Twisty, Book Killer

The decaying corpse of crappy fantasy novel Storm Front. Original crime scene photo courtesy Coroner’s Office/The Twisty Library

I have become a serial book killer.

A spinster aunt of my advanced years, for whom time is of the essence, can but react with murderous outrage when the paperback for which she has paid $7.99--on the advice of people who are supposed to know from books--turns out to be an insulting lump of crap.

Last night I committed my second book murder. About 40 pages into a highly recommended fantasy novel, I experienced an acute involuntary spasm in my feministrium. I screamed in pain and chucked the book at the wall (if this blog were a fantasy novel, I would have “shrieked like a captive faerie and flung the accursed volume against the battlement”), whereupon it splatted, fell to the floor, coughed twice, and died. I’m glad it’s dead, I tell you, glad! For a glance at the patriometer confirmed it: the book was nothing but a formulaic male supremacist manifesto written by another traitorous female tool of the patriarchy.

Coincidentally, the last book to meet with this fate at the Twisty Bungalow was the only other fantasy novel I’ve attempted since adulthood, Storm Front by some chucklehead named Jim Butcher. The book had been recommended by I-forget-who as “Harry Potter for adults.” Rash young dipshit that I was, fresh from the superb Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and full of residual warmth and admiration for authors of books about magicians, I approached Storm Front with unguarded enthusiasm, ignoring my usual policy of avoiding titles that are also the names of white pride organizations. 

Within two pages Storm Front revealed itself as so aggressively mediocre that I actually mutilated it before I thew it. Author Jim Butcher is apparently a virginal 7th grade boy who has been instructed by his creative writing teacher to replace all dialogical instances of he said  with inept “action” tags like he growled,  he challenged, he drawled, and yes, the classically lame he snorted. Butcher also compares his female sidekick character to a cheerleader and Shirley Temple in the same breath. But here is the line that drove me to libricide, delivered without irony by the hero, who is explaining why the murderer must have been a woman: “You can’t do something bad without a whole lot of hate...” wait, it gets better: “Women are better at hating than men.” [The chapter is excerpted here, unfortunately]

Possibly there exist legitimate literary applications for gross sexism (although not, I’m afraid, for such a clunky expression of it), but if you are not Dashiell Hammett or Edward Albee, and you put it in your book anyway, you’re a fucktard. If you are Jim Butcher, and your hero is a wizard named “Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, conjure by it at your own risk,” well, it’s just sad.

But the Storm Front killing is behind me now (I was acquitted. Self-defense). Last night’s paperback projectile was The Curse of Chalion, authored by one Lois McMaster Bujold, acclaimed winner of Hugo and Neosporin and Dramamine awards. Her characters are all clichés, but to be fair, LMcMB has a touch of the old narrative flair, so when I killed her stupid book, I stopped short of disemboweling it.

From what I understand of the genre, works of fantasy are required by law to be written in some species of hyper-formal, faux-archaic English that no actual human has ever spoken. Such as:

“The birthday present sent down this year from the capital at Sudafed by her brother Bengay was a fine dappled gray mare, an inspiration either well calculated or very lucky, for Visine flew into transports over the shimmering beast.“

This is goofy, but I can live with it. What I can’t live with is the dependency of the fantasy narrative on unapologetically misogynist pseudo-feudal agrarian European settings that glorify patriarchal principles of war, caste systems, omnipotent deities, primogeniture, and women-as-virgin-damsels. The Curse of Chalion is about pseudo-medieval Spaniardesque nobles with names like antifungal ointments, the males brandishing swords all over the place to protect the females, who sit around the castle embroidering. The hero, Benadryl, is a 35-year-old warrior-nobleman who lusts after Rogaine, the beautiful, strong-willed 15-year-old princess.

It really chaps my hide that a woman writing in the 21st century, who, after all, is supposedly inventing a fantasy and could theoretically think up a world in which women are portrayed as something other than willowy young receptacles and subordinate producers of male heirs, wins awards for merely regurgitating the same old superannuated patriarchal crapulence that has plagued popular fiction since Clarissa and beyond. Pah.

Comments

[Andygrrl]

This reads like a literary version of "The Cell Block Tango": "If you'd been there, if you'd seen it, I betcha you would have done the same!"

Personally, I avoid any book that's marketed as being "Harry Potter for adults". As if adults don't enjoy Harry Potter or something. Check out Robin McKinley for some good feministy fantasy; her book "The Hero and the Crown" is kick ass and focuses on a dragon-slaying princess. Ellen Kushner, Tanith Lee, and Karen Joy Fowler also have some good stuff that won't incur your wrath. :-)

[AndiF]

Here's some more suggestions.

Holly Black, Tithe
Candas Jane Dorsey Black Wine, Paradigm of Earth (more speculative fiction than fantasy)
Nancy Collins' Sonja Blue books
Doris Egan's Complete Ivory (three books in one volume, all with wonderful snark)
Rosemary Kirstein's Steerwsoman series (actually science fiction that appears at first to be fantasy)

And I second the Robin McKinley. Other books of hers: Deerskin, Sunshine

[Ron Sullivan]

C. J. Cherryh. If you want a twist (and of course you do) on the faux-olde language, The Dreaming Tree, or at least its first half, The Dreamstone. The anthology Sunfall sounds pretty too. The Chanur and Morgaine series are just good fun. (Chanur's sci-fi; Morgaine's fantasy, except where it isn't.)

[Chris Porter]

Fantasy and Feminism? Read Suzette Hayden Elgin's Ozark Fantasy Trilogy. Very smart, very sly, very Ozarky.

[Wordlackey]

Alas, I wish I had followed your fine example when I first started the crapulous Storm Front. I, unfortunately, finished it. My housemate, She-who-I-call-Fierce-Celt, had less tolerance and perhaps got as far as you did before abandoning it in disgust. I think she would have performed bibliocide as well but the book was nominally mine so she forbore doing so.

Your example is before me: I see a way to save the world from this book. Book burning is anathema to me yet I admit there are some books which the world would be better for their destruction. Actually, I'll probably just tear it apart and recycle it rather than burn it. Thanks for the encouragement.

[antelope]

Pretty much any sci-fi or fantasy by Ursula LeGuin is going to deal w/ gender roles in an interesting way - some of her women may be kept down in one way or another, but they know it & they're not happy about it. The Left Hand of Darkness came out a long time ago, but if you haven't read it yet, I really, really recommend it.

[TimT]

Ursula le Guin, yes; and maybe Joanna Russ, who writes consciously feminist sci-fi.

Despite the name, I'd also recommmend Michael Moorcock. He's written very critically of backward-looking fantasy writers like Tolkien and Lewis, and explores gender roles a lot in his books. Maybe The Final Programme.

[Naomi]

"libricide". I rarely find a new word I love. Your blog is fabulouso. My view of Americans is forever slightly altered. Ta!

[Twisty]

Thanks, you guys, for the generous outpouring of fantasy genre suggestions. They are noted, and should the day ever come when I find I have sufficiently recovered from the Curse Of Claritin incident, I will give'em a try.

For the record, it isn't necessary that everything I read revolve around explicitly feminist themes. I may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater when I held up my hand and said to rock'n'roll, "Rock'n'roll, you are dead to me," but I can't bring myself to do that with literature. There are, for instance, big problems with The Taming of the Shrew, but I'm much too big a snob to suddenly stop quoting Shakespeare.

[flea]

I had the same reaction when I tried to read Hubbard's _Battlefield Earth_, but that damned book is too thick for me to tear in half. I couldn't get past the part where the aliens, as per Hubbard's description, consider humans to be on par with dogs, yet as soon as the humans start fighting back, the alien females start simpering and mincing around the humans and making them coffee. Has any woman ever become submissive to a hostile dog outside seriously diseased porn? No. In the real world, women have them put down and don't lose sleep over it.

Does _Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell_ count as fantasy? I loved this book. It weighs five hundred pounds and I had to drag it everywhere for a solid month, which was a pain, but I couldn't put it down.

[Twisty]

TimT, I've got a Michael Moorcock in my queue right this minute. It's called (I think) The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius. I bought it because, although Moorcock wrote lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult, the painful "Don't Fear The Reaper" was not one of them, and also because he wrote a great essay skewering that fascist Tolkein, and also because he has the good sense to live to Texas. Of Thatcher-era England he writes (in the aforementioned essay), "Humanity was derided and marginalised. Sentimentality became the acceptable substitute. So few people seem to be able to tell the difference." Which remarks resonate nicely with the situation in post-9/11 USA.

[Twisty]

Flea, I think you're probably right, that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell does count as fantasy, but unlike most fantasy novels, it also counts as a pretty stunning work of general literature. Obviously I'm no authority on the fantasy genre, but from what I can tell, a fantasy novel more or less depends on cliché, or even allegory, for its armature; its success as literature beyond that is directly related to the degree to which it can overcome that impediment, with style and substance and truth and beauty and all that.

Meanwhile, the recent trend toward 90-pound books is, I agree, problematic. I am not above surgically separating these writst-spraining monoliths into portable chapters with an X-acto knife.

[Tony Patti]

Wouldn't it be nice if they divided these monolithic novles into volumes like back in the good old days? I'm surprised they haven't repackaged Proust as an enormous one-volume 25 pound lump of lit. It would probably boost sales dramatically, and then even more people could prance around claiming to have read it; at a lectern, standing, like a medieval scholar imbibing some Cicero.

[Mandos]

Huh. My trackback didn't show up. Is there something wrong with TypePad?

[Mandos]

BTW I also don't buy the literature/genre fiction dichotomy entirely either.

[Twisty]

Dude, there's been something wrong with TypePad since last weekend, when they implemented all the "exciting new enhancements."

[Twisty]

No shit, Tony. It's bad enough that publishers indulge authors who think they need 987 pages to make their point, but it's sheer insult to force the reader into costly and painful physical therapy to recover from the strain.

[Mandos]

Yeah, I was away from my blog for a while (travelling) and missed that. So I'll just throw in a link to my post for blog-posterity (which is a weak, anemic version of posterity but there you have it):

http://politblogo.typepad.com/politblogo/2005/07/fantasy_sf_and_.html

[Amber Taylor]

Funny, I just read this and liked it (a brief review is on my blog). If you'd made your way to the end, you'd have seen a few feminist flourishes, although your general criticism of the "pseudo-feudal agrarian European settings that glorify patriarchal principles of war, caste systems, omnipotent deities [and] primogeniture" remains valid.

[emjaybee]

To be fair Robin McKinley isn't about feminism, she just writes from a naturally non-sexist viewpoint. She isn't a Beat You Over the Head type.

Also, most sci fi and fantasy remains utter crap.

However, have you read the Phillip Pullman His Dark Materials series? Because there you will get your fix of pseudo-Victorian, alternate-universe fantasy with some wonderfully rich adventure writing with the added benefit of tearing organized religion to tiny little shreds. And a child heroine who frankly, is so tough she could kick Harry Potter's ass if she met him.

[Twisty]

But what about Mr. T? Could she kick his ass?

[Wordlackey]

I liked Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy as well although there was something about it that nagged and bothered in the back of my mind. While the young female protagonist is incredibly resourceful and brave (ie, able to face her fears and move on), the general feel of the fantasy world was... I don't know, off in some indescribable way. Oh, very well written, very well imagined, but still... off. I wish I could pinpoint my problem with it.

And yeah, I think she might be able to whup Mr. T's ass. Not in a straight up fight; rather, she would find a way to send/lead him into the frozen wasteland to die confused and uncomprehending of his fate. Smartly playing to her strengths.

I did not know Moorcock was living in Texas now. Shows how much attention I've been paying. I liked the Jerry Cornelius books altho I must insert the caveat that I read them in the late 1970s. I was young and much more credulous and willing to overlook amazing sexist crap in fantasy and science fiction at the time. I've often been shocked at rereading books which hold a warm spot in my heart and memory, only to find them rather fetid from my current vantage.

[Sarah in Chicago]

I personally loved growing up with fantasy and scifi as they were the only genres where I could regularly find female characters who weren't simpering idiots just there to support the men, or didn't go boy crazy at the drop of a hat (which annoyed me no end when it did occur). Course when I was young I didn't realise that was why I loved them, just that I loved them.

Of course, as with any genre, you have the pound-your-head-at-a-wall exceptions (try finding woman-positive militaristic space-opera if you want a challenge - have a few titles though, NOT John Ringo however).

I personally adore Elizabeth Moon's stuff, and Mercedes Lackey (though the "gay men are beautiful" narrative got a little thick therein, not to mention the weirdly corresponding lack of lesbians). I fell for the Honor Harrington series by David Weber though, bigtime. And as a weird aside, the alternative history series that started with 'Island in a Sea of Time' by SM Stirling (any series that get's slagged off by the anti-feminists in the amazon.com reviews section HAS to be good). And anything by Tanya Huff.

My one problem is that I did a persisting foray into overtly feminist scifi that was published in the 80's and early 90's and honestly; mind-numbingly boring. Nothing seemed to happen. Ever. Maybe I was too young, but it drove me nuts, and I am a staunch feminist.

Oh, and as an aside, did anyone else get really pissed off with the insane misogyny in 'The Da Vinci Code', or 'Angels and Demons'?

[Sarah in Chicago]

Oh, and yes, I know most of those titles are pulp scifi/fantasy, but honestly when you deal with huge tomes of academic analyses on a daily basis in large numbers as a requirement of your studies, having these pulp novels to take you away without having to work your braincells excessively even more is a blessing. Especially when your main reading space is the EL (subway here in Chicago)

[Mrs. Coulter]

I heartily recommend Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. His other books (such as the Sally Lockhart trilogy) are grossly overwritten and heavy-handed (though worth a laugh); his female protagonists are very feminist (Sally Lockhart is actually a little *too* much). I also very much enjoyed Garth's Nix's Abhorsen trilogy, which also features well-written female protagonists. Like Pullman, his other books, sadly, are also not as good.