Post by sillierthings on Jun 27, 2015 23:10:58 GMT
So, I started a new job 4 weeks ago, and I have had no time to do much more than scroll tumblr and these boards on my lunch break. I have really missed chatting with you all!
I read a post on tumblr comparing Martin and JK Rowling's writing style, and I've been thinking about his style quite a bit in the last week as a result. I have now read two other novels that he wrote (Fevre Dream and Armageddon Rag) and I've just barely dipped into Dying of the Light. I think ASOIAF is far superior to these novels, though they are fun and readable and explore a lot of the same themes. You can see where he has grown as a writer over the years, and while I think most of Martin's other works are decidedly good "scifi/fantasy"--intelligent and well written, but unlikely to transcend their genre. ASOIAF, however, is far more than a fantasy novel with dragons that takes on a few deeper themes. It's literature. I know there are people who would call me a snob and say any work that is read and enjoyed deserves to be called literature, but I don't believe that. A Thomas Kincaid print, for example, may be pretty to look at and bring pleasure to the viewer, but there is not a lot to think about. It's pretty. It's consumable. It is "art," but I hesitate to call it ART, if you see what I mean. I feel like ASOIAF might well be Literature with a capital L.
Martin has so many literary references in this series. We've discussed a lot of them here--Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Once and Future King, Arthurian legends in general, Greek myths, Celtic myths, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, The Stranger, The Plague, The Metamorphosis, Shakespeare, fairy tales and more. This isn't even taking into account all of the pop culture and musical references he puts in as well (and after reading Armageddon Rag, I SWEAR he was making that Mellow Yellow reference in the new Alayne chapter). So what? That's what I kept asking myself. Why all these references? For fun? To build character? When I used to teach English literature, I was always tell my students when they found an interesting line or detail to ask "So What?" and to keep asking it until they came up with a satisfactory answer.
So what? Westeros is the center of this world Martin has created. Westeros is an evocative name. It is the West and winter is coming. It is a western society whose old ways aren't really working, whose very society is falling apart. It really is the fall of the western world, and I think in the real world, the west, which has dominated for so long, is in a decline (and I'm not thinking politics or making any statement here. I'm thinking about this purely from an aesthetic/artistic point of view). What happens to the beautiful things like the poetry and the stories and the songs? How do they survive? Why do we still know the myths of the Greeks? Why does Shakespeare still resonate. But does it? Does it really? I taught Shakespeare and a lot of other great works. And I think it does. But you have to reinvent it for the students. You have to repackage it. In my experience, you cannot just throw Hamlet at someone whose never really heard of it before and expect them to love it.
Under the guise of his fantasy series, Martin has woven in all these references to the works, I assume, he loves. He has repackaged them into popular literature again, little literary breadcrumbs that lead us back to the source material and enrich the whole experience. It's very much in the tradition of T.S. Eliot or Yeats or any storyteller who has taken the stories and characters that came before and reinvented them to work for their time. Provided the original tale had some universal, human truth, they can be reworked again and again. I was in Verona, Italy many years ago, and one of the walls around the city was built of stone and mortar. Among the stone were pieces of old Roman monuments, signs, whatever, repurposed for that wall. The ancient Roman Empire lives on, maybe not in quite the same form, but it's there, and I found those pieces of the monument mixed into the wall more fascinating in some ways than the preserved monuments in the Roman Forum. Or it's like a patchwork quilt made of pieces of clothing that were once useful. These worn clothes can be reworked into something beautiful.
For the record, while I know GRRM and JK Rowling both write what could be labeled as "fantasy" works, they are not comparable to my mind. JK Rowling is a fine author, but her references to mythology and such fall flat to me. So, Luna Lovegood's mother was named Pandora. So What? Why the reference? What does it tell us about Luna? Not much, I don't think. I own the whole series. I've read them all. I was enough of a fan that when book 6 came out the exact same week I gave birth to my first child, I had my husband buy it for me, and even though I should have spent any spare time I had sleeping, I spent a lot of that time reading her novel. Ultimately, I was disappointed. Her books are fine. I think they are not half as deep and profound as she likes to pretend they are (especially with the amount of retconning she has done over the years). The novels sit on my shelf, and I can say that I have never felt the desire to go back and reread any passage intently, not like I do the ASOIAF series.
I read a post on tumblr comparing Martin and JK Rowling's writing style, and I've been thinking about his style quite a bit in the last week as a result. I have now read two other novels that he wrote (Fevre Dream and Armageddon Rag) and I've just barely dipped into Dying of the Light. I think ASOIAF is far superior to these novels, though they are fun and readable and explore a lot of the same themes. You can see where he has grown as a writer over the years, and while I think most of Martin's other works are decidedly good "scifi/fantasy"--intelligent and well written, but unlikely to transcend their genre. ASOIAF, however, is far more than a fantasy novel with dragons that takes on a few deeper themes. It's literature. I know there are people who would call me a snob and say any work that is read and enjoyed deserves to be called literature, but I don't believe that. A Thomas Kincaid print, for example, may be pretty to look at and bring pleasure to the viewer, but there is not a lot to think about. It's pretty. It's consumable. It is "art," but I hesitate to call it ART, if you see what I mean. I feel like ASOIAF might well be Literature with a capital L.
Martin has so many literary references in this series. We've discussed a lot of them here--Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Once and Future King, Arthurian legends in general, Greek myths, Celtic myths, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, The Stranger, The Plague, The Metamorphosis, Shakespeare, fairy tales and more. This isn't even taking into account all of the pop culture and musical references he puts in as well (and after reading Armageddon Rag, I SWEAR he was making that Mellow Yellow reference in the new Alayne chapter). So what? That's what I kept asking myself. Why all these references? For fun? To build character? When I used to teach English literature, I was always tell my students when they found an interesting line or detail to ask "So What?" and to keep asking it until they came up with a satisfactory answer.
So what? Westeros is the center of this world Martin has created. Westeros is an evocative name. It is the West and winter is coming. It is a western society whose old ways aren't really working, whose very society is falling apart. It really is the fall of the western world, and I think in the real world, the west, which has dominated for so long, is in a decline (and I'm not thinking politics or making any statement here. I'm thinking about this purely from an aesthetic/artistic point of view). What happens to the beautiful things like the poetry and the stories and the songs? How do they survive? Why do we still know the myths of the Greeks? Why does Shakespeare still resonate. But does it? Does it really? I taught Shakespeare and a lot of other great works. And I think it does. But you have to reinvent it for the students. You have to repackage it. In my experience, you cannot just throw Hamlet at someone whose never really heard of it before and expect them to love it.
Under the guise of his fantasy series, Martin has woven in all these references to the works, I assume, he loves. He has repackaged them into popular literature again, little literary breadcrumbs that lead us back to the source material and enrich the whole experience. It's very much in the tradition of T.S. Eliot or Yeats or any storyteller who has taken the stories and characters that came before and reinvented them to work for their time. Provided the original tale had some universal, human truth, they can be reworked again and again. I was in Verona, Italy many years ago, and one of the walls around the city was built of stone and mortar. Among the stone were pieces of old Roman monuments, signs, whatever, repurposed for that wall. The ancient Roman Empire lives on, maybe not in quite the same form, but it's there, and I found those pieces of the monument mixed into the wall more fascinating in some ways than the preserved monuments in the Roman Forum. Or it's like a patchwork quilt made of pieces of clothing that were once useful. These worn clothes can be reworked into something beautiful.
For the record, while I know GRRM and JK Rowling both write what could be labeled as "fantasy" works, they are not comparable to my mind. JK Rowling is a fine author, but her references to mythology and such fall flat to me. So, Luna Lovegood's mother was named Pandora. So What? Why the reference? What does it tell us about Luna? Not much, I don't think. I own the whole series. I've read them all. I was enough of a fan that when book 6 came out the exact same week I gave birth to my first child, I had my husband buy it for me, and even though I should have spent any spare time I had sleeping, I spent a lot of that time reading her novel. Ultimately, I was disappointed. Her books are fine. I think they are not half as deep and profound as she likes to pretend they are (especially with the amount of retconning she has done over the years). The novels sit on my shelf, and I can say that I have never felt the desire to go back and reread any passage intently, not like I do the ASOIAF series.
).. JK Rowling...eh. As you say, she's a great world builder, and she is Dickensian in her naming and characters, but honestly, you said it best, she's like a cup of tea. Nice. Cozy. But ultimately, not that substantial. At a certain point, it seems fruitless to compare Rowling and Martin. It's kind of like comparing Lois Lowry's Giver series to Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World. Yes, they are all dystopian novels, and as much as I like Lowry's writing for children, it's not the same level. 
