I’m working on an analysis of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series – a dangerous activity since I haven’t finished it yet – and I’m starting to work from the theory that fantasy offers us a chance to rewrite our cultural origin stories. This approach comes from the idea that
- fiction of the apocalypse offers a chance to rewrite our future, minus all the messy stuff that got wiped out in the actual apocalypse and offering us a chance for our chastened, humbled selves to rethink our future along lines more in approach with what we should believe (insert your belief system here); or
- science fiction offers us a chance to write our futures by including all that messy stuff, but adding some sort of paradigm-shifting scientific discovery or technological breakthrough that forces (or enables) us to rethink key assumptions about that future (Gibson’s the-moment-when-it-all-changed)
This approach comes from reading Jessica Hurley’s beautiful article on Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. She argues vociferously for Whitehead’s novel as a corrective to the euphoria about America as a post-racial nation after Obama’s election, and she characterizes Whitehead’s novel as one in which history’s sheer weight crashes down the barriers that we erect to keep it out (this barrier being our history as a slave nation). As she puts it, novels like Whitehead’s enable us to “recover lost histories” and to show how “those disavowed histories manifest themselves in the present and make themselves visible on the surface” – 319.
This helped me think about ways in which Erikson (and Esslemont, although I haven’t read his novels yet) might be critiquing fantasy. I had originally worked from the perspective of identity, and while there’s plenty of identity work going on in this series what I’m particularly interested in right now is how they are critiquing fantasy’s approach to war.
So the argument goes like this, I think…
- the fantasy template that they’re critiquing is from LOTR, of course, and all the thousands of novels afterwards that have gazillions of noble elves, irascible but lovable dwarves, and evil orcs, balrogs, etc.
- this does not include Donaldson, Delaney, et al, and is more directed at those who skipped the Silmarillion, the appendices to LOTR, and so on…Tolkien was a WWI vet, and I don’t think he glamorizes war necessarily, as the glowing sword folks often meet grisly ends in the non-LOTR parts of his world.
- that series rewrites our origin stories about war as a grinding but necessary evil, something that heroes do reluctantly and with no sense of joy but only sorrow and need.
- these same heroes often triumph through sheer will, power, and a magic sword that is attached to some sort of prophesy or other nearly magical power.
(NOTE: for all the admiration I have for Martin, and for what he is trying to do to upend fantasy conventions, I think that he also attempts this recreation – my guess is that ASOIAF reimagines our origin myths about the Enlightenment, especially in terms of accumulating wisdom instead of knowledge)
- we want these heroes – John Snow and maybe Danerys Targaryen in ASOIAF, for instance – and their modern incarnations are Rambo and that sort…
- i’m not trying to ignore all the political arguments and the masculinity issues on display here, as instead I’m looking at another way in which these texts “manifest themselves in the present and makes themselves visible on the surface” in Hurley’s words…
- MBOTF questions the re-imagination in general, and it does in a bunch of ways – war, religion, social structures, and more…
- my first attempt at this will be looking at modes of combat, and the current novel has a couple of distinct markers – we get to see a couple of different takes…
- Brys Benedict’s thoughts: (Dust of Dreams 137) “Soldiers lived difficult lives, Brys well knew. Friends lost in horrible, sudden ways. scars hardening over the years, ambitions crushed and dreams set aside. The world of possibilities diminished and betrayals threatened from every shadow. a soldier must place his or her trust in the one who commands, and by extension in that which the commander serves in turn. in the case of these Bonehunters, Brys understood that they and their Adjunct had been betrayed by their empire’s ruler. They were adrift, and it was all Tavore could do to hold the army together; that they had launched an invasion of Lether was in itself extraordinary. Division and brigades – in his own kingdom’s history- had mutinied in response to commands nowhere near as extreme. For this reason alone, Brys held the Adjunct in true respect, and he was convinced that she possessed some hidden quality, a secret virtue, that her soldiers well recognized and responded to-and Brys wondered if he would come to see it for himself, perhaps this very night”
- Another, more obvious in its implications: (Dust of Dreams 88) “Mortal Sword Krughava reminded Tanakalian of his childhood. She could have stridden out from any of a dozen tales of legend he had listened to curled up beneath skins and furs, all those breathtaking adventures of great heroes pure of heart, bold and stalwart, who always knew who deserved the sharp end of their sword, and who only ever erred in their faith in others-until such time, at the tale’s dramatic climax, when the truth of betrayal and whatnot was revealed, and punishment soundly delivered.”
- The third example comes from the point of view of the warrior priest Tanakalian, wondering at the camaraderie developed by the Malazans: “He understood the necessity for propriety, and the burden of tradition that ensured meaning to all that they did – and all that they were – but he had spent time on the command ship of the Adjunct, in the company of Malazans. They displayed an ease in shared hardship that had at first shocked the Shield Anvil, until he comprehended the value of such behavior. There could be no challenging the discipline of the Bonehunters when battle was summoned. But the force that truly held them together was found in the camaraderie they displayed during those interminably long periods of inactivity, such as all armies were forced to endure. Indeed, Tanakalian had come to delight in their brash lack of decorum, their open irreverence and their strange penchant for revelling in the absurd. (Dust of Dreams 75)
- through a sort of ignored enforcement of military formality, one in which enlisted soldiers grumbled and pranked and spoke freely to officers, determining the best course of action by consensus or by compelling argument rather than sheer power of command. I wonder if Whiskeyjack and Dujek Onearm fit this mode as well…
- all of this speaks to a new model army, one that I think aligns better with modern notions of war than those of the past, at least as we idealize and rewrite that past.
- but my point is that it’s more realistic. I have read some of Bernard Cornwell’s Arthur novels, and I would have never have guessed of the prevalence of the shield wall without reading it. Two sides locked in fierce pushing combat, trying to protect each other, as someone else who I can’t find put it unable to whip out their cool combo moves on each other. It’s as incapable of creating the flashing glorious battle figure as is the idea of charging machine gun nests – moments of individual heroism that are to be celebrated, of course, but no one can overcome the machine gun’s bullets through sheer force of will.
- The Romans, right, conquered through team work and protecting each other…
All this is enough for a start, methinks…