saying as I saw it. McC was saying that Stark existed as a hero and "role model" (for lack of a better term) in Westeros, yet promoted the stereotypical Fantasy-As-Authoritarianism ideals bandied around since Aragorn. No one doubts that it is right for Ned Stark to act as he did based on his circumstances and setting. The main point is that he's acting the same way Fantasy heroes have for three generations, and the subpoint is that Martin is promoting ideals not his own, which is more of a curiousity to me than anything else.

[Brahm]

"I realize that. I was pointing out that you misread/misinterpreted what McC was saying as I saw it. McC was saying that Stark existed as a hero and "role model" (for lack of a better term) in Westeros, yet promoted the stereotypical Fantasy-As-Authoritarianism ideals bandied around since Aragorn. No one doubts that it is right for Ned Stark to act as he did based on his circumstances and setting. The main point is that he's acting the same way Fantasy heroes have for three generations, and the subpoint is that Martin is promoting ideals not his own, which is more of a curiousity to me than anything else."

I don't think Stark is beyond criticism- in fact, many characters validly criticize his actions, and many readers do as well. His inability to compromise his honour, while admirable in many ways, is partly responsible for a devastating war that destroys his family and the realm- all before winter arrives. He may be in a similar mold as Aragorn, but I think George differs from Tolkien in that he allows that morality and honour do not necessarily entail good government and peace.

"Oh he can. I just don't think that it can be taken as serious literature if that's his intent. But once again, we're far from the original points raised by McC."

So then, by your definition, serious literature must be completely didactic, and must clearly spell out the author's views through a helpful character or two? Though the notion of serious literature can strike me as pompous and silly, this would be about as bad a definition as you could find, I think. Shakespeare's Henry VI plays are similar to ASoIaF in that they show the workings and failings of the feudal system; yet because there is no character there that clearly states that the feudal system is bad, Henry VI must not be a work of serious literature. It seems quite silly.

"The obvious, hit-you-over-the-head answer is yes, but on a deeper level the best fiction talks about mankind's greatest truths. And so we come to the present issue: can a writer promote and celebrate the opposite of their ideology without being a hypocrite?"

All historical fiction writers are hypocrites then, or at least the ones that do their job right. Sorry Robert Graves, McCullough, Gallo and Homer. Is it not possible to reveal historical theories and truths through writing, through characters and plot events? Is it not possible to simply want to tell a story in a medieval setting without telling everyone that you support Democrats over Republicans? If serious literature is solely that which sacrifices setting, plot and characterization to deliver the author's message at all costs, then I'll be quite happy over here reading my not serious books.

[Gwinna]

Green Gaidin, I afraid I still don't see why the fact that GRRM uses a medieval setting means that he is promoting and celebrating "authoritarianism." I don't think anyone would, from reading his books, come away with the impression that he actually approves of the kind of society he depicts in Westeros. Can't an author, and readers, simply find it interesting to look at people who have ideologies different from our own? Must a book always have the purpose of either promoting or condemning the society it portrays, or else have no claim to be "serious literature" (which, by the way, I'm not at all certain GRRM is claiming for ASOIAF)? If not, then a book set in the Middle Ages can't be "serious literature" at all, since as far as I know no one actually thinks we should return to that system, so condemning it would be redundant. But does "serious literature" necessarily have to say something about society at all? Maybe it could speak about human nature, or something else that isn't necessarily connected to our social or political systems?

[Eric B]

Hi Jon,

I'm new to this blog so I hope you don't mind some dissenting opinions.

You know for someone who claims that fantasy novels create a simple political "mortality" you sure overgeneralize and oversimplify a lot.

In the real world and according to grown up politics, the columns aren't obvious at all.

Which is exactly what Martin is doing. True like any good author Martin writes certain characters that we like more such as Jon Snow, Ned Stark, and many of the other Stark brood, yet he never quite settles on good guys versus bad guys.

Even the characters we "like" tend to be morally complex, doing things that are morally questionable or perhaps better to say morally problematic.

The whole point is that when sitting down to write a book, GRRM didn't question the politics of the genre.

Oh, I think you're wrong on this point. First, I wonder what you mean by politics of the genre. It seems to me that Martin and Tolkien are complete opposites in many significant ways.

He questions things like the death penalty, but in very subtle ways that you'll miss if you aren't reading closely.

It is interesting for example that the novel opens with the "death penalty" (an execution) and ends with an execution. It also interesting that the "morally righteous" executer is the one executed.

I agree that Martin opens in this way to show that Ned is a decent guy, even more so to show that he is Honorable, that the most important thing to him is his honor.

Who is the person he executes? An oathbreaker. His complete opposite. Someone who could care spit about his honor, at least in the way Ned and his society defines honor. He is a law-breaker. The law demands he die. Ned kills him because it is his duty, it is honorable to follow the law.

So far I agree this might seem fairly reactionary.

But then we must consider the structural parallel at the end. Ned Stark dies. What is Ned's ultimate downfall?

The answer is: his honor.

His honor refuses him to let Cersei and the Lannisters be when they have commited obvious crimes. His honor and faith in the law gets him to trust the guards of King's Landing; he puts his faith in the law since everyone must be as honorable as him. His honor then gets him killed when the guards betray him out of greed.

He gets his head chopped off like the man whose head he chopped off in the beginning. The man he killed dies because he is an oathbreaker, he dies for breaking the law and not honoring his commitment. He dies for a lack of honor. Ned dies precisely because he put his faith in the law and in the importance of honor.

I don't think Martin is trying to portray Ned as evil or morally corrupt as you've pointed out in one of your replies. I think he is doing something much more subtle, much more nuanced, and much more interesting.

It becomes apparent at this point that this isn't a simple matter of if you're bad, you deserve to die thematic statement that you might see in something that was truly reactionary. No, it's far more complex than that. You get the death penalty for being either too honorable or having too little honor.

Now, this doesn't necessarily exclude all reactionary interpretations. After all, maybe Martin is getting all Aristotilean on us (not that I think Aristotle is necessarily reactionary), and going for the Mean is the best road sort of thing.

Or maybe he is still being purely conservative and trying to make a martyr out of Ned. Perhaps we've been looking at this all the wrong way. After all, we might say that he dies for his "virtues", that we are supposed to empathize with his plight and hate the "evil" Lannisters.

Indeed, I believe most readers do initially dislike most of the Lannisters, we do empathize with Ned on some level, we like him because as you said he comes off as a decent guy, but yet looking at reader's comments across those various message boards you mention I wonder why it is that so many readers simultaneously feel frustrated by Ned's actions. I don't think too many readers feel frustrated by the actions of characters in LOTR. Why does Ned's death frustrate those readers? Why do many readers that I've encounter smack there head with frustration and want to shout at Ned for being such an ignorant naive goody two-shoes? Even more so are there real consequences to his choices?

I would suggest Ned is akin to Othello or Oedipus. We love Othello and Oedipus, even in their gross misdeeds, we still can't help liking them at some level, even as their actions frustrate us. Othello's tragic flaw is jealousy. Oedipus' tragic flaw is hubris.

Ned Stark's tragic flaw is his honor and blind faith in the law of the land.

Martin is doing something very interesting here: he is equating honor, normally considered a virtue, with jealousy and hubris.

This I would argue is not something you typically see in authoritarian fiction. This goes completely against anything Tolkien would have in mind, against any of the various forms of Christianity which values The Law and Honor to God, it is in other words the farthest thing from reactionary.

We then must consider another subtlety. In the beginning Martin presents an execution performed by Ned under the guidance of the law of the land. We take it at face value, Ned has the right to do this because it is the law and therefore it is right. Fairly conservative.

Ned is lawfully correct when he brings his accusations against Cersei. She commited treason agaist the king by having Jaime's kids, yet it is Ned Stark despite obeying the law and being correct that it was she who broke the law, who ends up losing his head from the law for "treason."

From a modern perspective you can say this is the equivalent of an innocent man dying on death row, but even that is oversimplfying it. It might be more accurate to say that this is the equivalent of an innocent man dying on death row after being accused by the guilty men (pardon my gendering the subject in these examples, please). Still that too doesn't seem to capture what Martin is getting at. He seems to be saying something almost Machiavellian, that whoever has the biggest guns decides the law.

Now there might be the urge to say, Ah ha! See! I told you his work is reactionary! Might makes right, indeed!

But unlike Machiavelli he makes no positive moral judgement about Might Makes Right as a world-view. It's not a world-view, it is practical realism of his world He doesn't say this is a good thing or a bad thing. If anything actually he suggests it may be a bad thing. He points out that it is the powerful that makes the law, it is the powerful that gets to decide who is a traitor and who isn't, it is the powerful who ultimately choose who loses their head. There is a complication of the law. There is the objective law. Cersei is the real traitor. And then there is the law as it practically works in this world. Despite that Cersei is the real traitor, Ned is the one to die as the "traitor" because he doesn't have the power to protect himself and enforce the law in his favor.

Basically, this whole thing is a setup to look at who makes the laws. Who benefits from them?

The morality of this first death penalty is challenged by the parallel of this second death penalty.

As the series progresses we see Martin questioning this might makes right attitude again and again, but always in very subtle ways. The whole story is a setup to question authority and power and law, among various other things.

Also, this still ignores the practically consequences of his death. Ned is a martyr to the readers perhaps, but he is not a martyr to the world he lives in. His name is tarnished. The honor he thought was so important means nothing because everyone thinks he is traitor.

Worst of all, his children are punished for his decisions. Instead of thinking for the safety and well-being of his children first, he chooses to "do the right thing" and his children suffer for it. No one in their right mind would call that conservative or reactionary. Seriously a conservative hero whose selfish actions ruin their family's life. Conservative fiction is generally pro-family with strong patriarchal figures saving the day. We have the complete opposite here.

Martin is a far cry from Tolkien.

But speaking of Tolkien, I also think you're not giving proper room for reader's individual interpretations. Many environmentalists and 1960 hippies and leftist Anarchists have found tons of things they like about Tolkien, even as many Christians and Fascists (let me remind you these are two very different things by the way) have also found things they like. Not to mention many libertarians have found things they like in Tolkien, and whatever you might thing about libertarianism, they are certainly anti-authoritarian by the very nature of their political ideology.

Also, which status quo do you keep referring to? The status quo of Martin's fantasy world? The status quo of medieval societies in general? The status quo of today's society? How can a medieval authoritarian fantasy world support the status quo? Are you saying we live in an authoritarian medieval society? Funny, I would think the status quo of a medieval society would be very different from the status quo of a democratic society (pardon me, if I am being U.S., European, and Canadian-Centric). Are you saying they are the same thing?

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Adam -- I think you're trying to have your cake and eat it there (which, come to think of it is a profoundly weird saying).

I think you're trying to defend two conflicting positions. On the one hand you're trying to say that I'm wrong because GRRM DOES do the challenging I'm talking about but I hadn't got to it. On the other hand you're returning to the whole idea that "this is how the medieval world works" as a defence of the early books. If you look at the body of medieval history you'll see that there are numerous approaches to the field all allied with different political viewpoints. Martin has chosen, in the early books at least, to accept the traditional authoritarian reading.

So either he's setting that view up for a fall (which is okay) OR he's saying that medieval world really did work the way he showed it in the early books. You can't have both. Either he agrees with that view of history or he doesn't.

The only way to square the circle here is if the later books accept the authoritarian view of history but feature characters that battle against it (as opposed to revealing that society never worked the way Stark thought to begin with), which isn't the same thing as questioning the assumptions of the genre.

I haven't read the books you speak of so I really can't comment, though the above theory would explain why you seem to be the only person here not defending GRRM's assumption of authoritarianism ;-)

[Ian Sales]

...the fantasy scene is unapologetically populist with its "low-brow", best-selling books getting far more attention than the perhaps more deserving and interesting books that only get picked up by critics and award bodies.

I don't think this is true. Yes, WoT, ASoIaF, etc all have massive web presences, but look at the blogbytes devoted to books like Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora - which apparently has been outsold by fantasy titles mentioned far less frequently.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Elio -- Yes, but I'm calling into question the idea that the pre-modern world operated in that way and I'm not the only one. The criticism is that Tolkien and GRRM (and pretty much everyone operating in the epic fantasy sub-genre) are writing in accordance with that view of history without calling it into question.

In Tolkien's day history was taught in terms of kings and aristocrats and battles and his source material was a load of mythological stuff that was definitely authoritarian. The question is why GRRM decided to continue to embrace that view of the world, especially as he himself professes liberalism.

Tolkien was somewhat out of touch but a product of his more authoritarian age. GRRM has much less of an excuse.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Green Gaidin -- You have the essence of what I'm driving at.

As for Homer though, I thought that Homer did take the piss out of Achilles by presenting him as a terrible prima donna and glory hound.

But anyway, Homer was writing in a very different time and context. In those days you didn't really have a liberal view of history... or proper history at all. I don't blame Homer for being a product of his time and place but modern fantasists don't live in that time or place so what's their excuse for being just as authoritarian?

Weirdly, I think the Viking sagas are less authoritarian. There's a lot of social history there because places like Iceland didn't really have an aristocracy. I've only started looking into them though.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Eric -- I'm not convinced about Jon Snow and the dwarf whose name I forget. As I said, they're morally ambiguous in that they refuse to pick sides but they do acknowledge the existence of sides. They just don't completely fit into one or the other.

As for Stark's downfall, you make a convincing case for Stark's beheading being a sly dig at that opening scene but I read Stark's downfall being due to being astonishingly politically naive and assuming that everyone will obey the law. So when his opponents move against him he's completely taken unawares.

His flaw is that he thinks the world is a well ordered and moral place. His downfall shows that it isn't and that history is all about brute force. His failure as a person is his failure to realise the brutal realpolitik of courtly politics. I'm not sure how any of this conflicts with anything I've said. He's an idealist of sorts and he gets killed for it.

[MattD]

Jonathan et al,

I think "authoritarian" may live on a different axis than "liberal" and "conservative." Martin is actually an interesting exemplar of this, as his historical base for ASoIaF is the War of the Roses, which featured both the rise of a stronger central monarchy out of a feudal society (authoritarian++) and the rise of a mercantile class (liberalism++). I don't know how closely Martin intends to parallel history, so I'm not comfortable making too strong a statement on the conservatism or liberalism of his work. I could imagine him following history, but certainly I could also imagine within the confines of the story the commoners getting sick of all these nobles and their silly wars, beheading the lot of them, and forming a republic. I don't necessarily think that will happen (although damn, it should), but the story to date has not precluded it.

That said, I do agree there are some incontrovertibly authoritarian aspects to ASoIaF, and a lot of the comments here seem to be getting caught up in a confusion between conservative and authoritarian. One difficulty Martin has is his starting point: because he started the story when/where he did, there's the tendency to see the time before the Mad King as a time of stability and prosperity. It's when the mess of realpolitik and the sin of incest intrude that things go to hell, that everybody -- nobles and commoners alike -- suffers. There is throughout the sense that if there were even a single strong, fair ruler, none of this chaos would be happening. There is also something of the moralistic sense of personal authoritarianism, although it's subtle: in ASoIaF, the good characters are the ones who show themselves capable of growth. And characters who do so, tend to grow in all ways at once (Jaime, anyone). Someone like Ned Stark, in contrast, we admire yet pity as we might a stubborn child trying to convince a rabid dog to give back a favored toy, earnest but naive. This is not surprising.

Look, epic fantasies are the creation myths of cultures and nations. From Gilgamesh through Homer to the Arthurian cycle. Tolkien created Middle Earth in large part to create a quintessentially English mythology. Certainly Tolkien knew how England came to be a country as a matter of history: it's important to recognize that epic fantasies are about explaining the unhistorical aspects of our sense of how we got to where we are now. What Tolkien was grappling with were the odd nostalgia for a pastoral past that never was, and how a devout Christian could explain the problem of evil. More broadly, what epic fantasy grapples with are matters such as how to reconcile the idea of a nation with the arbitrariness of lines on a map; how we explain how we can understand the concept of "pure evil" even though psychology has pretty much rendered the idea moot; why do so many people have an appreciation for the idea of magic in a world where there is none; how we explain our sense that the world was once better, even though history tells us otherwise.

A lot of this is a mirroring of our own growth: when we were younger, our sense of the world was more black and white; we (in general) were happier, yet simpler, we didn't have as developed a sense of self or know what we stood for; there were authority figures we relied on. This is why the coming of age story is so intertwined with epic fantasy: the changes to setting in the story of epic fantasy mirror the way our view of the world changes as we mature.

Obviously not all epic fantasy is created equal; in fact, some of this discussion is useful for thinking about how various epic fantasies succeed and fail (my personal pet peeve with much modern epic fantasy is how most characters' inner growth tends to cease at about the age of 16). But in general, this helps explain both the good and bad of epic fantasy in a nutshell:

The bad is that the explanations that epic fantasy provides may disincline some people to seek other explanations, to seek understanding of other peoples; in addition, the explanation may prove too appealing, may become a false escape that instead traps by letting us live out our growth "virtually," safe in story, rather than in the real world. The high-level viewpoint and reliance on known causes and effects of epic fantasy ill-prepare us for the real world when read in isolation.

The good is that reading epic fantasy may keep alive a sense of agency in some people who might not otherwise have it, a sense their opinions have authority, should carry weight. The authoritarian impulse in epic fantasy becomes internalized, giving the reader a sense of choice and enablement -- the common farm boy in them has grown up to be a king. Given how many people lack this sense and how much Western republican society depends upon it, I think reading epic fantasy *as part of a wider reading program* may be quite beneficial for many people (I think it has been for me, at any rate).

One last comment for Jonathan -- are you implying with your post that epic fantasy is the only fictional subgenre that is a locus of authoritarianism? Other subgenres like MilSF and space opera spring to mind as candidates for me; as you are more familiar with SF than fantasy, it might be worth discussing the other side of the F&SF ampersand.

P.S. Have you read Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy? Young adult/middle grade, but if you can make it past the first book you might enjoy them.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Ian -- Lynch is an interesting case. I think a lot of his champions have been the kind of people who normally care about awards and "high-brow" books... his disappointing sales have reflected this niche popularity.

But I don't think he's deserving of the praise he gets because I think the differences between the Gentleman Bastard books and your standard slice of fat fantasy are more cosmetic than anything else.

I think Lynch has the worst of both worlds. He has the sales of a high-end transgressive work and the artistic merit of something far more populist. But I don't want to get into Lynch too much as I'm going to be reviewing him soon and I'll be airing my opinions about him more fully then.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

MattD -- An excellent post. Thanks for your input.

You're right about the framing of the story and that's what I mean about GRRM subscribing to the authoritarian view of history. The belief in a former golden age (a very popular fantasy trope) and the need for a leader to unite people against a common foe (another popular fantasy trope) are the stuff of reactionary politics.

Does GRRM's books take in the idea of an expanding middle class at all or is it all squabbling nobles? As you mention, the weakness of the crown in the War of the Roses period contributed to an expansion in the middle classes in the same way that the French Wars of religion took place against a backdrop of more and more middle class people getting educations and going into business and becoming players in the way the country was run thanks to the French tradition of patronage.

That's the stuff of liberal history right there. The sense that society is improving and moving forward despite the squabbles of the nobles.

I'm not arguing that epic fantasy is the only authoritarian genre out there. MilSF is horrific in that respect and pulp SF was practically fascistic at times with its racism and anti-communism. However, I'd argue that SF has done a much better job of keeping itself politically relevant than fantasy, Le Guin not withstanding as her endless talk of farming and women's rights was properly politically transgressive in a genre not only noted for its authoritarian politics but its outright phallo-centrism.

[Arilou]

Yes he does, mostly in the fact of Littlefinger, the dealings with the Iron Bank of Braavos, the Sparrows... Heck, even the Antlered Men conspiracy... The point of course is that (the exception being the French Revolution, perhaps) the "Rise of the middle-class" would not be something that the people involved would notice and comment upon (at least not most of the time): It would be perfectly possible for someone to live through, say.... The 30-years war and not notice the important changes it triggered, because these changes would be outside the scope of his or her perception.

And of course, it should be noted that the "lost golden age" and the kind of "nostalgic authoritarianism" were very real things for people living in the middle-ages: Again and again we see peasantry preferring (in the words of a swedish rebel "Better one master than many.") For medieval socities, where the problem of violence (the fact that it was rampant, ever-present, and without many checks) made authoritarianism the natural answer. (Not to mention the oft-ignored fact that the lack of communications made medieval authoritarianism far less pervasive than modern totalitarianism and the fact that it also made any sort of large-scale democracy largely impossible)

And once more I'm going to have to disagree with the statement: In fact, presenting a political viewpoint that is different from your own, credibly and without resorting to parody. Is what marks a *good* author.

For the results of what happens when you are incapable of or unwilling to do that, see Terry Goodkind.

[Kit Whitfield]

Good grief, this thread has come a long way before I realised you'd read my article!

Hello, Kit Whitfield here. Very interested to hear what you have to say. Much of the thread seems to have been taken up with discussing George R.R. Martin, but I'd like to address a couple of general points, if you're willing...

You say:
'is it possible to set out to write a fantasy novel without any of the genre's tropes in mind and if it were possible, would that work still be fantasy?'

From my own perspective, I'm very chary of the whole concept of identifying works of literature by genre, whether fantasy, crime, romance or whatever. With all but the most deriviative works, it tends to result in a rather literal-minded oversimplification: it's got a murder in it, so it must be crime! It's got a wizard in it, so it must be fantasy!

As I've found myself, that can lead to simple disagreement about what kind of book something is - you can find me under the 'Crime' heading in UK Borders and 'Fantasy' in the US, for instance. Now, part of my discomfort with that is purely mercenary - if I can be fitted under both, I want to be under both, so I can sell more copies and thus have money for groceries, which is always useful - but it also concerns me that, unless I'm utterly unique and special (which I'd like to believe, but alas is probably not the case), then probably it's happening all over. And that means that all sorts of people will miss out on books they'd enjoy because a bookseller decided to put them on shelves they wouldn't usually visit.

But it's particularly an issue with fantasy, because in terms of classification, fantasy somehow seems like a dominant genre. I can't think of a less tasteless example, so sorry if this offends anyone of any persuasion, but: apparently in the antebellum American South, having any African ancestry at all classified you as 'black', even if you had one African great-great-grandfather and your great-grandmother, grandmother and mother were all impregnated by white men. There seems, in the minds of some people, to be a similar assumption about fantasy: it can have the structure of a romance and the style of a crime thriller and metaphysics of a comedy, but if it has anything at all supernatural in it, then forget about all that, it's Fantasy. I just don't find that logical.

You say that contemporary fantasy is flexible, but another way of looking at it would be to say that it that it's continually being flexed by the forcible inclusion of all kinds of books that have nothing in common except that there's something non-realist in them somewhere, and may actually have more in common with other genres. As you've said elsewhere, fantasy is governed by things, not rules, but the problem with that definition is that it means that any fantasy Thing gets a book classified as fantasy.

Which would be fine, except that when people think too much in terms of genre, many people assume that if it's fantasy, it can't be anything else. Which seems a very unreasonable assumption. This is why I enjoy going on different shelves in different shops; it makes me feel like I've got away with something. But I still think that classifying books by genre leads to some regrettable over-simplifications.

This is made worse by the fact that whether 'fantasy' means what you call 'fat fantasy', or just 'fantastical', is something that different people disagree on. So what tropes are we talking about? 'Boy-who-would-be-king meets wise-mentor'? Or just, 'Something happens that wouldn't happen in the real world?' It's all a big mess, and I don't buy it.

As far as politics go ... for my money, it's perfectly possible to be authoritarian AND liberal. 'Liberal' is a political standpoint that tends to favour policies like government regulation of business, curative rather than punitive justice and social benefits for the poor; 'authoritarian' is a personality trait that is inclined to assume that those in power are usually right and that those who challenge authority should be smacked down. Altemeyer points out in his book that studies of Americans under democracy and Russians under Communism showed that the more authoritarian personalities in each regime tended to be the most inflexibly convinced that their own side was right - that people with similar personalities can wind up with opposing politics depending on who happens to be in authority where they live. I don't know very much about Mr Martin's politics or personality, but it seems perfectly possible that an author could be an authoritarian liberal. Less likely, in today's current political climate, but possible.

Because of that, when you say...

'If I say that fantasy is inherently authoritarian then I am saying that the fantasy genre ultimately finds its roots in the political attitudes of a by-gone age that have since been rejected by society at large but remain largely unquestioned by lazy writers and passive readers.'

... I think you may be assuming that authoritarianism is the product of a political era, whereas I'm assuming that authoritarianism is a personality trait, which finds different expressions in different eras but is always with us. I don't think it's the era that produces authoritarianism, it's authoritarianism that produces the era.

I say potato, you say potato, perhaps - but from a writing perspective, you have to write about characters if you're going to have a story, which means that human nature rather than ideology is, at least in my experience, the basic starting point. I suspect that this is the case for many novelists, just as a matter of practicality. Non-fiction may be explicitly ideological, and some fiction is as well, but with most fiction, it's going to be the author's personality, and their understanding of the personalities of their characters, that's going to be the driving force. Hence, an author whose politics are liberal but whose writing is authoritarian may wind up finding that their work lends itself to politics that they don't agree with, as most authoritarians these days are not liberals.

In which case, I think I might lean towards agreeing with you that, given a structure that requires stamping out an evil to maintain the status quo, it's going to be extremely difficult not to be authoritarian - but that doesn't necessarily mean that the author is politically conservative.

In fact, you could use that as an argument in your favour - if you find writer X authoritarian, and someone says, 'But he votes Labour!' or 'He's a member of Greenpeace!', you can say, 'Pah. Doesn't matter. He's still an authoritarian, because you find them in every political group!' I think where we differ is that you're arguing that fantasy structures are inherently linked to politically authoritarians eras, and I think they're coincidentally similar.

... By your leave, I'm linking to this article from my own, and pasting your reply in my comments section to keep my own blog readers up to date, along with this comment; hope that suits you.