Pluripotency

How the law of symbols applies to tales of fantasy, and is the author’s best friend

One of the seminal works at all fantasy writers ought to read is Sigmund Freud’s book on dreams. In this book one of the primary truths about dreams that Freud announces, is that dreams show us things that are two things at once – or are even more than two things at one and the same time.

Of course, artists and madmen have long been aware of such things as symbols. And long, long ago – when all tales were fantasy tales, and the realistic and rational world that we live in today had not yet been invented – the notion that some object or person could beat itself and at the same time something entirely different was a commonplace. A burning bush was God, a young herald in the army was also the god Apollo, and so forth.

But then, alas, the realistic and rational world was invented, and we were all condemned to live in it from cradle to grave, without any choice or say in the matter. We who have thus been condemned to a life and the world in which each and every object, person, animal and plant can be nothing besides itself, have the most difficult time in imagining what our ancestors of ages past knew as easily as breathing. So we are impoverished in our imagination, and power attempts at fantasy are laughably simple and even I might say crippled, halt and lame. Some of us cannot even imagine a world of fantasy, and we are compelled to create ‘rules’ that govern our magical objects and powers, and are harshly critical of stories in which there are no ‘rules’ governing their magical objects creatures and powers.

This worst of all limits ourselves in the very mechanics of our tales. In a fantasy tale, because every single character, object, animal and plant can be both itself and something else – anything else – as well as a third thing, at one and the same time, any plot device and story turn is possible.

Remember this, the next time you have any trouble with your fantasy story. There is no story difficulty that cannot be solved with a little recourse to magic. More than this, when you tell a fantasy tale you can tell two stories at ones – or three or more. If you want your hair out to be a prince, he can be a prince; but if you would also like to tell the story where the prince is a pauper, you can do that as well – all in the same tale. If you want the heroine to end up with George, she can do so; if you also find yourself feeling a little sorry for Edgar, she can end up with him as well, because George and Edgar can be the same person.

This comes up as a result of a note from Bardelys, who for a long time struggled with one of his tales. He couldn’t decide whether his young hero should be in the end revealed as a prince, or a nobody who helped a prince. The ‘Prince’ model is the typical, what I call ‘American Superboy’ model. In America, all our heroes must be princes, and in the fantasy tales, any son-of-a-nobody will in the end be shown to be in truth the son of a king, or or some powerful magician, or to have unusual powers of his own, or to be the Fated or Destined One of Ancient Prophecy (or multiples of these combined).

How very different was Tolkien’s model of the humble Hobbit, who in both The Hobbit, or There and Back Again and in The Lord of the Rings had his hobbits as mere helpers, and not princes themselves. (We can argue that Bilbo had common-sense shrewdness and resisted better than Dwarves Men or Elves the madness of lust for Dragon’s Gold, and that Frodo had extreme powers to resist the commands of the Ring; but I imagine that Tolkien would have insisted that these are the virtues of the common English peasant and reveal more of a reverse snobbery than any insistence that Bilbo and Frodo were extremely virtuous in any way. Tolkien’s very point was that the hobbits had more in them than the great and wise could guess on first glance.)

So Bardelys, having already built up his structure with the boy as a revealed Prince, thought better of it, and asked himself, ‘Yes, but what if he is a nobody all the way through?’ He liked this notion, and set up a parallel structure. Along the way he had to give up some things, of course, and in the end, he grudgingly returned to the Prince model.

And yet he kept looking back with longing at the notion that the boy would be a nobody through and through… And so in the end he managed it, by having the boy both a Prince and a nobody all the way through. To see how he managed it, you must read the full tale … if he ever gets around to finishing it.

(Composed by dictation Sunday 5 April 2009)

Words from Bardelys

Modifications and a warning from the talesman himself.

Yesterday’s chapter instalment of The Magic Key had a line that bothered me the more I thought on it. Hans is said to remember the remark he made to his Father, that ‘Six wins all tricks.’

No such line exists in the manuscript as Bardelys had given it to us. The closest to this line comes in an exchange between Hans and Father in the little attic room, early on the Dreadful Night:

Father: ‘One and seven make eight, and eight is late.’

Hans: ‘Eight is great, you mean.’

I asked Bardelys about this, and he confessed that he has been reading these posts and criticisms of mine, and it has inspired him to give another look over the old tale. That is when he found he made a mistake in these lines, he said.

For various reasons, Bardelys told me, he wished his tale to begin on Summer’s Eve (which is the eve of Hans’s birthday), and that this should be a night of a New Moon. At the same time, Bardelys had given much thought to how old his young hero ought to be, and settled on 18 as a fitting age.

And yet Bardelys had also found himself bound that Hans should have been born on a certain year.

When Bardelys consulted a calendar, he found that the only year that suited all his requirements was 1773 – and yet this broke his wish to make his hero 18. Instead, Hans would only have been 15 on Summer’s Day 1773.

Bardelys was faced with a choice: alter the calendar (after all, who would know? who would care?) or change Hans to 15. Bardelys chose to make his hero younger.

This then invalidated the exchange quoted above. Instead, Bardelys tells us, the exchange with Father really went as follows:

Father: ‘One and five make six, and six is hard to fix.’

Hans: ‘Six will win all tricks, you mean.’

Bardelys also has made other changes, he tells me. But he withholds them as yet.

On another note, I have presented today a Foreword to Part Two of The Magic Key which I negelected to include in the posts in its proper place. Bardelys tells me this Foreword will be included in the event that he publishes each part of the tale as a separate volume, slim though such volumes should be. In the event of an omnibus single volume, on the other hand, Forewords to each part would be suppressed.

(Composed on keyboard Monday, November 17, 2008)

Critique of Part Two, Chapter Six

Three things strike me about this chapter:

1. Bardelys continues his practice of short chapters
2. The danger returns with magic
3. Bardelys shifts his hero’s character back around

Chapter Length. Bardelys has made a pattern of using short chapters. It will be interesting to see if he will keep this up or if he will vary the length of his chapters. In general it strikes me that over the past several chapters, he breaks whenever he comes to any significant ‘bump’ in the narrative.

Magic. Magic has come back into the tale, the closer we are to the Forest. This then might have been at the back of Bardelys’s mind when he made his Groening-stead chapters so un-magical: the closer the tale takes us to the Black Forest, the stronger the magic becomes. Only Edgar, Mother Groening’s half-mad brother, has smelled at all of magic back in the friendly house, and he seems to have been touched by the Forest, and might even be in league with it.

Once again Bardelys is trying here to overcome his earlier mistake of identifying the Forest, and wicken, as ‘wild but not evil.’ He makes a specific reference to this remark of Hans’s Father, and has Hans mentally correct his dead Father’s judgment. This is about as good a way as there is of undoing a mistake of this kind: talk about it openly. ‘I know I told you so-and-so, but in fact that was wrong, and the truth of the matter is this-and-that.’ An additional benefit may be wrought out of this technique or strategy: since the talesman has changed his story once, we readers cannot be sure that he will not change it again. Which is it, is the Schwarzwald only wild, or is it malevolent? It might even be the case that Bardelys himself is of two minds on this question, and means to leave this at the heart of his theme. Wilderness, the un-human, can certainly be dangerous to men, but is it a conscious, willful threat, or an ignorant, even ‘innocent’ one?

We will have to follow this thematic question closely as the tale carries on, and see whether the talesman definitely decides it one way or the other.

Character. Hans recalls his banter with Father and his own words, ‘Six wins all tricks.’ This is more like the shifty coal-biter than the more-innocent and innocuous stay-at-home character type. It further suggests that Hans will fall into the archetype of the Trickster, a type that makes sense for a youth who has not shown any great physical prowess. Hans is not big for his age, he is not overly strong – at least Bardelys has not made mention of any such thing, and the omission seems deliberate: Hans never acts as though he is a strong lad, except for the one point when he breaks out of the wicken-army camp by bumping up against one of a knot of soldiers – and even then Bardelys stresses not the strength and size of his hero, but his knowledge of how to attack an opponent in the childish game he knows.

Knowledge is the Trickster’s forte.

Thus we have now been offered three different character types for the hero:

1. Coal-biter
2. Stay-at-home
3. Trickster

Maybe Bardelys is unable to make up his mind here. (Although it is true that the Trickster often wears many hats, and can appear to play the part of other archetypes when it suits his purpose.)

The final image of this chapter is the most gruesome yet in the tale. Bardelys drew a veil over the deaths of Hans’s family, and left them offstage; we only heard with Hans his Mother’s dying scream, but we saw none of the corpses, nor how the dreadful trees disposed of them. Young Bertie Groening, on the other hand, is left (literally) twisting in the wind.

(Composed on keyboard Sunday, November 16, 2008)

Critique of Part Two, Chapter Five

Fear returns; how to redefine terms

In this chapter, Bardelys focuses on Otto, the ‘gangly farmhand’ and his seeming threat to Hans. The man seems mad – at least that’s the conclusion Hans reaches at the chapter-break. Otto insists that Hans must go into the Black Forest. His reasons are murky at best, something about being ‘the Forester now.’ A fit or frenzy overtakes Otto, and Hans fears they must come to blows. However the farmhand lapses into weird mutterings, and Hans is left on his guard, unable to sleep, trapped on the haystack in utter blackness beside a madman, while the grinding sounds of the wild-growing trees grow louder and louder in his ears…

This kind of fear is quite different from that of the traditional folk or fairy tale. In those tales, even monsters were reasonable beasts. Take a monster such as the Gian in the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. This Giant wants to catch Jack and eat him because men (particularly Englishmen, according to the rhyme the Giant chants) are one of the things he eats. Though beastly and horrible it may be for man to eat man, the Giant looks upon Jack as a man might look upon a fat mouse in his house.

The muttering and fit of Otto partakes of madness. There may be reason enough behind what he wants of Hans, but the way Otto expresses it is classic madness: the gaping, pale eyes, the insistence without reason, the sudden mounting into frenzy, the lapse into muttering ‘sounds that were not proper words’ all are traits of the madman.

Now I wonder how familiar common folk were with madmen say 500 years ago. Schizophrenia must have existed then, but ‘Tom O’Bedlam’ was not surely someone the average person knew. I might say that today there are few enough of us who actually know people who are out of control in the way Otto the farmhand is – but we have seen them depicted in fiction and television and above all in horror movies so often, it is as if we had known such folk. Enough to make them a kind of cliché to any follower of the horror tale.

The creature Gollum, in Professor Tolkien’s The Hobbit, by contrast, is at first more like the Giant in Jack’s tale. It is a sneaking wretch, anthropoid but not, seemingly, human (or Hobbit), not quite a troll either. It is quite capable of throttling and eating just about any living thing that might fall into its clutches. But Gollum is not mad.

In the final line in the chapter, Bardelys equates this madness that has overtaken Otto with wicken. This is good: where a talesman does choose to create his own terms for creatures and aspects of his magic world, he must avail himself of every chance he finds to ‘charge’ these terms with the emotions he wishes us to associate with them. This is especially true in the beginning stages of the tale. ‘Wicken’ has been wild and magical, inhuman, vaguely threatening – and yet in its most extensive use thus far, the term is made into something similar to ‘Nature’ as a whole. This takes place in the scene when Hans and Father play chess in the small attic room. Hans wonders if ‘wicken’ is the same thing as ‘evil,’ and Father tells him No. Father goes farther, and tries to explain that the wicken-things in the Black Forest have something like their own rules, and are not to be feared by any man who knows his place in the natural order. Thus we might have begun to think of ‘wicken-things’ as something like big bears, extremely dangerous if threatened or attacked, but if we just avoid them, they won’t harm us.

This explanation takes the fangs out of the term, and Bardelys was mistaken to do that so early on: it affects how we will think of ‘wicken’ from then on. I suppose that since this was the last scene in which Father would appear before he dies, Bardelys wanted to plant this notion of wicken – probably Hans will come around to realizing the wisdom of such a position much later in the tale.

The problem is that having then explained to us that ‘wicken’ is not so terrible after all, Bardelys can’t just call the Sooty Prince, or the White Lady, ‘wicken-things’ and expect it to send shivers up and down our spines. He has placed ‘wicken’ into a ‘dangerous but not overly so’ box, and if now he wants us to think of ‘wicken’ as belonging to the box of those things ‘malevolent and dangerous,’ he is going to have to go twice as far as he would have if he had started us off with that view.

(Composed on keyboard Saturday 15 November 2008)

Critique of Part 2, Chapter 4

Comments on short chapters and long

This chapter finishes the journey Hans makes to see what is left of his home. No sooner does he find that his remembrance of the dreadful night is truth, than he is attacked and the chapter ends. It ends somewhat abruptly and unsatisfactorily, but evidently Bardelys considers this sort of short chapter with a jagged ending to be a good way to force us to read on through the chapter breaks.

This makes me consider the whole question of short chapters vs. long ones.

Short chapters are like hors d’oeuvres, small and tasty, designed to whet the appetite rather than satisfy it. I suppose the theory is that we will just go on reading and reading and ignore the chapter breaks altogether.

Long chapters, on the other hand, mark significant progress in the logical development of the tale. For the purpose of this discussion, I will consider this the main distinction between short and long chapters: a short chapter takes us only half a step down the tale’s road, or less; a long chapter takes a full step.

Bardelys has given us one such step here: Hans leaves the Groening-stead and along with the farmhand Otto, he goes back to where his home used to stand. There he sees that his home is no more. The realization will presumably force Hans (and Otto, who is looking more and more like a major character at this point) to take up a new course of action – go back to Groening-stead and tell them what they saw, or fall prey to the things that lurk among the trees, or go into the Schwarzwald itself in search of Bertie Groening, or encounter more wicken-creatures like Yellow Socks or the White Lady. Or something else will occur to them. In all events, the course of the action Hans has been taking has now hit a wall: there is no going home for him! Where shall he then go, and what shall he do? The answers to these questions form the next step in his journey through the tale, and will take a new chapter if it is long.

But Bardelys has divided the journey back to the Forester’s House between two chapters, though it is less than one day’s march even for the hobbling Hans. Somehow the two chapters don’t seem to equal a ‘full’ chapter, a ‘decent-sized’ chapter.

But a talesman surely doesn’t want to tire his audience out waiting for a chapter to end. Getting many small, ‘bite-sized’ chapters allows us to put down the book every four or five pages – we know we can always read on, and a new break will be offered to us shortly.

(Composed on keyboard Friday 14 November 2008)

Critique of Part Two Chapter Three

Alone again – almost

This chapter is something of a delaying stretch. Hans is left to himself at the farm, and begins to understand how much he has changed in two days. He makes up his mind to go back home and see for himself the truth, for he has begun to doubt his memory. He lies to Mother Groening to comfort him, and in this we can see how he has softened from the coal-biter brat he was with his own Mother. (Or maybe Bardelys has begun to shift back to the conception of Hans as a stay-at-home rather than a true coal-biter.)

He starts back, but is accompanied by Otto, the dubious farmhand. And he can’t shake him, and his physical weakness, the sprained ankle, betrays him. In the end he is forced to accept the farmhand's company on the rest of the way back.

Overhanging all this is something of a mystery. Bertie Groening set out the day before to visit the Foresters’ house and let them know Hans was well. He should have been back last night, or this forenoon at the earliest, it seems. Mother Groening seems worried over him. This small bit of darkness, which Bardelys doesn't dwell on enough, I think, casts a bit of a pall over the future.

We already know that Hans is right when he feels that ‘all the bad was true, and all his hopes were false.’ Or at least we hope that is so, because we want the magic and the danger to arise to give us an entertaining tale. Bertie’s failure to return seems to bolster our hopes in the evil that will greet Hans when he finds his home again.

And yet, for the little of moment that happens in this chapter, it runs on awfully long. Bardelys has let his feet drag in the mire again.

(Composed on keyboard Thursday, November 13, 2008)

Critique of Part Two, Chapter Two

Building a mood

Hans spends his first day at Groening-stead, but it is an odd one. After breakfast, he sleeps all day, and begins a nightlong vigil. Already his experiences have placed him far from his fellow-men.

Here we find some traces of Magic reappearing in Bardelys’s tale. The chapter has little enough overt action, and yet builds a strangeness about Hans and his experience, like a veil that swings between him and the common, everyday actions of the men and women of the farm. Even though Hans seems to sink back for a time into childhood, and even begins to accept that the events of the Dreadful Night were in truth no more than his nightmare, we can see that going back to what he was is no longer any choice for him. He can try, but the effort will fail – we can see it, even if Hans himself still can’t.

A new character is introduced, Wendel, Mother Groening’s brother. From his remarks, we can believe he is not quite sane, or that he too has glimpsed the evil acts of the wicken-things in the Black Forest. He seems to know only too well what Hans has spoken about, and his final words regarding the ground fog echo the warning Hans got from his Granny.

It seems Hans feels a bit relieved when the household goes to bed, leaving him alone. He can’t sleep, as though he is now becoming a creature of the night himself. He goes outside, breathes in the cool dark air, and encounters again Otto, who seems to be waiting for him.

It is on this moment of the encounter that the chapter ends, begging us to read on and discover what business Otto has with Hans.

The effect of the periods of sleep and waking, the hypnotic firelight, and the mix of dreams and mundane activities, create a mood that is somewhat dreamlike in itself, and seems to me better-drawn than the actual nightmare when the trees tore down the house. It leaves us, along with Hans himself, separated from the common men and women of Groening-stead, somewhat adrift, and expectant. It is as though we felt the farmstead might suffer an attack any moment of the weird wicken-things – as though we would welcome such an attack.

And indeed, who wouldn’t? We are reading a dark fairytale, after all, and mundane activities must begin to bore us, unless they appear under the lens of such atmosphere and strange mood as we find here. Like the audiences watching Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds, we are complicit in the evil, for we long for the excitement and terror and weirdness of the rising wicken-creatures.

(Composed on keyboard Wednesday 12 November 2008)

Critique of Part Two, Chapter 1

Questions on part-breaks and character introductions

Bardelys has begun a new Part to his tale, The Magic Key. This, the second part, he calls ‘Darkness over Dimmerthal.’ So let’s look at this chapter with the broader question of part-breaks in mind. Since Bardelys has also introduced several new characters, we can ask about character introductions in general as well.

The Parts of a Book

A ‘Book’ is a specific way of presenting a Tale. Over the centuries various divisions of a book have been used. There are the ‘books’ of a ‘volume’ and the ‘parts’ of a ‘book’ as well as ‘chapters’ and ‘sections’ of chapters and ‘subsections’ of ‘sections.’ Of course these are all artificial and arbitrary, and often (as in the case of the original ‘books’ which were the division of Homer’s epic poems into separate scrolls) done for technical reasons having more to do with the means of reproduction rather than any organic or logical grouping of the scenes and movements of the tale itself. It remains true, however, that most editors and publishers and authors will try to make the divisions of their books coincide with organic and logical divisions of the tales printed therein. And we can also say that almost all the great and conscientious editors, publishers, and authors do so.

With that in mind, let’s look at where Bardelys has broken his tale here.

The first strictly organic distinction between parts one and two involves location. Hans in part one lives at home. His home life is destroyed, he runs for his life, and is rescued. Part two has him going to the homestead of the Groening family, and so it seems as though part two will show us how Hans lives with the Groenings. The title of the part, ‘Darkness over Dimmerthal,’ also indicates that the part is organized around the setting of its scenes, which will broaden our perspective and show us more of the Dimmerthal valley, and not just the Groening family and folk.

Another possible logical distinction we might want to draw between parts one and two involves the basic logical movements of this or any tale. It could be that Bardelys considers (consciously or intuitively) that the end of part one coincides with his First Curtain, when the conflict is set and fully engaged-in by both parties. Or it could be that Bardelys looks on the end of part one as the end of the Summoning – maybe he looks on this whole Dreadful Night as the Inciting Incident that upends the world Hans lives in (it certainly does that) but that Hans may still withdraw from the lists and not take on his enemies to the full. Maybe Bardelys thinks his young hero still has some growing-up to do, or some hardening of his heart, or needs to commit further to this war.

(Bardelys has sketched out the further outlines of his tale to me enough so that I could make a case for either alternative.)

Character Introductions

Bardelys in this short chapter gives us several new faces to learn. Some of these may be more important than others. There are:

1. Farmer Groening, the patriarch
2. Mother Groening, his wife
3. Bertie Groening their young son
4. A fat, jolly fellow-farmer
5. Anton, the foreman of the farmhands
6. Otto, a slightly suspect farmhand, maybe a simpleton, maybe more dangerous, and maybe allied with the enemy

From the way Bardelys has treated these introductions, I would guess that Farmer Groening, Mother Groening, Bertie Groening, and Otto will all prove to be major characters. Anton the foreman is probably minor. The fat, jolly farmer may or may not be significant; it’s hard to tell. Oddly enough, the fact that Bardelys does not tell us what this man’s name is has me leaning toward betting that he will be a major character – but I can’t say why I lean that way, for normally the anonymous characters are minor all the way.

Otto has the best introduction. Bardelys shows us what he looks like and what he does before he lets us know what his name is. We wonder about him, along with Hans. And Otto seems ambiguous, and someone to watch out for. He may turn out to be a minor villain, but it seems that he has an important role to play at least in this Dimmerthal part of the tale.

Second to Otto stands Mother Groening’s introduction. She appears as a replacement for the Mother Hans has lost, right down to the smell of her apron. She offers Hans love, and it is only in her presence that he can feel vulnerable and weak. Thus it seems her part here will be to tempt Hans away from the Hero’s path, and encourage his desire to shrink back into childish dependency. We know, if we know anything about stories (and about stories of adventure most of all) that this is a bad thing! The Hero who shrinks from the Call flirts with disaster, and risks losing the entire struggle!

Farmer Groening (and Otto, oddly enough) are offered as replacements for the lost Father. Farmer Groening seems to stand in for the Father who was going to drag Hans against his will into the Black Forest. (And thus maybe Bardelys means the ‘fat, jolly’ farmer to be the other half of the missing Father, the more indulgent father-figure, and a complement to Mother Groening in excusing Hans from joining battle.) Otto might be a Father-replacement only because of the rather odd remark that Hans makes, in comparing the relative ages of Otto and Father. Only Otto is compared to Father at all, and since in all other ways the two are quite unlike, we must wonder. If Bardelys knows his business, this chance remark indicates more such comparisons to come.

(Composed on keyboard Tuesday 11 November 2008)

Review of The Magic Key part 1: The Dread Night

A doubt arises over the advisability of a talesman using his own terms

We have now read and criticised Part One of The Magic Key. Before going on to Part Two (which Bardelys tells me is in much rougher shape than Part One, and he’ll be glad of a bit of extra time to start serialising it) I thought it would be a good idea to look back on Part One with a special eye towards two aspects of the tale, the hero’s characterization and the terminology of Faëry.

Stay-at-home or coal-biter?

Bardelys has offered us Hans with aspects of both the stay-at-home and the coal-biter. The difference is two-fold. First, the stay-at-home doesn’t leave his comfy paternal nest for reasons of fear – he’s scared of the big bad World and clings to Mother’s apron-strings. But the coal-biter stays at home mostly out of laziness. The stay-at-home will usually be a ‘good lad’ and do what Mother and Father (if Father is around) tell him. The coal-biter snaps and snarls, talks big, talks tough, is arrogant, and won’t do anything he’s told.

These are the archetypes of the characters, and as you see, they are quite at odds with each other.

Second, the pattern of the typical stay-at-home hero’s story has him leaving home, at last, when the home itself collapses. Father goes bankrupt, the family loses the house, Father dies and Mother is forced off the property, Father and Mother agree that they can’t make ends meet and need to get rid of the kids (think of Hansel and Gretel here). But the coal-biter leaves home because his arrogant behavior has gotten him into trouble locally.

(Since the coal-biter is not well-known as a story pattern, I’ll lay out a modern version: one day, while playing football with the local guys on the high school field, the coal-biter quarrels, as he does with everyone he meets, with the kid playing quarterback on the opposing team. On the next play the coal-biter trips the lineman blocking him, and sacks the quarterback, driving him into the ground so hard he breaks the kid’s neck and kills him. Hauled before the local court on charges, the coal-biter sneers without any repentance, but his father pleads for him, and the judge offers the coal-biter the choice of going to juvenile prison, or enlisting in the army. The coal-biter shrugs and with a contemptuous joke says he’ll take the army because it’s one prison or another. In the army he distinguishes himself for bravery and insane, reckless courage, but is denied the appropriate medals and honors because he is so insubordinate … he goes on to be dishonorably discharged, becomes a mercenary, and ends badly.)

The first that we see of Hans fits the coal-biter in character and behavior. But the next night we see he is afraid of bad dreams, and on the next morning he is afraid of going into the woods. This fits the stay-at-home, not the coal-biter. Finally, he leaves home when his home collapses (literally) and his family is killed. So what starts off as coal-biter ends as stay-at-home, leaving us a bit confused.

It is possible of course to blend the archetypes, which makes Hans a more complex character. But Bardelys has given us what is mainly an archetypal tale, at least in the way he presents it to us. It strikes me as strange, and wrong, to have ‘once upon a time’ lead into a psychological study in realism – the two just don’t fit together.

The Terms of the Tale’s World

I have criticised Bardelys through chapters 7–9 for the lack of Magic, and how the tale seems to have ‘down-shifted’ into a mere adventure tale rather than a tale of the Fantastic. I compared it unfavorably to Professor Tolkien’s The Hobbit in this regard. But I noted, too, that in The Hobbit, Tolkien’s Elves were decidedly unmagical. We regard them as magical simply because, well, they’re elves, aren’t they?

That set me wondering whether Bardelys might not have given these chapters of his a lot more magical feeling, had he named his Charcoal Burners with a traditional name of creatures out of fairyland. What if he had said the wretched poor charcoal burners had been transformed, in the eyes of his young hero, into ‘ghouls’ or ‘demons’ or ‘vampires’ or ‘trolls’? Then every single line that refers to them could be fraught, if not with magic per se, at least with the expectation and anticipation of magic in the minds of us in the audience. ‘They look like Charcoal Burners, but really, they’re demons!’ Hans could tell Farmer Groening, and we might even shiver. But we react quite differently when we hear him say, ‘but really, they’re wicken-things!’ For Bardelys has not yet, at this point in the tale, sufficiently ‘charged’ his invented term of wicken with the same awful supernatural portents.

Thus we see in this instance the advantages for the talesman in using his own terminology for his fantastical creations, and the disadvantages. When we hear or read of ‘ghouls’ or ‘vampires’ or ‘trolls’ we shudder, if we find the terms fresh, but we roll our eyes if we are inveterate readers in the genre, and we think, ‘Oh not the trolls again!’ or we yawn and think, ‘Yeah, I know all about vampires and all their tribes … which kind of vampire is it this time?’ But all the same, we do know that trolls and vampires are not of this Earth. As for ‘wicken’ (or any other newly-coined talesman’s term) we just wonder what the heck it is, and until we get settled into the tale, we have to pause a moment and wonder whether we missed some earlier scene in which the term was set forth and defined.

(Composed on keyboard Monday 10 November 2008)

Critique of Chapter Nine

Is this even a fantasy tale?

One more chapter, no more magic.

This is getting ridiculous. Or tiresome.

Compare this tale to how Professor Tolkien arranged The Hobbit. From the very first paragraph he introduces us to a ‘hobbit,’ a small creature with its own homely magic of disappearing in a lane whenever a Big Folk clumsy oaf like you or me blunders along. (This talent Tolkien promptly forgets, although later in the tale it is formalized when Bilbo finds the Ring.)

Another page and Tolkien gives us a wizard (Gandalf) who quarrels with Bilbo and then puts a spell upon his door. Then along come a dozen dwarfs to invite themselves to a feast at Bilbo’s expense. Even though the dwarfs seem to have no magical powers or talismans, they are themselves creatures of folklore, and whenever we find them in a tale, we know we are wandering through fairyland. The dwarfs propose robbing a dragon of its gold. Dragons of course are even more magical creatures than dwarfs.

The wizard goes along with the band, and they encounter all sorts of magical creatures along the way. Without checking, I would venture to say that there is not a single chapter in the book that has no magic. Indeed, and properly I would say, the magical incidence (or ‘intensity’ or ‘density’ if you will) increases as the book goes on. Bilbo and the dwarfs encounter more and more strange creatures, and the only Man they meet turns out to be a wolf-shifter who can talk to his magical animals. Only at the very end, do Men appear, and they are no more than Men as we find them, except that their leader has a bow and an arrow that are lucky at the very least (and in fairyland luck is a kind of magic) and magical at best, for it brings down the dragon. And how does Bard the bowman know where to aim? A crow tells him, a crow that has overheard Bilbo and the dwarfs talking.

It is true (and a weakness of the tale) that Tolkien’s elves are not very elvish, and hardly seem more magical than Men. No more his dwarfs. And yet as noted, merely by virtue of being called ‘elf’ and ‘dwarf’ the creatures are of Faëry and out of the folklore of our bedtime tales, and enchanted enough to satisfy most children.

Modern talesmen, steeped in reason and the mundane existence of cars and smog and tubes and computers and television, seem on the whole to have lost their sense of wonder. They grasp for it, as we see by the mere fact that Bardelys and his fellows even attempt to tell tales of fantasy at all. And yet it is like a foreign tongue to them that they speak but haltingly, it chafes at them, and their normal tendency is to revert to banal mundane matters, and at best tell us tales of boyish adventure.

(Composed on keyboard Sunday 9 November 2008)

Critique of Chapter Eight

No magic at all…

Chapters Seven and Eight of The Magic Key: The Dread Night by Bardelys are really one episode: caught by the soldiers, Hans tries to escape. He manages to make his way out of the camp and runs some way up the valley, only to sprain his ankle, whereupon he hides in a haystack; the soldiers track him there and burn down the haystack.

The chapter ends with a cliff-hanger as Hans goes out into their clutches.

There is not a whit of magic to be sniffed out here. No fairy godmother rescues Hans, and the soldiers don’t seem to use any magic to track him. (They might use magic, but we don’t see any hint of it. This to my mind equals no magic at all.)

So we have here a standard bit of boy’s own adventure fiction, direct descendent to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island episode where Jim Hawkins falls into the apple barrel and overhears the mutineers.

Where Bardelys seems to have gone wrong is in the level of detail, or granularity, with which he tells this tale.

Let us consider this movement through the tale, as if we in the audience, along with the hero, were traversing an unknown land. I can say that there are three broad paths we could follow:

1. flying
2. riding
3. slogging

The Brothers Grimm, and most traditional talesmen, chose to fly. They soared high above the events of their tales, swooping down for the occasional episode or scene of heightened suspense or emotion, winging higher to cover transitions of great distance or time.

The nineteenth-century master novelists rode down the King’s highways, or took us in coaches, stopping along the way to observe some especially scenic outlook, racing onwards now and then, and enjoying a nice meal at a roadside inn.

Modern talesmen slog through the bogs and mires cross-country, and make us feel every midge-bite, smell every outburst of marsh-gas, and struggle through the mud of every single moment.

Bardelys, though he began his tale in imitation of the traditional flying talesmen, has slipped, as though by default, into the modern manner of slogging with young Hans over every step of his flight, asking us to share every tortured breath, the feel of the new-mown hay stubble upon bare feet, the chill of the night fogs, and the fear of discovery.

If as seems likely, Hans begins the next chapter in the hands of the soldiers, he will find himself in precisely the same position he was in at the head of Chapter Seven, and these two chapters will have been wasted.

On the other hand, these flights have been an attempt by the author to make us share in the fortunes of the hero, to feel grief (not enough of that), anger, desire, fear alongside Hans. Maybe he has deemed this necessary to enforce identification (sympathy + empathy) with Hans; and maybe now, or at some point soon to come in the tale, he will consider that it has been enough of this, that we do now identify with Hans (or we never will) and thus Bardelys can go back to riding or, we hope, even flying.

We shall see.

(Composed on keyboard Saturday 8 November 2008)

Critique of Chapter 7

Does every chapter need magic? And how extensive or deep must the magic go?

Chapter Seven is mainly an action chapter: Hans, after sneaking into the Charcoal Burners’ camp, spies on Yellow Socks and Corbluncz (where does Bardelys dream up such awkward names? Names are not his strong point), is caught by the soldiers, and escapes with his life. But he sprains his ankle and hears them closing in on him in the fog-shrouded darkness…

I was about to write that there was no magic here. But there is, a little: we see for the first time some of the effectiveness of Clutchfast, the White Lady’s magical falconer’s glove. When Yellow Socks dons the glove and takes hold of Corbluncz by the collar, the Sooty Prince is made helpless, and seems to be in great pain. Yellow Socks boasts that the glove gives him, or indeed any wearer of the magical talisman, utter control over Corbluncz.

A remark here about the logic of magic. I read a great deal on fantasy-writers’ blogs about the need for a ‘logic’ or ‘rules’ of the magic in fantasy books. These rules seem to call in general for limits on the magic, as well as disadvantages in magic to counterbalance some of its advantages. Rather like the great powers of Superman must be diminished by the Achilles’ Heel of Kryptonite in its various colored forms.

It is a theory that I dislike. Its aims are surely good ones, and yet what makes magic, magic is that it does not follow rules the way science must. A flying carpet obeys your command to fly, and there is no need to expostulate on the correct weaving to be made of such a carpet, nor of any weakening of the person flying the carpet to limit its range.

Of course, here in the shadow of the Schwarzwald, Bardelys is playing games in the yard of the Brothers Grimm, and may thus escape some of the rigors that writers of High Fantasy fall prey to. Bardelys may simply invoke the fairy tale of childhood, and be judged by a different standard.

And yet it seems to me that when talesmen argue for limits and rules on magic, they betray a basic ignorance of fantasy itself. They seem to be so bound in the modern, scientific world, that they can’t escape Reason and Natural Law. And thus their work must dwindle into a sort of science-fiction lite, even as the grand traditions of science-fantasy have been shrunk to fit the small confines of ‘hard sf.’ Magic is dream-work, whether simply daydreaming, psychology (or pathology), or symbolism. To constrict it is to kill it.

And if you kill the magic you end with simple adventure, as we seem to have in this chapter.

The question then rises, How much magic need be present in any one chapter or portion or scene of a magical tale? And how deep and extensive should that magic be?

Your answer to these questions (as they pertain to Chapter Seven here) will depend on whether the action and adventure of Hans’s struggles against the ugly squat soldiers suffice for your entertainment.

(Composed on keyboard Friday 7 November 2008)

Critique of Chapter Six

Our Hero encounters danger, and welcomes it

Bardelys finally gives us his young hero’s reaction to losing his parents, sister, and home. It doesn’t seem adequate.

This though is a tricky subject. Too much time spent on ‘Oh dear! Oh my!’ will make our young Hans seem a weepy-eyed wimp. Too little will make us wonder at his stony-heartedness, and ask ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Bardelys has chosen to minimize the time – presumably in favor of action; now that he has (at last) begun the tale, he seems to want to carry us along with it. As I say, it seems too little to me. I don’t have a sense that Hans is too broken-hearted to lose everything he has. But on the other hand, maybe this is what Bardelys has in mind? We saw on the first two or three pages that Bardelys was critical of his hero, showing him to be lazy, arrogant, greedy, and self-centered. So maybe Bardelys merely wants us to add ‘uncaring’ to this list.

The glow of Yellow Socks’s lantern leads us to the great camp where the transformed Charcoal Burners (in greater numbers than Hans saw from his window when the nightmare began) have set up a great tent around which the common fighting-men stand or lie as wardens, burning fires to keep watch.

Hans enters the camp. It seems too easy, but the note that one of the dirty fighting-men might have called after him gives us a note of some worry. Have they followed Hans to the great tent? Are they spying on him even now?

He manages to worm his way under the flap of the tent, where he gets his first glimpse of the leader of the soldiers. I presume this is the Sooty Prince that the White Lady mentioned to Yellow Socks. And sure enough, Yellow Socks is in the tent, in the middle of some dispute with the man in the throne.

The ending of this chapter is one of those ‘bumps’ that break chapters in the middle of a scene. There is a small revelation – that it is indeed Yellow Socks. And there is the promise of more argument between the lad and the little ugly man in the throne, which just might answer some of the questions we have about this whole business – who these creatures are, what they want, why they have invaded the fields of men from the wicken-haunts of the Black Forest.

I like this chapter ending. I think I would find it very difficult to put the book down here. I am forced to (as are you) since Bardelys is only feeding me one chapter a day. But if I found it in a book, I would have to read at least the first page or two of the following chapter.

(Composed on keyboard Thursday 6 November 2008)

Critique of Chapter 5

The Enemy takes the stage

Songs Rhymes & Verse

In this chapter, the second in a row, Bardelys shows his hand at … well, ‘doggerel’ would be the best word for it. Why is it that fantasy and folk tales use rhyme so freely? I suspect it goes back a long, long way, to the beginning when such tales, handed down through generations, used the mnemonics of verse to help talesmen remember them. Many epics were remembered only in verse. We can point to the Scottish Ballads and several nursery rhymes that recorded actual events, coded in symbols to ‘scape whipping,’ as Hamlet says.

Professor Tolkien (who must be accounted the Father of the Fantasy epic in the last half-century) employed verse quite well. But not even he matched the tale of Tam Lin, which has the interpolated rhymes actually advance the plot. Nor does Bardelys do so here, but rather he takes the ‘Warner Brothers back-stage musical’ approach, by having his characters sing songs, for specific purposes: the Charcoal Burners sing a marching-song to shorten their road, and the White Lady here sings a sort of spell of allurement to snare someone; Hans, because he happens to stand within ear-shot of the song, feels the spell creep over him as well, and he is on the brink of surrendering himself to her fatal glamor, when she disappears into the ruins, and he feels free once more

The New End of the Wood

Bardelys means to show us that the Black Forest has grown out from its former boundaries, and now has swallowed up the end of the Road along with the house where Hans grew up. I fear this is not well handled, and I wonder if it makes sense to a reader who has not had it explained to him in other words.

He manages to creep under the shadow of the Black Forest, while still remaining technically outside it. Bardelys is at some pains to make this distinction, but what difference does it make? We can only hope he will tell us later on. Right now it doesn’t make a lot of sense, so the question arises, does this add to the mystery and make us want to read on to learn the Why of it, or does it merely confuse us more? The answer I will leave to all of you.

Boy & Lady

Two characters are introduced, both wicken-things: the White Lady and a boy Hans’s age who wears the Yellow Socks by which Hans names him. Hans experiences first deep grief over the loss of his family (and this might have been developed a bit more at this point; saving it for later seems an error), then hatred for the boy in Yellow Socks, and then a ‘fatal attraction’ for the mysterious, utterly beautiful Lady in white.

There seems some distinction between these two creatures: the White Lady is wicken through and through, to a greater extent than the boy. Yellow Socks calls the White Lady ‘Mother,’ but her treatment of him is hardly maternal, more the way a cruel mistress treats one of her servants or slaves.

A third creature, and a fourth, make indirect appearances here: the White Lady speaks of the ‘Sooty Prince’ and the ‘King.’ In addition there are magical objects (Bardelys tells me the tale is full of magical talismans, and this I fear may be a mistake: better to have only one Talisman, I feel, instead of a litter and a clutter of them) mentioned:

1. the silver falconer’s glove Clutchfast
2. the Needle

Up the Road Again

It’s interesting that this chapter ends where Chapter Four did, with Hans running up the Road into the valley of Dimmerthal away from where his home lay. Does this doubling annoy you? Maybe Bardelys would have done better to have Hans faint, or lie in a tangle of briers at the edge of the woods, while the Lady and Yellow Socks arrived. The thorns could have held Hans from obeying the summoning chant, and then he might have torn loose to follow Yellow Socks, if the briers on the outer edge of the woods were looser or more open than those on the inner edge; to do this all Bardelys had to tell us was that his hero was caught up in the outer margin of a wall of thorns – then to go to the White Lady Hans would’ve needed to work through the thorns, but to chase after Yellow Socks all he’d need do is tear out the edge of them

(Composed on keyboard Wednesday 5 November 2008)

A New Leaf

Introducing Hans Forester

In honor of www.nanowrimo.org the National Novel Writing Month, asotir here presents to you the work of Bardelys, the which Bardelys had worked on 3 Novembers ago, and on-and-off ever since. The tale is one of an odd boy in a small principality wedged between the Alps and the Black Forest in a forgotten corner of the Austrian Empire at the end of the 18th century.

Along with this, asotir will himself (myself) add posts to comment on how Bardelys seems to have gone about the task of presenting and organizing his tale. I have heard from Bardelys enough to know the broad outlines of the tale, so I may make educated guesses and criticisms of the beginning with some awareness of where it all will end up.

Therefore beware of spoilers in the explanatory posts!

All the same, I must tell you that the tale is unfinished, and none but Bardelys himself can say how the tale will end up. Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps Bardelys will change his mind as to which way he will go – which way the tale will take him.

(As always, the tale of Hans Forester, the mysterious White Lady of the Fogs, the folk of the Dimmerthal and the Schwarzwald, is here given under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribute-Share-alike license.)

(Composed on keyboard Saturday 1 November 2008)

Echoes From a Distant Age

Some notes written thirty years ago

Bardelys continued to slog through his ancient juvenile essays on art and writing. Along the way he found some that intrigued him; they were based less on abstract theory and more on personal observations he had made both as a reader and in writing his own works.

They were also practical and specific. Therefore he took them more seriously.

Here are a few from some thirty and a half years ago.

Rule of Three

(January 19, 1978)

It’s really amazing how the number three dominates art, especially writing. I cannot explain it. However, it should be used for rhythm – two items will seem too short, and four items will seem just a little bit too long. Five items seem all right, and six items are two triples – that is my idea. So depending on what results you want, you should organize your lists etc. in these numbers.

What Is Most Emphatic – since three-speaking will predominate, it is good to know which element is most emphasized of the three. The rule is: the first-mentioned is more emphasized than the second, and the third more than the first. This works the other way as well: if you want to conceal a detail you must tell, make it the second of three. (In movies, each item on the list of three will tend to override and mask the previous one; thus in film the first is least, and the third is most.)

Pace

(January 19, 1978)

Formula: pace equals activities divided by characteristics, or in other words, narration divided by description, or again verbs divided by nouns, or nouns divided by adjectives.

Also, there will be in most stories incidents, descriptions, or episodes which are necessary but not plugged into any specific time sequence. These should be deployed in order to help pacing – to slow sections or speed up (by their absence) others.

How Words and Phrases Work

(January 19, 1978)

Be aware of words and phrases and how they work. Words are the tools of the trade, and writing is distinguished from most other forms of art in that it is a relationship between writer and the words and only that, in order to create the desired relationship between the reader and words. Each word is loaded; what you have to do is pick those words which will trigger the right reactions in the reader’s psyche. And all the various ways, you have to get him off well. The process of awareness will be automatic as you write and read more; but it can be accelerated by deliberate or awareness. Learn the precise impact of every word and phrase.

One Problem

(January 19, 1978)

One problem of many beginners dealing with a complex plot, is that the overall direction is lost in concentrating upon specific scenes. This confusion can be a good thing at times; but the point is that you should control whether there shall be confusion or not. This is done (somehow) by subordinating scenes. If the tendency is wrongly away from the overall, mention it specifically. [Note 2008: I really don’t have any idea what I meant!]

Variety

(January 19, 1978)

Properly speaking, variety is the ideal. But a tedious sameness can have great artistic effect. However, as with all breaking of rules, it should be employed only sparingly for deliberate effects. One tremendous use of tedium is the glorious release of escaping it afterwards. Set up a rigid pattern which you pursue to the breaking point – then break away to something completely different. This is in line with a general theory of pleasure: there are pleasures and then there is the pleasure of being released from chronic pain.

Poetry

(January 19, 1978)

Poetry is the purest form of writing. All dross has been distilled away in the process of saying worlds in a dozen lines. Poetry is also the most efficient form of writing. It should be studied and attempted by every writer. In addition, poetry teaches the power of that single, capturing phrase; and the rhythm of words and lines.

Art and Revelation

(July 21, 1978)

It took me three steps to reach this point: first was ‘Art as the realization of the Dream,’ second was that ‘Art proceeds by revealing or showing,’ ferret was that ‘Art is beyond the mere function of Dreams because it can reveal what is not known or imagined by the reader.’

The Dream consists of the Other – the other self, the other sex, and the other world. It is not the other person, because we can only approach literary characters in the light of analyzing our own internal processes. (This is considering art as a process worked upon the reader; it is his dream which is being realized by a curious chemistry. I, the writer, am capable of achieving literary power only by making real my own dreams; but the response of the reader depends upon how well that realization corresponds, harmonizes, or exalts his own dreams; thus the reader remakes the work of art by perusing it. By this standard, the greatest work of art is that which becomes all things powerful to all people.) So that, even in the realization of the other sex, we do not see another person: just an aspect of our own selves dressed in another sexual identity. [Note 2008: today I would say that the other sex is still just part of ourselves, but in a different way – I would say rather that the Other Sex in the Dream is a manifestation of our own desires, and therefore refers more to ourselves, into any other person outside ourselves.] (Yet does this not deny all rational analysis based upon observed behavior? That is, do I not make the mistake here of regarding the process as purely an empathetic one, whereas in reality, just as we can deductively analyze another person, so we can use such observations to appreciate literary figures. It is also to undermine the alien quality of the Other, if we bind it by our own dreams, morals, and goals. If I intuitively construct a 13th century peasant, I must do so either on the basis of what I am, or what I have seen in some other person. How else can I gore about it? [Note 2008: there is also the matter of historical research, and analysis done upon that research.] Yet neither of those will have that fundamental quality which makes the 13th century peasant what he is, or was. To grow by dreams is to bind myself to what I know; drug-induced fancies should be able to conceive mockups of greater alienness, but still fashioned out of pieces already to be found within myself. True ‘otherness’ is the elusive for the artist, but not so for the reader, who passively consumes what the writer has created for him.)

So that the way Art ‘instructs his quote is by the revelation of the Other. The artist himself can become the author, by structuring his art around his philosophy, and succumbing to propaganda. Yet is that a legitimate process of art? Or should the artist be no more than the revealer? Let him speak through the fashioning of what he reveals; this is also to prohibit him from having characters mouth his own words.

Why am I saying this? Perhaps it is because I am such a rebel, that I do not like even to be bound by the artist’s Godhead over his own word. Yet that Godhead is inescapable: what I do not like, therefore, is its explicitness. I am not reacting against the act itself, merely insisting that the act be disguised.

What had begun as a very simple summation, has become so complicated that I am left with more questions than before I began.

Nonsense Words

(July 29, 1978)

Repeat a word to yourself fifty times.

The word will lose connection with the concept it has been chosen to represent. It looms large, mysterious, sinister – then it ends by becoming nonsensical. How could the word ever mean anything? What an odd word!

This is particularly true with the words so common that they are used every day. The word itself, the actual phonetic and physical quality of it, comes to have any meaning of its own, a personality if you will.

This process can be employed for the names of characters. If you refer to our character by a certain name for long enough (important: the name should be long enough or formal enough so that its repetition would be unusual: you want the reader to see and hear the words every time they are used. Not just ‘Jim,’ but ‘James L. Shaughnessy’) the name itself will come to have an effect on the reader. It will no longer simply name the character. It will come to have its own meaning – of the joy, of terror, of repulsion, etc. – love and by itself.

This is a particularly nice trick to have when you want to set up a punch for a character who is going to reappear suddenly in the story. Just before you leave him, repeat his name every chance you get. Refer to him with pronouns such as ‘him,’ ‘he,’ as seldom as possible always use the name and always use the full name.

I used to this technique twice so far in Ara Karn: in his own telling of his past life, I referred to his mentor not only with the full name but also with an epithet, and in the funeral of the Queen’s lover, I referred to the Imperial regent by his full name.

The Critic in Spite of Himself

In which he confronts his own, worst self

It is sometimes a terrible thing to look into the mirror.

It can be an even more terrible thing to look into the mirror, and see yourself as you once were.

These thoughts had begun to haunt Bardelys as he transcribed via dictation his old and juvenile essays on literature, art, and criticism. He cringed every time he found his ancient self proclaiming ex cathedra upon matters of art and storytelling that the child Bardelys could not have known, for sheer lack of experience. He groaned aloud every time he had to repeat some idiotic and most extreme statement. He suffered enormously every time he had to say out loud his younger self’s pronouncements on how despicable all critics were, and how worthless all criticism, and are ignorant and foolish all theories of criticism.

And he had to wonder: was he any different now?

(He would like to hear from his readers whether they think that is true or not – and yet he also fears those answers!)

At least, he reflected, the young Bardelys had admitted in so many words that he was himself the target of his many jibes. The problem – the great fear and horror – was that neither Bardelys the younger nor the elder had enough experience (enough practical experience) to know the things he claimed to know, or to give anyone any advice on any matter pertaining to talesmanship, criticism, or art in general.

He was so far only half way through the process of transcribing the old notes and essays. He noted with chagrin the first line of one of these:

I cannot write, therefore I think.

It was so true, and it stung him to the quick, and made him so sad that in reading it his eyes refused to leave the words upon the page, and even afterward the words on the page hung in the air before his vision, prompting almost tears.

The very blog that he had been working upon so assiduously for three quarters of the year now, was it any better or more advanced than the childish ramblings of the over intellectual enfant terrible that he had once been? He wondered at the validity of almost anything he said it was not merely repeated from his teachers – and even those sayings were perhaps only repetitions of things those teachers had once heard from their teachers in turn.

Bardelys was reminded that the three most instructive and most useful books on writing that he had found at all three been written not by writers, but by literary agents. Those men all wrote about something very simple and mechanical: the kind of story, the kind of literary prose, that these agents had noticed would be most likely to be accepted by editors, publishers, and book buyers.

As for Bardelys himself, he really only had one thing to say:

I cannot write, therefore I think.

(Composed by dictation Sunday 5 October 2008)

Be Ware

Looking to his own past, he wonders how he could ever have been so pompous an Ass.

Bardelys was transcribing old essays he had written in decades past. And reading them as he dictated them, he became acutely aware of two things:

1. He had been an insufferable prig and ‘expert’ on matters of which he knew practically nothing at all

2. He had no assurance to offer himself (or anyone else) that his present proclamations amounted to a whit more substance or truth.

Here is one of these glimpses into juvenile nonsense.

Fantasy Art

If as I have affirmed, writing deals with the manipulation of the mechanism of memory, then this has particular importance for anyone writing fantasy. Because these things (fantasy creatures, worlds, events – the ultimate Other) nobody has experienced. How then can we ‘remember’ them?

There are five possibilities I see now: atavistic memory – the memory of contradictions – other forms of fantasy art – childhood memories – ESP.

Possibility one. Atavistic memory is only a possibility, as yet unproven to exist. Yet if neo-hatched chicks will flee the shadow of a cardboard hawk (as has been shown in studies), yet not flee the cardboard cutout when its shadow does not represent a hawk, and some knowledge might be passed from generation to generation among humans just as easily as among chickens.

Possibility two. ESP assumes we can somehow ‘tune in’ to events happening elsewhere in time and space. Again, this is only a supposition and speculation and is as yet unproved.

Possibility three. Memory of contradictions. Since we can manipulate memory – not just in whole but in the smallest parts – we should be able to ‘cobble’ memories of things which never occurred. This is called ‘imagination.’ A greeting giraffe – a horse with wings – and all the legendary monsters are examples of this. Still, this remains rooted in reality: we cannot imagine a giraffe whose color we have never seen.

Possibility four. Other forms of art. As I have written, only writing has no external objective existence – just the notations to indicate its existence, as if we wrote notes and had no instruments. But other forms of art do have objective existence. So it is possible to draw creatures and worlds which never existed; and this forms the basis for our memory. Thus perhaps the importance of illustration for fantasy literature. (But, as Professor Tolkien has affirmed, the finest fantasy literature is hurt by this.)

Possibility five. Childhood memories. The existence of a child is filled with wonder. He sees things adults do not; he has not yet understood that all things are different in their own way, and that the expectation of existence is formed by the statistical database of past experiences. In addition to this, deeply-felt and repressed emotions manifest themselves in various seemingly-unconnected. So traumas can give rise to terrors and joys beyond the normal run of existence.

...

In addition to old days, we appreciate fantasy literature based on past fantasy literature we have read. Yet this cannot go back forever and must ultimately rely on one of the mechanisms cited above. Still, it shows why fantasy literature tends to run in cycles, and why tradition in fantasy literature is so important.

She Sings Sweet

He tries another audiobook, and is as delighted as he was erstwhile disappointed.

Bardelys sometimes felt as though he were a visitor from the future; he wandered through the events of his own time with a slight sense of distance, of alienation. He saw events as through a distorting, somewhat smudged lens.

These football circuses, these happy people driving their huge tanks down the roads toward their distant, isolated houses swimming in lawns seething poisonous chemicals, were to Bardelys as the walking dead. ‘They move and speak, and live their lives,’ he thought, ‘and they don’t even know that their lives ended long ago this year. This year of 2008 is the last year of America. And yet they know it not. And yet, it is so clear.’

He had listened to the next chapter of the LibriVox recording of a reading of Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk on the previous night, but could not hear it out. For a new twist had been added to this reading: the original man continued only to read the description lines, but the dialogue was read by two young women. What made this disconcerting, in the case of the first scene of this chapter, is that the dialogue records the conversation of two men. So Bardelys in his mind as he listened, could only picture two women in drag, dressed up like dandies of the early sixteenth century, with swords and baldrics, and painted on mustaches.

Not to mention the fact that the whole thing had apparently been recorded in somebody’s bathroom. Echoes abounding, the voice of the tub vies with the voices of the performers.

He hated to make such judgments. After all, these people were not professionals, and had offered freely him and the world their services. And they had assuredly done a far better job of it than he would have been capable of doing.

All the same, he found he couldn’t listen to any more of it. He couldn’t.

So he picked out another recording from http://librivox.org/ (he had however found the recordings from the vast trove at http://www.archive.org/) – this was of a Pimpernel adventure by the Baroness Orczy – The Elusive Pimpernel as read by Karen Savage.

Ah, what a difference!

Savage is British, to begin with, and so her voice suits an Anglocentric tale of Sir Percy and his doings in naughty revolutionary France. In the second place, Savage is fluent in French, so her pronunciation of the French terms and names that pepper the tale are as good as her pronunciation of the King’s English. And finally, she seems professional – and indeed her blog confirms she acts.

Her enunciation was clear and compelling, enough to put Bardelys in awe. More, she spoke at a lightning pace, enough to make Bardelys envy her in the extreme. Ever since he had begun attempting to use voice recognition software, Bardelys has learned to appreciate how great an achievement it was to declaim and read naturally, clearly, and with gusto.

Ms Savage did all this, and more.

(The only pity was how badly the dear old Baroness opened her tale; three chapters in and it wasn’t much better, but here the note that the Singer can be more important than the Song itself is proven: Bardelys wanted more, even of this mediocre tale, so long as it was the divine Ms Savage who recited it.)

(Composed on keyboard Wednesday 1 October 2008)

The Singer, Not the Song

In oral storytelling, the performance of the talesmen is just as important as the tale that he tells.

Bardelys had begun to listen to recordings of volunteers reading classical, public domain books. He had begun with a reading of Rafael Sabatini’s famous novel, The Sea Hawk.

Sabatini had been one of his favorite authors when Bardelys was a lad. Imagine then his chagrin when the person who had volunteered to read this book had so much trouble performing the tale. Groups of words and phrases were not spoken together as they should have been; and odd, archaic phrases were pronounced strangely (at least in the ears of Bardelys).

The result was a tale just barely worth following – indeed it was just barely able to be followed.

It struck him then, just how important the performance of an oral tale is. It seemed to him now that the performance was perhaps even more important than the tale that was to be told.

And yet he had to consider the Sabatini had written his book in order for it to be read, and not spoken aloud. Sabatini’s talesmanship is so good that the tale could very well stand a good recitation. However, that was not the author’s primary intention when he wrote it, and Sabatini’s love for archaic phrases and words of the historical period would make it difficult for any modern reader to read the tale aloud. Moreover, it was twice the challenge for an American to read archaic British phrases, such that Sabatini loved to employ in order to give his readers more of an authentic flavor of the time and place of which he wrote.

It is also true, that the true oral storyteller does not read his tales – he performs them, he does not recite them. He does not read off a page, nor does he recite from memory. Instead, the true oral storyteller knows very well in his heart the key signposts of his story, along with side trips and alternative choices along the path to the eventual end. He then adjusts his performance (both in his manner, his tone and the words he uses and the exact shape of the story) according to the audience as he finds them, and as he sees them reacting to his tale.

Who among us, Bardelys wondered, could not tell immediately the difference in tone of voice in the matter when an amateur reads something off a page and when he tells you something in conversation?

Bardelys followed this line of thought to its ultimate conclusion: for it meant that in the future, talesmen who want to record their stories in radio or podcast form, ought not to read them as they are written, but rather, holding the story events firmly in mind, these talesmen should simply tell us the tale naturally, almost conversationally.

Bruno Bettelheim mentions this in his wonderful analysis of fairy tales – how important it is for a parent to tell his children fairy tales, rather than for him to read the tales. Bettelheim, of course, was at least in part interested in the parent engaging with the child rather than sticking his nose in the pages of a book in the mumbling out phrases as he found them, or even sticking the book in front of the child’s face and reading the phrases with a finger functioning as the bouncing ball of old time musical movies.

And yet, the same applies to a real oral storyteller, whether he tell his tales face to face with his audience, or whether he record his tales to be distributed.

The oral tale is a performance, and not merely a transcription or recording.

(Composed by dictation Tuesday 30 September 2008)