(no subject)
Apr. 10th, 2009 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusSo I finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a book that often gets called "Harry Potter for adults" -- which seems like a vague insult directed at the many adult Potter fans.
But it's easy to see why the comparison gets made. Both are a mix of comic and dark, both centre on magicians in Britain, both are crammed with plot twists, and Jonathan Strange was published in time to ride the wave of Harry Potter popularity.
Overall, I'm with most people who compared both books -- Jonathan Strange is the better work overall in terms of craft, but with some reservations. And even though I think Susanna Clarke is the better writer, I still like Rowling better because she seems to understand things Clarke doesn't.
One major difference between the two series is that Jonathan Strange takes place in an alternate universe where magic isn't underground, just a lost art.
It follows the story of two rival magicians -- the careful, neurotic control-freak Mr. Norrell, and his daring, impulsive, and unstable opponent Jonathan Strange, both of whom want to bring magic back into the world. Strange is pushing magic into dangerous places, Norrell is trying to contain his enemies, and a very nasty fairy is interfering in both their lives.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a more poetic book than the Potter series. It's more concise and tightly written and better plotted. The characters are just as engaging -- though Rowling's got a few matchless characters that are better than Clarke's best. For the most part it's just a better work of fiction. There aren't any atrocious house elves, no dull and cheesy romances, or any other of the dross which really hurt Rowling's later books.
Clarke's magic is better, too. Rowling's magic is book magic -- say the words, wave the wand, and something happens. That kind exists in Clarke, too, but it's the lesser, weaker version. There's another kind of magic there, richer and more animist that almost borders on Ursula LeGuin. Rowling overexplains, overlimits, and makes her magic overly logical. Clarke leaves room for wonder. Clarke's feels more real.
However, there's one place where Rowling really outshines Clarke, and that's when it comes to the minorities in her world.
The creepiest thing in Clarke for me wasn't the dark magic or the descriptions of Faerie. It was the moments built around Stephen Black and the fairy gentlemen.
The depiction of Stephen throughout the novel was a real problem for me. A lot of the time she seemed to be finding ways to stave off accusations of racism, but it's hard not to see racism here. She has the convenient excuse that he's "enchanted," but Stephen does spend the entire novel playing a kind of Vaudevillian sidekick to the fairy gentleman, and enchantment or not that's a problem.
(And why is he enchanted anyway? The fairy gentleman has to use ancient and powerful magic to enslave the two white women, but just basically waves his hand and enchants Stephen. Are black people more susceptible to magic in her world? Maybe she considers them weaker-willed?)
It's also a problem that Stephen resentment of his white master is portrayed as completely unjustified, merely something excited in him by the fairy gentleman to serve his own purposes.
And that brings us to the fairy gentleman himself, and the queerer aspects of the story. And there are queer aspects to the story -- it's mentioned in a footnote early on that the Raven King was supposed to have kidnapped attractive men and women and enslave them as his lovers, so he's essentially a bisexual predator, and there is that poor sea captain who puts on a dress and is instantly struck dead by a murderous fairy.
The fairy gentleman follows in that pattern. Mincing, effeminate, unstable, degenerate, and sociopathic, and constantly fawning over how good-looking Stephen is, he's a type of the homosexual from many Victorian novels, and the same type that filtered later on into Hollywood movies. The last two hundred years of literature and film are filled with that that version of the homosexual. He always dies at the end, and the audience is always expected to cheer.
True, homosexuality never made explicit with the fairy gentleman. But it's become popular now to indulge in stereotyping by shifting the stereotypes to another, fictional group. Video games and cartoons are full of animals that talk like black men and women from American cities, and who do things everyone would know was racist stereotype if they were their human equivalents. The idea is that if the creators are accused of racism, they can just say, "Oh, but these are just cartoon animals." There's a wink-wink, nudge-nudge thing going on with it.
And same with the fairy gentleman. Anyone who's read through the last two centuries of queer portrayals has seen the same type hundreds of times over, and we know it when we see it.
That's why I've decided that though Clarke might be the better writer in terms of craft, I like Rowling better. True, she's not entirely free of stereotypes herself -- all the black characters are in Gryffindor and play Quidditch, and the only obviously Jewish name (Goldstein) is in Ravenclaw.
But there's no sense that Rowling's trying to wrap the ugliest and most bigoted tropes in a pleasant package to make them acceptable again, either. There's just a nasty undercurrent in Clarke that makes me very uncomfortable.
On a totally different note, Vandana Shiva was on The Current this morning. I first heard about her through David Suzuki's writings -- she's a quantum physicist, an environmental activist, a feminist, and an anti-globalization activist, and I've always been a fan of hers.
But it's easy to see why the comparison gets made. Both are a mix of comic and dark, both centre on magicians in Britain, both are crammed with plot twists, and Jonathan Strange was published in time to ride the wave of Harry Potter popularity.
Overall, I'm with most people who compared both books -- Jonathan Strange is the better work overall in terms of craft, but with some reservations. And even though I think Susanna Clarke is the better writer, I still like Rowling better because she seems to understand things Clarke doesn't.
One major difference between the two series is that Jonathan Strange takes place in an alternate universe where magic isn't underground, just a lost art.
It follows the story of two rival magicians -- the careful, neurotic control-freak Mr. Norrell, and his daring, impulsive, and unstable opponent Jonathan Strange, both of whom want to bring magic back into the world. Strange is pushing magic into dangerous places, Norrell is trying to contain his enemies, and a very nasty fairy is interfering in both their lives.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a more poetic book than the Potter series. It's more concise and tightly written and better plotted. The characters are just as engaging -- though Rowling's got a few matchless characters that are better than Clarke's best. For the most part it's just a better work of fiction. There aren't any atrocious house elves, no dull and cheesy romances, or any other of the dross which really hurt Rowling's later books.
Clarke's magic is better, too. Rowling's magic is book magic -- say the words, wave the wand, and something happens. That kind exists in Clarke, too, but it's the lesser, weaker version. There's another kind of magic there, richer and more animist that almost borders on Ursula LeGuin. Rowling overexplains, overlimits, and makes her magic overly logical. Clarke leaves room for wonder. Clarke's feels more real.
However, there's one place where Rowling really outshines Clarke, and that's when it comes to the minorities in her world.
The creepiest thing in Clarke for me wasn't the dark magic or the descriptions of Faerie. It was the moments built around Stephen Black and the fairy gentlemen.
The depiction of Stephen throughout the novel was a real problem for me. A lot of the time she seemed to be finding ways to stave off accusations of racism, but it's hard not to see racism here. She has the convenient excuse that he's "enchanted," but Stephen does spend the entire novel playing a kind of Vaudevillian sidekick to the fairy gentleman, and enchantment or not that's a problem.
(And why is he enchanted anyway? The fairy gentleman has to use ancient and powerful magic to enslave the two white women, but just basically waves his hand and enchants Stephen. Are black people more susceptible to magic in her world? Maybe she considers them weaker-willed?)
It's also a problem that Stephen resentment of his white master is portrayed as completely unjustified, merely something excited in him by the fairy gentleman to serve his own purposes.
And that brings us to the fairy gentleman himself, and the queerer aspects of the story. And there are queer aspects to the story -- it's mentioned in a footnote early on that the Raven King was supposed to have kidnapped attractive men and women and enslave them as his lovers, so he's essentially a bisexual predator, and there is that poor sea captain who puts on a dress and is instantly struck dead by a murderous fairy.
The fairy gentleman follows in that pattern. Mincing, effeminate, unstable, degenerate, and sociopathic, and constantly fawning over how good-looking Stephen is, he's a type of the homosexual from many Victorian novels, and the same type that filtered later on into Hollywood movies. The last two hundred years of literature and film are filled with that that version of the homosexual. He always dies at the end, and the audience is always expected to cheer.
True, homosexuality never made explicit with the fairy gentleman. But it's become popular now to indulge in stereotyping by shifting the stereotypes to another, fictional group. Video games and cartoons are full of animals that talk like black men and women from American cities, and who do things everyone would know was racist stereotype if they were their human equivalents. The idea is that if the creators are accused of racism, they can just say, "Oh, but these are just cartoon animals." There's a wink-wink, nudge-nudge thing going on with it.
And same with the fairy gentleman. Anyone who's read through the last two centuries of queer portrayals has seen the same type hundreds of times over, and we know it when we see it.
That's why I've decided that though Clarke might be the better writer in terms of craft, I like Rowling better. True, she's not entirely free of stereotypes herself -- all the black characters are in Gryffindor and play Quidditch, and the only obviously Jewish name (Goldstein) is in Ravenclaw.
But there's no sense that Rowling's trying to wrap the ugliest and most bigoted tropes in a pleasant package to make them acceptable again, either. There's just a nasty undercurrent in Clarke that makes me very uncomfortable.
On a totally different note, Vandana Shiva was on The Current this morning. I first heard about her through David Suzuki's writings -- she's a quantum physicist, an environmental activist, a feminist, and an anti-globalization activist, and I've always been a fan of hers.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-10 10:06 pm (UTC)I didn't see it that way. I saw it as the gentleman keeping Stephen under his thumb. If Stephen is a "sidekick", it's not of his own free will, it's because that's how the gentleman wants him. This is supposed to provoke the reader's dismay for the obvious reasons, and I will elaborate even more right now....
Stephen was easily enchanted because the gentleman promised him something he already wanted and could never have had. The white women didn't want for anything and were, for the most part, free to come and go as they pleased. Their desires didn't reach as deep into their psyches, so it was harder for the gentleman to use those desires to get ahold of them. Everyone wants to be respected and free. Stephen's lack of those things was a large and tender vulnerability. That is one of the smaller branches of injustice that great injustices like slavery creates; people who are dehumanized are more willing to debase themselves because they are desperate and have nothing to lose. Bumfights are a good real-life example of this phenomenon.
I think that was necessary to retain the tone of the book; it's no surprise to me that a Victorian-style book would have Victorian-style attitudes. To portray something is not to condone it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-11 09:37 am (UTC)The problem with this is that now, when a writer wants to get away with a racist, homophobic, or sexist portrayal, there has to be an explanation of some kind.
Take all the homophobia in The Sandman and Neil Gaiman's other works. You can isolate any one of his characters -- Cluracan is shallow and empty because he's a fairy, Alex Burgess is shallow and selfish because of his awful father, the shallow lesbians in Barbie's later story just aren't very bright -- but step back and there are patterns here, both in the text and in the larger culture of portrayals. And those patterns matter.
Magic gives a writer the power to hand-wave almost anything. She could have used it to hand-wave Stephen into a position of power in the human world at the end, but instead she chose to hand-wave the last fifty years of progress in portrayals of black men. I don't give her a pass on that.
"Stephen was easily enchanted because the gentleman promised him something he already wanted and could never have had. The white women didn't want for anything and were, for the most part, free to come and go as they pleased."
But he's always protesting that he doesn't want to be a king...? And he doesn't seem to want anything other than to be a servant in Sir Walter's home (which is problematic in itself).
Again, I approach it from a readings in the portrayal of queer people. I look at The Talented Mr. Ripley. There you've got the same clichéd and offensive trope of gay murderer, but with added psychological complexity to try and deflect charges of homophobia.
But at the end of the day, it's still a homophobic movie, and Ripley's just another gay murderer in a long line of fictional gay murderers. The added layer of complexity just shows the lengths the creators were willing to go to rescue a homophobic trope from its all-too-slow death.
And I see the enchantment of Stephen Black -- and his seduction by the quasi-homosexual figure of the fairy gentleman -- as similar. Regardless of how he gets there, he's a sidekick in the end, and we can't lose sight of that end whatever the process.
"I think that was necessary to retain the tone of the book; it's no surprise to me that a Victorian-style book would have Victorian-style attitudes. To portray something is not to condone it."
Racism is not just another trope, like magic mirrors or Gothic hauntings. Racism's not an ornament to make a Victorian Christmas tree look authentic. And if someone's got a lawn jockey on their lawn, I don't care if they're a white supremacist, an idiot who's never thought about why that's wrong, or a kitsch-collecting Gen-X who's put it there in a spirit of irony, there's still a lawn jockey on his lawn. The act matters more than the motivation.
I'm sorry, but I don't think you can give anyone a pass this way. It's never evident to me that the author really thinks differently from her characters in this respect, and I don't think it's too much to expect that level of clarity.
Part of my frustration with Stephen Black is that he's such a failed character. He starts off interesting, with a nice backstory, and hinted prophecies at things to come. For one brief moment near the end, I thought he was going to keep all that power -- that would've redeemed it for me.
And for awhile, I thought he might be a reincarnation of the Raven King, and that the fairy gentleman was trying to keep him under control to prevent magic from returning to England. That would've been more interesting.
But instead he exits the world stage right, sentencing himself to a place he's considered his dungeon all these years. This after he's done nothing but the fairy gentleman's bidding, rather than being developed as a character. It was very disappointing. What a waste of an interesting set-up.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-12 03:55 am (UTC)I think we'll have to agree to disagree. My reason is the following principle: I don't believe that any concatenation of character or plot should be off-limits to a writer. I would never want to be denied the chance to read a really good story about an avaricious Jew or a homocidal queer or a fastidious Asian because somebody somewhere might use it to reinforce their own ignorant worldview. You know that I share your belief that the stories we tell are a vessel for societal values; but that isn't all they are. The ethereal world of fiction is not a definitive picture of what the world is like or how it should be, it's a realm of possibilities. That means ALL possibilities.
IMVHO, it was kind of evident to me. I detected a *nudge nudge wink wink* tone. But maybe I was just projecting - her tone is so very wry, like Austen, it's sometimes hard to tell where the sarcasm begins and ends.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 12:42 am (UTC)But I think we have more than enough such books. For me, it is a flaw, and a serious distraction from the pleasure of the book, a blow to the credibility of the author, and a failure on the author's part in the pursuit of truth. And it taps into an image that's as far from reality as one can imagine.
In books, femme gay men kill strong heterosexual males, whereas in real life it trends to be the other way around. That kind of media, I think, heightens the atmosphere of threat for straight men, and I think the constant media portrayals of gay men as predators contributes to anti-gay violence. I don't think it's wrong to object to such portrayals.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-12 03:40 pm (UTC)My goal is to try and finish it before the end of the summer.
Comparing it to Harry Potter so far is a bit difficult... I guess I can see how people would compare them and maybe prefer this one but I'll wait until I've finished reading to really say what I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 12:45 am (UTC)The book doesn't get to the can't-put-it-down stage until about halfway through. Then it becomes really exciting.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-14 03:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 12:48 am (UTC)It's very well written, with a deliberate Jane Austen style (right down to archaic spellings and fake footnotes).
It's not her craft I'm faulting -- she has that down. But it'd be an even better book without the mincing, effeminate sociopath villain and his underdeveloped-black-character sidekick.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-14 06:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 12:50 am (UTC)And it was a bit uneven from time to time -- I cut her a bit of slack for that because it's hard not to wobble with 1000 pages.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 04:20 am (UTC)