The Great Goddess Diana (part II)

Yet another reason DWJ is such a bloody genius: her plots are giant chaotic messes and sheer insanity, and things just keep getting thrown into the disorder and making it crazier, but the whole time she knows exactly what she's doing, and by the ending, on the last few pages, everything makes sense.  She untangles all the plot threads, reveals the mysteries, and tidies up all the loose ends.   She's like one of those super intense jugglers from Cirque du Soleil, who effortlessly hurl twenty fragile plates in the air and catch every single one.

I love tidy endings.  They just make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and I can't stop smiling.  If the ending is a particularly good one, I tend to make noises like a happy guinea pig.  DWJ makes me do that a lot.

The Great Goddess Diana

I was reading one of her older books for the first time recently, The Time of the Ghost, and I realized another reason her books are so good.  She has such strange ways of describing feelings, and they shouldn't make any sense, but they do.  They make such perfect sense it's uncanny.  In her own words:

"Some people get stiff and unhappy writing because they think they can’t manage to write how it feels to have an adventure, or to be in the middle of very fast, exciting action. This is nonsense. Everyone knows. What you have to do, if you are stuck this way is to stop thinking in words and then shut your eyes and think how it would be if you were the one having the adventure, falling down the cliff or being attacked by a vampire, or whatever. You’ll know at once. Then you simply put down what you know. It may come out queer, but queer is good where actions and feelings are concerned."

--from her website.

A Brief Addition to the Muddling

Actually, there's a brilliant book by the even more brilliant Diana Wynne Jones that's just a big spoof of stereotypical fantasy.  Unlike Piers Anthony's Xanth series (a never-ending spoof series set in a world called Xanth, in which the author uses every single element of fantasy), however, it is a guide.  The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.  A work of genius.  It's basically an encyclopedia to all things fantasyland, complete with the occasional gnomic utterance.  

And then she apparently liked the idea so much that she turned it into a novel.  

It's set in a fantasy world, but everything is so...practical.  That's the great thing about DWJ--it's fantasy, but it makes so much sense.  None of this mystical nonsense that you're supposed to instinctively understand.  An example that comes to mind is from Howl's Moving Castle, when the main character has a rant at a suit of clothing she's mending, and the suit then gains magical powers and does exactly what she was accusing it of doing.  It just seems such obvious and no-nonsense way to do magic.  

DWJ is brilliant that way.  Perhaps my favorite line of hers is "He left the room like a very long procession of one person." I believe that's from Howl's Moving Castle, although it may be from The Lives of Christopher Chant.  If anyone cares.

Muddling Through Why Fantasy Occupies My Shelves

Most of the books on my shelves are fantasy.  And when people ask, I tend to say this defensively.  All too often, fantasy is frowned upon. Scoffed at.  I frown upon the scoffers' scoffing.

I mean, if I think of the stereotype of fantasy literature, it's all muscly barbarians hefting swords and white-robed priestesses with heaving bosoms, and grumpy dwarves, willowy elves, disguised royalty, a large amorphous mass of pure evil, and at least two apostrophes in each name.

So I get where they're coming from.

But not all fantasy is like that, thank the gods.  Barely any, if you stick to children and teen fantasy.  Which I do, despite being plenty old enough to read about heaving bosoms.

The thing about fantasy--and sci-fi, the two of which one should NEVER CONFUSE--is that it opens you up to possibilities.  Faeries may not be real, but what if they are?  How would you know what to do if you were taken below into their faery kingdom and offered food?  Or take science fiction.  Think how much less surprised and panicky you'd be if you were an avid sci-fi nerd and suddenly encountered an alien.  There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.

Basically, it prepares you for the unlikely.

It makes life more magical.  You read enough fantasy or sci-fi, and you start believing it--while you're reading, of course, but some of that belief stays with you even after you've finished the book.  Just enough sparkle that you're wary around mushroom circles, or that you're more open to the idea of sentient life in space.

Sci-fi and fantasy explore possibilities that no other genre can.  Other fiction is bounded by a tedious thing called "reality," and non-fiction is constrained by not only this "reality," but also truth.  But sci-fi and fantasy are completely free.  Reality? Pssh. They make their own reality.  And truth? It is true in that reality. They're sort of a problem-solving exercise as well...the author thinks up the craziest scenario possible and then tries to fix it.

And of course: it's the best escapist literature offered.  I have to live in reality, so why would I want to read about it as well?  Dull.

So really, don't ever feel embarrassed about reading fantasy or sci-fi.

(Unless you're reading the one with the muscly barbarian.)