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I read this book when I was in high school, returned it to the library, forgot the title and author, and was never able to find it again. Until I discovered ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
whatwasthatbook, where, in a truly bizarre coincidence, someone had posted about it earlier that day. This was my description:
"A fantasy novel, probably from the '80s, about a group of role-playing gamers who go to a fantasy world where they become the characters they play. It was NOT one of the series by Joel Rosenberg. One of the women, who might have been overweight or thought she was unattractive, has magic bracelets that she can click together and become this beautiful flying insubstantial creature, but she loses touch with her emotions when she does it. Someone else might have been able to freeze people."
Doesn't sound very interesting, does it, if that's all there was that stuck in my mind. However, since there was a copy available on Paperback Swap, I ordered it. Having re-read it, I'm not surprised that it stuck in my memory, nor that it's a very obscure book. It's something of an ambitious failure, an attempt at revealing what Carpenter seems to see as the unhealthy wish-fulfillment fantasies underlying the genre of fantasy under the cover of a very standard fantasy wish-fulfillment quest novel, complete with a battle in every chapter. If Carpenter had better chops as a writer, this might have been an M. John Harrison-esque novel which lures the reader into the fantasy, then forces them to see their true and ugly reflections. However, Carpenter's prose is nothing special, and he makes several decisions that end up undermining his intentions.
I should say that I don't generally care for stories about how fantasy sucks and is bad for you, unless they are very specifically about how fantasy may be bad for particular people for particular reasons and in a particular manner. Obviously, I do not think that fantasy or fantasies are noxious in general, or I wouldn't read and write them. However, if I'm going to read a book with that thesis, I would prefer that it do a good job of illuminating it. In any case, I'm glad I re-read Carpenter's book, because, like many books which are flawed but ambitious, it illuminates certain writing issues more clearly than either excellent novels, competent hackwork, or books which are just plain bad.
The basic plot of Carpenter's book is that there are five young adults, all of them with some personality flaw or secret sorrow, who meet to play role-playing games and escape their wretched lives. But when they gather to do so one evening, a mysterious man gives them five figurines, each of which are for characters with personalities and abilities which correspond to the game-players' hearts' desires-- generally in a way which exaggerates them to unhealthy levels. For instance, the man who's big and clumsy and tongue-tied, and feels trapped by the necessity of taking care of his bed-ridden mother, gets a nimble, quick-witted thief who doesn't give a damn about anybody. The woman who can't untangle herself from a relationship with a man who doesn't love her becomes an ice maiden with a strong will but no emotions. And so forth.
They all get thrown into a fantasy world where they are those characters, but with an overlay of the people they were before. Things keep attacking them, and as they battle forward, they become more and more subsumed into their characters.
The first problem is that the hero, Paul, is the only one whose figurine does not have negative personality traits. His embodies the leadership and confidence that he lacked in real life, and has no negative side. This undermines the main thesis, as the fantasyland is only negative for him in the sense that all his friends are more-or-less possessed. So the ending, in which everyone sadly realizes that they have displayed their worse selves and must now return to the real world where they can try to be less horrible people, makes no sense for Paul, who, alone, ended up being a better person.
The corollary to this problem is that Paul, again alone among the rest, is never tested by getting an overlay of nastiness over his original self. He gets an overlay of goodness instead. So, since he's never tested in the same way the others are, his personal triumph in not becoming a jerk is totally menaingless.
The second problem is that none of the other characters ever really make an effort to fight becoming their characters. They angst about it, but never really try to overcome it. So instead of seeming like there's a real inner battle going on, they just seem possessed or, at best, really really weak. So it's questionable how much what they did actually illuminated their real flaws, and how much was just that they had an irresistable enchantment placed on them.
Here's how the book would have been a million times more consistent and interesting:
Every character, including Paul, gets a fantasy-world self with powers and personality flaws. Every character goes through a struggle of whether or not to embrace that character. Some of them decide that they'd rather be their old selves, successfully throw off the character, and must battle through the fantasy world as their regular, powerless, improvising selves. Some decide they like their new selves better. Some reluctantly decide that their powers are necessary for survival, even at the cost of being someone they don't like. During the course of the book, they all shift back and forth between selves at various points, are tempted and yield, and are tempted and resist. And then whatever decisions they make at the end and whatever they come to believe about themselves would actually be true and meaningful.
And finally, it would have been so much better and more illuminating of character if the RPG characters they played were ones they'd made up themselves and had been playing for a while already, not new ones someone else made up for them. (Joel Rosenberg actually does this in his "Sleeping Dragon" series, but unfortunately, that's not about revelation of character. And is also pornographically violent.)
whatwasthatbook, where, in a truly bizarre coincidence, someone had posted about it earlier that day. This was my description:"A fantasy novel, probably from the '80s, about a group of role-playing gamers who go to a fantasy world where they become the characters they play. It was NOT one of the series by Joel Rosenberg. One of the women, who might have been overweight or thought she was unattractive, has magic bracelets that she can click together and become this beautiful flying insubstantial creature, but she loses touch with her emotions when she does it. Someone else might have been able to freeze people."
Doesn't sound very interesting, does it, if that's all there was that stuck in my mind. However, since there was a copy available on Paperback Swap, I ordered it. Having re-read it, I'm not surprised that it stuck in my memory, nor that it's a very obscure book. It's something of an ambitious failure, an attempt at revealing what Carpenter seems to see as the unhealthy wish-fulfillment fantasies underlying the genre of fantasy under the cover of a very standard fantasy wish-fulfillment quest novel, complete with a battle in every chapter. If Carpenter had better chops as a writer, this might have been an M. John Harrison-esque novel which lures the reader into the fantasy, then forces them to see their true and ugly reflections. However, Carpenter's prose is nothing special, and he makes several decisions that end up undermining his intentions.
I should say that I don't generally care for stories about how fantasy sucks and is bad for you, unless they are very specifically about how fantasy may be bad for particular people for particular reasons and in a particular manner. Obviously, I do not think that fantasy or fantasies are noxious in general, or I wouldn't read and write them. However, if I'm going to read a book with that thesis, I would prefer that it do a good job of illuminating it. In any case, I'm glad I re-read Carpenter's book, because, like many books which are flawed but ambitious, it illuminates certain writing issues more clearly than either excellent novels, competent hackwork, or books which are just plain bad.
The basic plot of Carpenter's book is that there are five young adults, all of them with some personality flaw or secret sorrow, who meet to play role-playing games and escape their wretched lives. But when they gather to do so one evening, a mysterious man gives them five figurines, each of which are for characters with personalities and abilities which correspond to the game-players' hearts' desires-- generally in a way which exaggerates them to unhealthy levels. For instance, the man who's big and clumsy and tongue-tied, and feels trapped by the necessity of taking care of his bed-ridden mother, gets a nimble, quick-witted thief who doesn't give a damn about anybody. The woman who can't untangle herself from a relationship with a man who doesn't love her becomes an ice maiden with a strong will but no emotions. And so forth.
They all get thrown into a fantasy world where they are those characters, but with an overlay of the people they were before. Things keep attacking them, and as they battle forward, they become more and more subsumed into their characters.
The first problem is that the hero, Paul, is the only one whose figurine does not have negative personality traits. His embodies the leadership and confidence that he lacked in real life, and has no negative side. This undermines the main thesis, as the fantasyland is only negative for him in the sense that all his friends are more-or-less possessed. So the ending, in which everyone sadly realizes that they have displayed their worse selves and must now return to the real world where they can try to be less horrible people, makes no sense for Paul, who, alone, ended up being a better person.
The corollary to this problem is that Paul, again alone among the rest, is never tested by getting an overlay of nastiness over his original self. He gets an overlay of goodness instead. So, since he's never tested in the same way the others are, his personal triumph in not becoming a jerk is totally menaingless.
The second problem is that none of the other characters ever really make an effort to fight becoming their characters. They angst about it, but never really try to overcome it. So instead of seeming like there's a real inner battle going on, they just seem possessed or, at best, really really weak. So it's questionable how much what they did actually illuminated their real flaws, and how much was just that they had an irresistable enchantment placed on them.
Here's how the book would have been a million times more consistent and interesting:
Every character, including Paul, gets a fantasy-world self with powers and personality flaws. Every character goes through a struggle of whether or not to embrace that character. Some of them decide that they'd rather be their old selves, successfully throw off the character, and must battle through the fantasy world as their regular, powerless, improvising selves. Some decide they like their new selves better. Some reluctantly decide that their powers are necessary for survival, even at the cost of being someone they don't like. During the course of the book, they all shift back and forth between selves at various points, are tempted and yield, and are tempted and resist. And then whatever decisions they make at the end and whatever they come to believe about themselves would actually be true and meaningful.
And finally, it would have been so much better and more illuminating of character if the RPG characters they played were ones they'd made up themselves and had been playing for a while already, not new ones someone else made up for them. (Joel Rosenberg actually does this in his "Sleeping Dragon" series, but unfortunately, that's not about revelation of character. And is also pornographically violent.)
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Puts me in mind of how superhero comics are often (always?) about getting powers willy-nilly: and renunciation isn't an option. (The scene in Sandman where Element GIrl or whatever her name is renounces Ra's gift is beautiful and moving.)
[phone call, can't write more now, sorry]
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I love that issue of "Sandman."
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Since very few people daydream about becoming accountants, his skills turn out to sometimes be useful.
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I'm interested in stories about how fantasy sucks and is bad for you. Can you name many of them, off the top of your head, in any format or medium?
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Also, I would've thought the superhero genre would be a rich vein of unending ore when it comes to this sort of thing, but I can't think of much that is really self-reflexive or metafictional about its own wish fulfillment. The only thing I can think of offhand is the later issues of Scott McCloud's Zot!, but it comes quite late.
And on the anime/manga front, Abenobashi Shopping District, though that's busy being a fanservice fest most of the time.
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