Two Griefs Observed (Here There Bee Spoilers)

Having finished the Thesis this May time, I found myself burned out on academia.  The hours spent pouring over texts for the right passage to fill out a page, the books rushed through in search of a sentence with which to complete a footnote to justify my own observation.  And in those pages, the sight of erudition and excellence that seemed to mock my own feeble attempts at contributing to millennia of accumulated knowledge.  I was tired.  I needed a break.

But the opiate offered through repetitions of favorite video games and Netflix marathons wore out its welcome remarkably swiftly, so that before long I found myself drained of even the desire to be unashamedly distracted from the strenuous labors of applied thought.  My imagination burned.  Yet the idea of cracking the cover to almost any of my multitude of books (which library continued to grow with each ill-advised essay into Barnes and Noble) cowed my transitory ambition.  Though I purchased books with fervent devotion, I could not bring myself to read any of them.  In a moment of horror, found myself becoming the sort of man whom CS Lewis describes as liking the idea of books, yet never reading any in his vast collection.

So naturally, it was to Lewis that I turned for salvation.  His wit and humor would entertain my fleeting fancy, but that same wit coupled with his customary genius for explaining profound truths about which no reader has even considered to think would spur on my much-exhausted academic faculties.  Accordingly, upon my succeeding pilgrimage to B&N, I picked up a copy of CS Lewis: The Signature Classics anthology.  My expectations were not disappointed, and it was with a profound sense of relief and growing excitement that I blitzed through Mere Christianity (fittingly, the first entry) and The Great Divorce.  

That concluded my summer, and so rejuvenated, I tackled my academic duties as an instructor with renewed vigor, though the increase of busywork started to drag at my mind once more, inciting a return to the mindless rambles in place of more challenging exploration amongst my bookshelves.

That is when I discovered Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  The BBC dramatization appeared in my Netflix queue, and I recognized the title at once as a book highly recommended by a good friend. Intrigued, I committed to the pilot episode over dinner, and by the end of the weekend had completed the series.  The premise is elegant and unique - a pair of Regency era magicians seeking to research and restore English magic during the Napoleonic Wars.  But what I found most delightful was the academic element so strongly portrayed through their dialogues and intrigues.  Here we see two well-spoken scholars (philosophers, even) engaging in wars of words over the nature and purpose of fairies, witchcraft, and superstition - treating it with all the care and devotion of real professors at my university.  Listening to Norrell wax eloquent on the proper use of magic among gentlemen sounded uncannily true to the spontaneous lectures delivered by my professors on the care and nurturing of proper history for the modern man.  I was enchanted.  My imagination burst into flame.  I wanted to read again, to write, to delve into my shelves with all the boyish glee of Jonathan Strange.

Once more, I returned to CS Lewis for inspiration.  If I am to truly learn, I told myself, If I am to produce something of value, then I must seek after deeper thoughts with constancy and devotion.  Much like studying the Bible.  But like the study of Scripture, it is not advised to tackle Predestination when one has but a shaky grasp of the Eucharist, or even a vague memory of having mastered the subject.  So as a warmup I selected the shortest Lewis text in my possession.  And it is in A Grief Observed that I met a Lewis most unexpected.

Until this evening I had only the shakiest notion that "Jack" had ever married, or ever loved a woman deeply (much as he writes - even self-consciously - on the topic).  Yet within those pages I found a lover bereft of half his soul, his own the grief to be observed and analyzed.  What struck me was the haste and passion with which it is written, and the ever-present threat of raving incoherence.  Lewis is always so careful, so precise and perfect that the certain perfection of it all is part of the thrill.  But here Jack appears, dashing off wild thoughts almost as they come to mind, yet all following a studied course, as though his surgically accurate mind could not help itself.  It is jarring, breath-taking, raw.  There is a real sort of fear that in reading one has become a voyeur.

In describing his wife, Jack once more puts into words what mere mortals fail to dare considering.  She is the very soul of remarkable, the final word in Godly feminism, at home in her own skin and utterly unexpected at every turn.  She is Eve to Jack's Adam; she completes him in ways he never dreamed, and daily could not expect.  In an odd way, this is the sort of relationship enjoyed by

Jonathan Strange and his wife, Arabella.  Though attracted to her at the beginning of the narrative, Jonathan's devotion looks more like that of a puppy than a mature man's.  But as his responsibilities increase, through war and dedication to his occupation as a practicing magician, Jonathan comes to see Arabella as the joy that he did not know he'd been missing.  She is the last word about good wives: supportive and expectant, frank and instructive, unafraid to give voice to her opinions, while unashamed of her fears.  Her attentions do not bring Jonathan to heel, but spark in him the desire to be a husband, to put aside his own puerile dreams with manful resolution when he confronts the reality that they threaten Arabella's happiness - even when she has already come to peace with them.  It is a refreshing break from the usual tripe peddled by contemporary media, of the bumbling or overbearing husband needing a good education from his sensible and sassy wife, or the frivolous and domineering wife who can't bring herself to love a meek and cringing husband.  The pure and unabashed love shared between Jonathan and Arabella is a thing of truly wondrous beauty.

All of this irrevocably changes when Arabella apparently dies of exposure to the winter chill.  At first, Jonathan's native flippancy reasserts itself as he forlornly tells himself that he, the King's Magician, can restore her to life.  This, however, does not transpire due to the fact that Arabella is not really dead.  But what follows is not resignation on Jonathan's part, but an intensified desire to find a way, any way, to revive his beloved, even once she's buried.  He engages in world travel, studies black magic, and even induces his own fits of madness.  It bears some resemblance to the sort of frustrated passion expressed by Jack in A Grief Observed.

Yet here is the difference: Jonathan's quest to reunite with his love is an adventure, and a fictional one.  His grief is a vehicle that drives him far beyond the stifling confines of his teacher's academic limitations, to challenge ancient powers and in the end save Arabella from a fate yet worse than death.  Jack had no such hope.  He had only the assurances of Scripture and the love of his friends to assuage his pain.  And in his erudite way he brutally analyzes the future.  Will he see her again?  Is it possible to have again what they had before?  If she is no longer a body, yet is outside time as all spirits are outside time, can she properly exist in the way that humans comprehend existence?  Indeed, did she ever exist at all?

How to Dungeon like Star Lord

I really think that "dungeon" should be a verb

Another shameless plug

And the new webcomic is proceeding apace...
http://witnesswork.blogspot.com/2016/04/so-text-came-out-blurry-it-says-what-on.html

New post over at Witness Works - rough of Page 001 of a project that I've had in mind for some time.  Stay tuned.

Defending the "Gentle" Sex

Although I don't call myself a feminist I am all about equal rights for women (right to vote, enter the workforce, etc.).  However, I also have some old-fashioned opinions, like the role of mothers as, well, mothers and the man's duty to respect and protect the women around him. So it is with great reluctance that I fight female NPCs when gaming.

Girls' night out in Markarth: my Nord archer and her housecarl Lydia

I've recently acquired a copy of Skyrim (I know, I know) and have been enthusiastically fulfilling my digital destiny.  I love the open combat system in Bethesda's games, and it is with equal enthusiasm that I tackle bandits, trolls, and dragons (at last, a game for going toe-to-toe with the great wyrms!).  But what really bugs me about the Elder Scrolls is their insistence on making the main character fight women. 

Don't get me wrong, I am not above sitting by during a throwdown between women (I remember eating dinner one day in the cafeteria at my undergrad when an all-female knock-down-drag-out fistfight started a few tables over and immediately went to the floor.  Rather than leaping to anyone's aid, I took another bite of scalloped potatoes, preferring to allow several athletic-looking frat brothers and the security officer break it up.)

But in Elder Scrolls there is no choice: women draw swords as often as their men, if not more so, and the Dovahkin is compelled to reciprocate with force.  Why Bethesda decided on this feature, whether as a way to make things interesting or out of some ill-conceived notion of gender equality, is unknown to me.  I like the variety found in the Elder Scrolls (accents, races, religions, sexes), but I must raise objection to the female body count my various characters have accrued in the course of their journeys through Vvardinfel, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim.

Case-in-point: as Lydia and I were brawling our way through Broken Tower Redoubt last night, the Foresworn garrison consisted of nearly all women; the one bloke, a craven Briarheart, was holed up in the highest room in the tallest tower, tending to a shrine of Debella (the only woman he bothered to defend, despite the incessant clamor outside).  What bothers me about this is that while clearing the first floor every female death was met by a pang of guilt, but by the time we were on the terrace outside the tower it was all business.

I do not take this change of heart lightly.  What sort of message does this carnage send our kids?  One answer might be the asinine responses found on a message board discussing this same topic.  The first post expressed chagrin at the necessity of this bloody combat, but a good number of the responses encouraged the chivalrous fellow to simply "respect" the women he was fighting, as though "honoring" these CGI warriors by giving them a noble death somehow exonerated the deed.  Except THIS IS FICTION.  It can be whatever you want it to be, and Bethesda has decided that a ghastly female death toll is necessary for their millions of heroes to achieve stardom in their imaginary universe.  This is the sort of thing that mars an otherwise good story, just as unnecessary ribaldry has always soiled the otherwise pristine mayhem in Game of Thrones.

In the case of Elder Scrolls, I suppose one might be consoled with the promise of a MOD that rewrites the game script.  The problem with Westeros is that both the TV series and the books will be to be totally rewritten in order to merit redemption. 

The Use of Handicap In Creative Writing

I recently reviewed an article by J.J. Cohen in which the author suggested that in producing the Hobbit Trilogy Peter Jackson had embarked upon a quest of his own to create a sort of "disability" epic, which is to suggest that being short, stocky, and possessed of a Scottish brogue is qualification for joining a wheelchair rugby team - and also seems to ignore the total lack of handicapped behavior and prowess demonstrated by all members of the Company, Oin's ear horn, Bifur's incomprehensible Khuzdul and mummery, and Bomber's athletic corpulence notwithstanding.

Poor Bofur (behind 5th from right)

Yet it got me thinking on the matter of introducing greater diversity into my own writing.  I do not mean diversity in the Politically Correct sense - as a quasi-moral obligation - but as a means of introducing something truly interesting and entertaining into the story.  This scheme can have various results upon the story that one has in mind, and, as with all writing tropes, can either make or break a story.  This is perhaps best demonstrated by comparing two authors known for their handicapped protagonists: Mark Haddon and George R.R. Martin. 

Back in my undergraduate writing program one of my classes read Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  It is the story of an autistic teen, Christopher, and chronicles via inner monologue his adventures crossing town to find his estranged mother.  Obviously the character's disability is the driving force for the story: it determines his actions, which in turn influence the plot and development of the story.  It also raises some questions about writing quality and acceptable boundaries for criticism, since Haddon's depiction of Christopher and his autism is by nature of publication now open to examination.  For instance, one of my classmates observed that, in his personal experience with the mentally disabled, Christopher's condition was inaccurately described, for which he suggested an alternative diagnosis.  But in another vein, Christopher's handicap (and thus his personality) were subject of sharp criticism in our class - which introduces interesting discussions of writing craft and the place of diversity in literature. 

The thing is, many if not most of us could not stand Christopher, but given the PC environment of society today, we had some difficulty expressing our views without discomfort.  Some critics might laud Haddon's work for its "daring" entry into the autistic mind, but I confess that despite appeals to a better nature, I absolutely hated Christopher.  I found his actions and inner monologues tremendously aggravating, and there was precious little to like.  Perhaps a more favorable reader would observe that Haddon does a remarkable job of delving into the rationale behind autistic mental processes, but that did nothing to redeem Christopher in my eyes - and I was not alone in this assessment.  During discussion, another classmate spent a good while in agonized silence, struggling in vain for words sanitary enough to avoid PC castigation.  But when he finally expressed his frustration with Christopher's seemingly inexplicable logic, very few of us disagreed with him.  This is illustrative of the conundrum surrounding sensitive issues, as well as the freedom with which we feel allowed to address them: what is the purpose of disability in literature, and is it appropriate to criticize its handling as one would any other writing trope?

I am sure there's much to say in favor of this book, but frankly my classmate's eventual outburst summed up my view precisely.  Despite what may have been Haddon's best efforts, Christopher was for us a totally unlikeable character, regardless of what some in our hyper-sensitive culture might demand.  These hypothetical thought-police could respond angrily to our assessment of Christopher, but to that I would say that defending The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime solely upon its merits as a tale of handicap is like defending the decision by a worship pastor to add How He Loves Us into the lineup for Sunday service: it is an awful song for many reasons, but as it was composed in a time of personal distress it is unassailable.  It is this sort of reasoning that also produces and defends modern "poetry" and "art."

Bad is bad, and even when an item is really good, personal taste is still subject to the audience. Therefore, it is a disservice to literary criticism to grade the quality of a work solely by the agenda that it champions.  The same is even true of overtly-Christian literature, which often seems to veer away from the elegant evangelism found in Lewis and Tolkien and towards a non sequitur and point blank altar call (I am thinking of the movie adaptation of Ted Dekker's Thr3e - though a full discussion of Christian literature and film deserves its own post).  (Moreover, insofar as the role of taste in the appraisal of otherwise good literature is concerned, I find it interesting to note that Tolkien did not like Lewis' allegorical Chronicles of Narnia.)  To return to my central argument, it is equally a disservice to the story if all one seeks to accomplish by implementation of "diversity" is diversity for its own sake (though I recognize that this is not necessarily true of Haddon's purpose).  So while I applaud Haddon's work on whatever merits it may actually have, I nonetheless reserve the right to despise his protagonist.

The "misshapen" Tyrion Lannister

By contrast, George R.R. Martin nails the handicap epic, pushing the narrative for all it is worth, but never at the expense of the story.  I hasten to add that while I am a fan of Martin's writing capabilities, I cannot recommend his Song of Ice and Fire or its television adaptation, Game of Thrones - indeed, I strongly caution all Christian readers to take into serious consideration Philippians 4:8, Paul's injunction to only think upon good things.  However, I must credit Martin with the creation of the most likeable disabled characters I have ever encountered.  It seems that every other name in Song of Ice and Fire is disabled in some manner, from the old men in their dotage to the crippled Bran.  As for the "properly" handicapped, in contrast with Christopher I absolutely loved Hodor, Bran's laconic, simpleminded giant, while the story's strongest character is Tyrion Lannister, a misshapen dwarf.  Tyrion remains one of my favorite point of view (POV) characters from the series, whose wit and jovial cynicism help him to cope with the aloof behavior (and thinly veiled disgust) of others, even his own family.  Martin lends his inner monologues a hint of pragmatism as well, as he constantly vacillates between hating his form and using it to his advantage, while recognizing when he needs to change tactics based upon the fact that a dwarf by his very nature can only command so much respect. 

The crucial point here is that these characters' handicaps not only have an endearing quality to them, but also produce an interesting impact upon the story.  Tyrion is not a dwarf for its own sake - his disability is itself a plot device that molds him and motivates him, and motivates others, for good or ill.  His condition is integral to Song of Ice and Fire and has real consequences for the people around him and even upon the politics that shape Martin's world.  That, to me, is the point of diversity.

So while I cannot agree with Cohen's assessment of Jackon's "disability" epic, the notion is interesting and one that I hope we get to see more of.  I certainly plan on jumping on the bandwagon! (foreshadowing...)

Shameless Plug

I tend to take these things in shifts, it seems, so if you've been back to see if there's a new post here, try my other blog, Witness Work.  It's had a few posts lately.  Cheers!

Here's a sampling of the sort of stuff floating about over there: