The American Spectator : Touchy Fantasists

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Touchy Fantasists

By James Bowman on 3.15.10 @ 6:03AM

If only James Cameron were a worthy successor to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Goodness! How touchy are the devotees of fantasy lit, how quick to assume that they and their joy have been disrespected. One such is Daniel Crandall who has taken exception to a piece that I wrote about Avatar for the forthcoming number of the New Atlantis and that has already been posted on the magazine's website.

According to Mr. Crandall, I think that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are not "real artists." Golly! You can imagine the reaction in the blogosphere -- which, as you may or may not know, has way more Lewis and Tolkien fans in it than the population at large. I wonder why that is, by the way? Anyway, most of them seem to have taken to their keyboards to register a protest about my scandalous views, as Mr. Crandall has reported them, and you can imagine the kind of disparagement that my taste, scholarship, intelligence, morals and general character have been subjected to.

So much so, indeed, that I wonder if it is too late to protest that I did not say what Mr. Crandall says I said. What I did say was that fantasy -- by which I meant the fantasy actually being produced in our culture today, the fantasy of Avatar or The Dark Knight or that which is, in one way or another, merely derivative from Tolkien or Lewis -- represents a break with the Western mimetic tradition to which the fantasies of yesteryear still, more or less, belonged. I would indeed have been guilty of the absurdity I am accused of by Mr. Crandall and his supporters on The American Culture website -- and all the commentators on his piece there appear to be his supporters -- if I had attempted to claim that Lewis or Tolkien or anybody else, for that matter was not a "real" artist. But I didn't. I don't even know what it means to be a real artist -- as opposed, presumably, to an unreal one. I believe the question to be an unprofitable one, even if I knew how to answer it.

Nor would I ever make such a crude generalization as to say that anything fantastical in a work of art disqualifies it as art, as Mr. Crandall seems to suggest by citing the example of Shakespeare. His American Culture claque helpfully provides many more examples of art which I have presumptively made a fool of myself by proclaiming to be not "real." But I had no purpose in writing the piece to go on the fool's errand of deciding what is or is not "real" art. I have nothing against Lewis or Tolkien and am perfectly prepared to call them or anybody else Mr. Crandall likes "real artists." The trouble is not that they or any other particular artists write children's fantasies but that children's fantasies have now become such standard fare for children and grown-ups alike that it is getting increasingly hard to find anything, particularly at the movies, that is not children's fantasy.

The point is that the meaning of "fantasy" has changed with the cultural context in which it is now the predominant art form. When Lewis and Tolkien were writing, fantasy literature was a largely unvalued cultural sideline, an out-of-the-way corner of literature that, if it was recognized at all, was quite likely to be despised or condescended to. It existed in a ghetto and was assessed not with respect to "serious" literature but with respect to other S-F and fantasy lit. The situation today is completely different. As we have approached the point where we have nothing but S-F and fantasy, even when it is ostensibly realistic, the mimetic principle to which earlier fantasies still bore some relation has been abandoned. It is a sort of standing joke of the culture, roadkill on the superhighway to what we imagine to be a new and better reality than anything it could ever have represented to us.

That's where what used to be called "the suspension of disbelief" comes in. In today's fantastical and post-modern milieu, the question of belief and disbelief simply does not arise. Everything is equally disbelieved, which is another way of saying that everything is equally believed. Mr. Crandall derisively inquires as to "what Mr. Bowman makes of Shakespeare's Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. I guess that's not Art either. Unless, of course, the Great Bard actually believed in magicians, faeries and donkey-headed men." The answer is that we can't possibly know what Shakespeare himself believed in or didn't believe in, but we can know that he wrote in a cultural context that was characterized by belief in many more fantastical things -- as they now seem -- than these, and that this fact cannot be irrelevant to the meanings of these and others of his plays.

Thus, Homer's and other pagan gods were identified in the Christian era with the fallen angels cast out of heaven in the Bible. In art they were representations of what people believed were real beings. This was a world in which magic was only beginning to be distinguished from science. Fairies were believed in by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as recently as a hundred years ago, and I would not take my oath that Lewis and Tolkien did not believe in them too. The popular literature of Shakespeare's day included many books like Mandeville's Travels or Lycosthenes's, Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, which were full of fantasies that educated people were prepared to accept as truths in the same spirit in which Desdemona listens rapt to Othello's tales

of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders,

an account of which latter he found in Lycosthenes. When Hamlet says, a propos of the ghost he has just seen, that

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,

he is making a statement about reality -- and heaven was as real to his audience as earth -- not fantasy. To distinguish between reality and fantasy in the first place is itself an affirmation of reality, which is why our contemporary fantasists don't do it and Shakespeare does -- for example in satirizing the credulity of the common folk in The Winter's Tale. In Act IV of that play, at the sheep-shearing feast, the rogue and thief Autolycus appears with a collection of fantastical ballads for sale:

Here's one to a very doleful tune, how a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burthen, and how she long'd to eat adders' heads, and toads carbonado'd.… Here's the midwive's name to't, one Mistress Tale-porter, and five or six honest wives that were present. Why should I carry lies abroad?

Why indeed! But there would have been no joke if there were not lots of people prepared to believe his lies and other stuff nearly as fantastical as they are. As I'm sure Mr. Crandall and his friends know very well, there are a lot of people today who would claim that religious belief itself is nothing but a lingering monument to just such popular credulity. I don't think so, but then I'm rather credulous myself. What I objected to in our contemporary fantasists -- the question of their predecessors was too complicated for me to go into in such a short article -- was that they deliberately and as a precondition of their art cut me off from any possibility of belief in the worlds they represent to me because they do not believe in them themselves. And if they don't believe in them, why should I? And if I can't believe in them, why should I care about them? That is the question the fantasists need to answer and that appeals to Lewis or Tolkien are designed to circumvent.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (19) | Leave a comment

Stuart Koehl| 3.15.10 @ 7:08AM

Bowman always uses a lot of words to say not very much.

Asa Hearthrug| 3.15.10 @ 7:37PM

Bowman says what he must, succinctly.

basur| 10.27.10 @ 6:22AM

Sweet, so, if Hawaii breaks away, can we then say Obama is not a citizen and kick his ass out of the white house?

JP| 3.15.10 @ 7:52AM

I think much of disagreements stem from the very large changes in the world of "Art" beginning at the commencement of Enlightenment. Fantasy, or what many would today call allegorical stories of the ancient world through the High Middle Ages was usually put to verse. From Homer to Beowolf, to Tristan, and through Chaucer and even to the operas of Wagner, not to mention much of the Old Testament, verse was the main platform to convey stories, moral tales, tragedies, etc...

This all changed with Goethe, who in his early 20s wrote what many considered the first novel ( Werther). From then on, verse and poetry took a back seat. Yes, Shakespeare, Milton, Racine, etc... still had a big impact. But, the realism of Austin, Flaubert, Stendal, Elliot, Hugo, and Tolstoy and Dickens suited the imagination of the Moderns even more. Social Realism became the rage. And things like dragons, goblins, witches, and fairies were relegated to children's books. Tolkien changed all that. But as was mentioned above, his peers never really took him seriously. His greatist impact was on the young. It seemd almost a rite of passage for teens to have gone through a LOTR period (as well as a short period of reading Edgar Allen Poe, and even Lovecraft). What is interesting is that many people failed to realize the strong under current of Tolkien's Catholicism in his writings. In private letters, he freely admitted that he strongly wished not convey this directly in his stories. He never wished to write a Catholic allegory. But for those who know Catholic theology, they cannot fail to pick up on many subtle hints of the author's religious beliefs. Tolkien also infused a kind of Burkean idealism into his stories and characters (which many readers confuse with enviormentalism). Tolkien, like Chesterton, witnessed the passage of the old rural English traditions and moral life for the modern and industrial one. Lewis, however was more up front in his writings. They both had different ideas on how to portray thier ideas; but, both were artists in thier own right. Lewis was an expert on the English language, while Tolkien was an expert in language and mythology.

I think the explosive demand for fantasy writing indicates that many people have had enough of the utterly realistic social novel of the last 150 years. The world is too much with us, and most people realize that there is something missing in today's "art". The lack of contemporary artists to convey the mystical nature of our moral universe only underscores the demand for such movies and books such as Avatatr and Harry Potter. It isn't just children who like these things.

For conservatives, even religious conservatives it is important to realize this part of our human nature. I know religious Christian Orthodoxy precludes an interest in the occult. But, for even Russel Kirk the ghost story had a kind of strange attraction. He loved these kinds of stories. In his opinion, a classic ghost story indicated that a moral universe did exist beyond the bounds of science and "reality".

Tim| 3.15.10 @ 12:07PM

Sounds like you are up against what are referred to as "fan-boys". Grown men with the tastes of 12 year olds. You have little chance to win them over.

Ryan| 3.16.10 @ 2:45PM

Them's fightin' words. I read both the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings every few years.

They're that good. I'll stick with my "twelve-year-old tastes" over dry political commentary and "adult" sitcoms and whatever it is that passes for entertainment these days, thank you very much.

Vern Crisler| 3.15.10 @ 1:00PM

Interesting. I wrote a critique of Bowman's views on fantasies called "In Defense of Superheroes":

http://vernerable.wordpress.co.....perheroes/

There is always the distinction, of course, between good and bad fantasy, and Bowman doesn't seem to make that distinction often enough.

Stuart Koehl| 3.15.10 @ 4:52PM

The best refutation of Bowman can be found in Tolkien's seminal essay, "On Fairey Stories", in which he discusses such matters as "subcreation" and "eucatastrophe".

As for Bowman, let us concede that "Sturgeon's Revelation" (Ninety percent of everything is crap) applies to fantasy--but also to criticism and commentary. At the same time, let Bowman recognize that "Reality is a crutch for people who can't deal with fantasy".

Daniel Crandall| 3.16.10 @ 3:33PM

Stuart, I entirely agree, which is why I close out my response to Mr. Bowman with a quote from Tolkien's essay.

James Wilson| 3.15.10 @ 8:04PM

After reading the original essay as well as this one I don't find much to disagree about. However in one regard I think Mr. Bowman is giving Fantasy and Science Fiction too little credit--not in what they are, but what they might be.

All art is deceptive in and of itself; it is mimetic--it 'mimes' reality, but is not itself truth. The greater and more powerful the art, however, the better it illustrates a truth, or many truths. I can say "the name of a thing doesn't really matter" and convey an idea, but saying "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" conveys more meaning, not less. It better illustrates a truth than a simple statement of fact. I believe that is specifically related to how our minds function--and the reason artists are often conflated with deity is that they are on some level touching the deeper parts of mind and spirit; another reason is how art is made--inspired, rather than built.

The novel is a false picture of the world designed to illustrate what a novelist thinks is both true and important. There are also novels which have no such pretensions but are pure escapism with no attempt at any higher meaning. That describes the bulk of fantasy and science fiction, certainly, and even includes many 'serious' novels that are in their way mere fluff too, but very pretentious fluff.

Science fiction or fantasy, properly used, could be the apotheosis of novel-writing. Tolkien approaches this level without quite reaching it, and at some point (I hope) somebody will figure it out. I've written 12 (unpublished) fantasy novels myself and none of them is close, and none of the hundreds I've read is closer than Tolkien, but the possibility still exists.

The difference between a novel set in the ordinary world and one with an unreal setting is that the false world it gives the author greater control of the environment. A novelist is trying to accentuate what is important and relevant to reveal a truth or truths, and in a false world one has the opportunity to make little things pop out which get lost in the clutter of the real world. It also gives a chance to free oneself from dates. Charles Dickens is a very great (if not the greatest) novelist, but his world is becoming more and more obscure as we grow more distant from it. So many things that were ordinary conventions and common sense in his time are arcane or opaque to us today, and not only because of the distance of time. The Victorian world is execrated by many in the arts and academia, and what was taken for granted at the time is now seen from a hostile perspective. That makes a modern reader work to understand little things that were simply unspoken or understood in his own time, and for those who are not 'into' the classics, it makes them unreadable.

A fantasy novel is completely outside the realm of what is known, and a reader's attention is drawn along by the author in a way impossible to a contemporary novel. Political or philosophical beliefs can be removed from their current context and placed in a completely different setting to make them more easily understood or explained, and especially little observations of life and people and places can be placed in a setting where they no longer seem commonplace. This is not easier to write than a novel taking place in the contemporary world--it's far more difficult, because if the world too inconsistent or the wrong words are chosen to describe things, it can break the spell and jolt the reader out of the illusion. I think this is the reason why Tolkien seems so far in advance of others (at least to me); he chose his words with a great deal of care, and with an extremely good idea of both the what and the why of each word.

Unfortunately most novelists don't aspire to such things, whether they write fantasy or romance or 'difficult' literature. Because art has become so divorced from reality in general, as you described in your critique of Avatar, it's lost nearly all of its meaning along the way. Still the possibility still exists that someday will figure it out and write a truly great (as in almost universally revered) fantasy novel.

Incidentally Avatar does include one actual truth mixed in with all the dead horse whipping. I don't know if it was supposed to be ironic or not, but it was the only thing that impressed me about the story.

The Na'vi said about the scientists who had been studying them for years "you can't fill a vessel that's already full," or words to that effect. Which is why the 'dumb grunt' could learn their ways while the scientists couldn't.

I doubt I'm taking it in the way it was intended, but it's a truth. The problem with advanced education is that you don't produce people with open minds, but people who think their prejudices are reality. They are filled with a lot of elite and learned prejudices, and believe that only a fool would argue, so we have a whole class of people incapable of learning anything new after the age of 20 or 21. Which explains a certain President or two I could name. As the Na'vi said, 'you can't fill a vessel that's already full' (of itself).

Truth is where you find it--and no matter how bad the movie, there's almost always something worthwhile to be learned--like a little fleck of diamond hidden in a mound of manure. The question is whether it's worth the digging.

Ryan| 3.16.10 @ 2:48PM

Probably the best fantasy out now may be George RR Martin's Song of Fire and Ice, but he's getting a rather tired fandom who is waiting for him to finish the next dang book...

Daniel Crandall| 3.16.10 @ 3:31PM

I'm glad to see folks debating this subject. For those interested, I take up Mr. Bowman's response at The American Culture.

J.K.S| 3.16.10 @ 11:24PM

@James Wilson: "You can't fill a vessel that is already full" is nowhere near as elegant as "A cup's use lies in its emptiness." Clearly the Na'vi could use a few lessons in terse utterances from the the Japanese. And that, precisely is the problem with most "fantasy races" now isn't it? From it doesn't matter which corner of the Star-Trek universe you visit; the people you meet are inevitably either noble-savages or caricatures of some culture that already exists somewhere on earth and their philosophical truths have already been better expressed by some mere human.

RE| 3.18.10 @ 4:44AM

http://spectator.org/archives/.....ent_238988

P Wynn| 3.26.10 @ 5:25PM

Re Bowman's dissing of SF. SF of either Verne or Wells descent is either dead or moribund (this is arguable, I know). That branch of SciFi DEPENDS on its verisimilitude for its effect. Well's Island of Dr. Moreau is a case in point: the revelation of what the good doctor was up to is not revealed until after a realistic setting has been established: thus the shock, the frisson of good SF. As has been put more than once, that branch of SF sets up a believable world, all the better to shock us with its radical disjuncture from it. This is to be distinguished from fantasy, no matter what anybody says. I say that branch of SF is dead or moribund to try to explain why Bowman would link SF to fantasy, which he apparently does.

Robert| 4.5.10 @ 4:08AM

I agree with this comment: The novel is a false picture of the world designed to illustrate what a novelist thinks is both true and important. There are also novels which have no such pretensions but are pure escapism with no attempt at any higher meaning. That describes the bulk of fantasy and science fiction, certainly, and even includes many 'serious' novels that are in their way mere fluff too, but very pretentious fluff.

Robert,
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