rachelmanija (
rachelmanija) wrote2012-06-30 11:30 am
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I am the girl anachronism (Bitterblue)
I recently read a fantasy novel which was set in a Europe-esque landscape, with swords and bows but (unless I'm forgetting something) no firearms. They had the printing press and herbal birth control, but no antibiotics. People knew the concept of a republic, apparently based on theoretical writings, but actual governments were hereditary monarchies.
Given the ye olde setting, I was jarred to see characters use the phrase "mental health" and mean exactly what I would mean by it, and also the word "process" in the sense of "to process one's emotions." Those were the ones which jumped out at me, but there was enough in the language and concepts known and believed by the characters which was not merely modern, but distinctively modern, that between that and the thematic elements I ended up feeling that I was reading an allegory, not a fantasy. (Allegory is not a dirty word. It is a perfectly legitimate artistic form.)
The book, by the way, is Kristin Cashore's Bitterblue. I thought it was very ambitious and largely successful. But it struck me as an allegory of recovery from personal and political abuse and totalitarianism, not a fantasy on the same theme. I am not using "allegory" to mean "preachy," or anything else negative. I mean that the world of the book did not read as a fantasy world, but as a stand-in for our own. You don't need magical mind-control to be a brainwasher. It was the pervasive use of extremely modern concepts and phrases that made me feel that way.
Do any of you ever notice that sort of thing? What type and amount of modern language or concepts is invisible, what is jarring, and what tips the book into feeling like it isn't truly meant to be historical or fantastical at all?
Given the ye olde setting, I was jarred to see characters use the phrase "mental health" and mean exactly what I would mean by it, and also the word "process" in the sense of "to process one's emotions." Those were the ones which jumped out at me, but there was enough in the language and concepts known and believed by the characters which was not merely modern, but distinctively modern, that between that and the thematic elements I ended up feeling that I was reading an allegory, not a fantasy. (Allegory is not a dirty word. It is a perfectly legitimate artistic form.)
The book, by the way, is Kristin Cashore's Bitterblue. I thought it was very ambitious and largely successful. But it struck me as an allegory of recovery from personal and political abuse and totalitarianism, not a fantasy on the same theme. I am not using "allegory" to mean "preachy," or anything else negative. I mean that the world of the book did not read as a fantasy world, but as a stand-in for our own. You don't need magical mind-control to be a brainwasher. It was the pervasive use of extremely modern concepts and phrases that made me feel that way.
Do any of you ever notice that sort of thing? What type and amount of modern language or concepts is invisible, what is jarring, and what tips the book into feeling like it isn't truly meant to be historical or fantastical at all?
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My 12 year old extremely geeky son turned to me during the same show when one of the characters used the term "instruction manual" and said, "No one in that world would say that! Why did they write that?"
So that.
Those are the two things that leap out to me. But I know there are others.
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I really do and really do not want to read Bitterblue, heh--other friends have really enjoyed it, and I kind of liked Graceling except for its worldbuilding.... Did you enjoy the story otherwise, out of curiosity? (Subjective enjoyment and "largely successful" aren't necessarily congruent, IMO.)
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It was even more jarring because otherwise her command of language is gorgeous.
I was trying to explain it to myself with the thought that the characters' words would have had to be translated into English or at least updated into more current English, but that didn't really help.
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On allegory
(Allegory is not a dirty word. It is a perfectly legitimate artistic form.)
So when, or why, did allegory become a dirty word? One of my favorite works of literature, Dante's Divine Comedy, is an allegory and I love it to pieces, but if I picked up a modern book that labeled itself as an allegory I think I'd put it back down again. Did the form get abused by the preachy, or did it just fall out of fashion?
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PS. Susan Whittaker is your mom? Is she still writing?
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I hadn't even thought that about the cipher. Very true - that did go beyond the usual conceit of "the book is translated from its original tongue." I liked the concept of the ciphers, but confess to skimming big chunks of explanation about how they work.
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But it occurs to me that Terry Pratchett can break almost all rules in Discworld and not jar me at all. Because the Discworld IS here, as much as it is a fantasy world.
(late, reading through your archives after you were in metaquotes)
It's not that I demand all SF books take place in a perfect future where there is no oppression, it's that I want whatever forms of oppression that future setting has to follow logically from the details of the setting rather than be directly copied from contemporary America as though that's how things always are, have been, and will be. I find it extra jarring if the setting uses contemporary slurs/slang while it's doing so, since that's so context-specific.
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In general this seems to me an interesting alternate angle on the question of 'authenticity' of fantasy that gets much discussed re George RR Martin et al (the 'if you can invent a world with magic, you can invent a world with more liberal gender and sexual politics'/but that wouldn't be *authentic*‘ argument). I say mix it all up as much and as creatively as you want, but I love Steph Swainston's books.
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"Mental health" isn't just linguistic. It involves a whole set of concepts which were radically different from previous ones, and which essentially came in with Freud. Same with "process" (in a psychological context.) I forget if Cashore used the word "privilege," but she wrote about it from an extremely modern understanding. The entire book was like that.
Again, I'm not saying that's bad. I'm saying that it was noticeably different from fantasy I've read which tries to get at least a little bit into the mindset of non-modern characters, even if it doesn't strictly hew to real history. It was also noticeably different from fantasy writers like Michael Swanwick or Mary Gentle (probably Swainson? I haven't read her), who mix pre-modern and modern attitudes and objects in a deliberately jarring manner.
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Modern sensibilities in historical-type fiction don't bother me too much as long as there's some context to indicate that these attitudes aren't necessarily pervasive at the time. But language... oof. I HATE reading historical fiction and finding words that don't belong.
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I am not sure if Cashore was doing it on purpose or not. That is, I am pretty sure she intended to reflect upon modern tyrannies, but I am not sure if the language was written to tip that off, or if she simply put everything in the terms that came naturally to her.
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But generally anachronisms do jump out at me, like the Prince in the Last Unicorn reading magazines(although I'm sure that was intentional)
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What bother me more are words or elements that indicate the author wasn't thinking about implications and/or wasn't trying to write a real fantasy, as in your example. I can imagine a society similar to parts of 15th-century Europe which does have the concept of "mental health," but there would have to be other societal differences, ones which would have allowed someone to come up with that concept and promulgate it.