Generally speaking I'm
not big on guest posts or surveys or anything promotional on this
blog. But recently I was sitting here part slogging, part tearing through Sartor Resartus when a not
inconsiderable pile of gold coins landed anonymously in my lap along
with a note demanding a “critical yet on the whole positive review”
of a new fantasy epic they are doing their damnedest to make into
a bestseller.
Not being one to take
bribes, I hired my good friend Professor Humblesworth, who teaches
both economics and literature at [your favorite prestigious
university], to give us his two cents, if not a little more. I
don't agree with everything he says. I think that Europe and America
do more than lord over the world and exploit it. They do offer some speck
of knowledge and enlightenment as well. But what he says about
ecology is notable.
Xen and the Art of
Badassedness Fakery:
Review of the English
translation of R.R.U. Schitterend's
The Lord of Spikey
Swords and the Hottest S&M Goddess
by Professor
Humblesworth
Europe
desperately needs to take its mind off its economy. The Netherlands'
new grand master of fantasy, R.R.U. Schitterend, is here to help.
Over the
past few years, with the rise in oil and food prices, Europe has seen
a general decline of its economic badassedness. European Unification
was going okay until Germany was forced to shoulder the whole thing,
carrying freeloaders like Spain and Greece by the sweat of its own
bailouts. Thus Austerity was born—that unhealthy realism that
America fortunately has shirked. As a result of Austerity, the Greek
government has been forced (quite against its will) to lay off
thousands of government workers and cut retirement benefits and other
necessary things that its citizens think they want but only need.
The
evils of such realism are obvious. They grow more pernicious every year.
Who can shake the knowledge that we use four times the amount of oil
that we are discovering? That 99% of plastics are made from oil, that
95% of the energy we depend on for food and shelter comes from fossil
fuels? Who can easily ignore that renewable energy sources like wind
and solar are nowhere near as portable or cheap as oil? Who has the
ability to hallucinate that the mean household income in the world is
much more than $10 a day? Or that top soil isn't being lost at 25
times its rate of replenishment due to unsustainable farming
techniques, overgrazing, strip mining, and fracking that keep Europe
and America in fact making more than $10 a day? It would all be
enough to make you become an organic-farming peasant or a wild
preacher or revolutionary or radical philosopher, except for the fact
that none of these professions will make you enough money to maintain
your lawn, a requirement for being a decent human being. How will you
pay for the seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, riding mower,
riding mower gasoline, and meticulous landscaping needed for a
respectable lawn if you don't have a normal job and drive a
gasoline-burning car to work? Ignorance of reality is indispensable.
Recently, a Radical Left party called Syriza won in Greece,
promising to end Austerity and the realism that goes with it. But so
far their noble-minded revolt against reality has had the opposite
effect. Now all of Europe is wondering whether the Union is realistic
at all, whether the whole region isn't in decline, whether their
economy isn't a hopeless basketcase.
Stop it,
Europe. Just stop it. We Americans, the masters of defying reality,
know well never to pit reality against itself. To defeat reality, you
need fantasy. England has J.R.R. Tolkien and America has George R.R. Martin. Europe, until now, has been lacking in this department.
America
is the most respected nation on earth because it has a strong
military, and it has a strong military because it has strong economy,
and it has a strong economy because it has a strong dollar, and it
has a strong dollar because people respect America. If you cut any
single link in this chain the fantasy collapses and we'll
slip up like we did in 2008. The secret to confidence is confidence.
Whether you're a real badass or fake one is immaterial, as long as
everyone believes you are. Europe needs to relearn this lesson, and
R.R.U. Schitterend was born to teach it. It is fortunate that Continental Europe, like England
and America, now has its Tolkien.
Schitterend
describes himelf as “a gentle atheist with a smattering of Xen.”
What is
Xen, again? Xen monasteries across the highlands of Asia have honed
the art of badassedness fakery for millennia. They've invented
countless fake badass martial techniques such as The Flamingo and The
Bursting Weasel and The Walking Cat that don't work in practice but deftly intimidate the
local peasantry. Several political wars have been won using nothing
but Xen-fu, but for most critical applications Xen monks use a
psychological weapon known as the Kone.
Kones
are explosively illogical stories. For example:
The largest of the peasants came against their oppressor Xen Master Uridu. The large peasant had a large stick and Master Uridu said, “I will grant self-rule if you but listen to two Kones.”
“Sure,” said the peasant.
“A student said to his Xen Master, 'Please explain Xen.'
“'If you listen to these two Kones,' the Master replied, 'I will kill you.'
“The student covered his ears.
“'And if you do not listen I will kill you.'
“The student did not hear because his ears were covered. So the Master killed him."
The large peasant thought for a moment and said. “And your Second Kone?”
“The largest of the peasants came against their oppressor Xen Master Uridu. The large peasant had a large stick and Master Uridu said, 'I will grant self-rule if you but listen to two Kones.'
[...]
Considerations
of space prevent me from reprinting a Kone in its full sprawling
force.
The most
successful authors of modern fantasy have mastered
the art of the Xen Kone. J.R.R. Tolkien may be the only significant
exception to this. His stories do tend to cohere and resolve.
He makes up for this deficiency with hard-to-follow
digressions—notably Tom Bombadil's mysterious appearance and
disappearance—and endless poetry and songs in invented languages
that would take years to master. Most people who begin the Lord of
the Rings never finish it and most who finish it go on to spend
their lives learning elvish because they are very nerdy. So the
result is comparable to that of Xen.
The
Lord of Spikey Swords and the Hottest S&M Goddess is 1200
pages long, 2/3 of which is exposition. Most of the rest is footnotes
and appendices. But Schitterend's mastery transcends verboseness and
density. He masterfully balances spectacle and poignancy, blood and
gore, barren sexuality and quirky idiosyncrasy. His plotline is thin
almost to the point of plotlessness, his pacing frantic to the point
of Expressionism, and his smut and violence so visceral and epic that
you find yourself on the edge of your seat without knowing or caring
what is going on. At every turn Schitterend frustrates his readers'
expectations while satisfying their dirtiest and most secret desires.
The
protagonist is a warm, friendly old man being executed for pacifism.
On his way to the gallows, pelted by rotten pears and pomegranates,
an old hag screams sarcastically, “And the peace-maker shall yet
live to be the Lord of Spikey Swords!” He spits his ironic, almost
flirtatious retort, “And thou shalt yet live to be the Hottest of
S&M Goddesses!” Hearing her inmost wish, she faints. The
old man is hung but does not die, and is released “by the
unfathomable will of the gods.” When he asks her what she meant by
the prophesy she says it was only meant as an insult but that some
higher power was clearly at work. So they set out together to realize
their joint destinies.
The
setting of the novel is “swordpunk” by the way, an innovative new
genre that is like fantasy in every respect, except that most
monsters and animals are clockwork machines powered by steam. It
makes the story feel more urban and edgy and not too naturey or
organic. Schitterend does well to discard the outmoded literary
imagery of healthy biology and flourishing nature, in yet another way
breaking with the stifling ecological conventions of traditional
fantasy.
Speaking
of shattered conventions, already in the first chapter you have a
hero and heroine who are old, ugly, poor, and stupid. It heightens
the suspense: How will she become hot if she is so ugly? How will he
become a Lord when he's a mere senile old crank? The fabulism of this
plot premise is equal to, or perhaps even greater than, the fabulism
of Martin's: Who will win this anarchic game of thrones and rule
happily ever after? And it is certainly more fabulous than Tolkien's:
Who will yet be lord of the rings? Rings? Who cares about rings?
Whether you're reading Tolkien, Martin, or Schitterend, the only way
to find out what will happen is to read on and on and on, and herein
lies the unique brilliance of epic fantasy.
So how
is the prophesy fulfilled?
If you
had a million chimps each with a million arms each typing a trillion
words per second, to stumble on Schitterend's plot would take them
almost two minutes. Seriously. This is the most original fantasy epic
ever written. Martin excels in shock value and plot twist?
Schitterend excels in electrocution value and plot spine-breaking.
Who will die? Who will live? Who will fornicate with whom? You can't know until you read it.
The
so-called “villain” of the story is the crazed Czar Imperator,
who supplies a vast ocean of gore and a giant pile of sex for your
hedonistic enjoyment. A Caligula with the heart of a Nero, he finally
gives Europeans an outlet for their natural urges of procreation and
death without having to move to a Third World country. Not to worry,
this X-rated material is brought to you guilt free, because all the
people ravished by the Czar (I lost count at 300) are racist
sex-offenders themselves. Schitterend's poignant scenarios remain
ever-fresh: basically everyone in the kingdom is a
politically-incorrect, criminally-minded bigot. Believe me or not, by
the end of the novel you are cheering Czar Imperator on. He
personally tortures and kills thousands of his subjects and this too
is vividly described, morally justified, etc. In short, Schitterend
does an superb job of evoking the emotions of queeziness and
dislocation any American or European would feel on being transported
to a medieval monarchy.
This
dark subplot crucially fills out the main narrative. Without it your
typical reader would admittedly be in danger of falling asleep.
Almost every protagonist in modern fantasy is a warrior or soldier—or
as in the case of Frodo close friends with one. In this story the
hero and heroine can't fight. They flee from every clockwork monster
and disgruntled human that appears. You can't blame them because he's
an elderly ex-con and she's morbidly obese and wanted for witchcraft.
Nor is the sole chase scene thrilling—she has a bad leg and he's
half-suicidal anyway—and from chapter three they hide under an iron
bridge with their cyborg goat, where they live on goat's milk and
asparagus from the ditch for half the novel.
***SPOILER
ALERT—GET YOUR $24 WORTH AND BUY THE HARDCOVER NOW***
When
your friends tell you they have a crush on Czar Imperator, you need
to be able to tell them what bastard from the novel you think is even
hotter. Or maybe you're not into blood-crazed Imperators or poor
elderly fugitives of the law? No worries! I'm throwing in my
dearly-prized critical acclaim to help this book vastly ennoble your
coffee table.
Ah,
you're still reading. So. Drought sets in, the asparagus dies, coal
prices skyrocket, and their steam-powered goat runs out of steam. A
herald announces that the Czar will fix things by relaxing
regulations on fracking but destroying the environment takes time and
they begin to starve.
Enter a
prophetic street guru named Deusex Machina, very unlike your
conventional Yoda or Gandalf who tend to suggest moralisms like “do
or do not” or “we must destroy the ring.” (Destroy? A power like
that? If Sean Bean hadn't predictably died before he could get his
hands on it, Tolkien's Xen would have become unlimited.) No, Deusex
once again breaks every convention. The guru that takes them under
her wing is young, female, sassy, and full of useful advice.
She
explains that the best thing to do is get an organic goat so their
lives aren't dependent on low coal prices.
Okay
let's pause here because I know this sounds too real, like maybe an
allegory about our fossil fuel dilemma. Not to worry. At the end of
novel, with mere paragraphs to spare, Schitterend elegantly sidesteps
the economically-fatal flaw of moralism. The Xen is strong in this
one. Read on for spoilers on how. (Or just buy the book.)
In
response to this advice the old bums laugh for a long time. The sassy
rather sexy guru is like what and checks her makeup, and they say no
you obviously know your stuff, and she's like then what is it, and
they point to a nearby coal-price sign. Prices have already dropped
from all the fracking (still too real? bear with me) and there's not
going to be another crisis for at least another 15 years and look how
freaking old we are we'll be dead.
The
sassy guru gets angry and curses them both and they metamorphose into
little children never to age. Gracefully done, Schitterend, you've
both advanced the plot and shown us there is no black or
white, as it often seems only critics know, but rather shades of
gray. The sassy guru cackles. Our heroes' now-youthful neurons become
sparkly and psychotropic and frolicky and learny again, as
Schitterend chromatically mosiacs over the next 250 pages. (I would
accuse Schitterend of offering a symbolic allegory of the 60s here,
but I mean, really, symbolic allegory in a 21st century
novel written by a white male?) But then the sassy prophet saunters
off forever and they come to their senses and unfruitfully scour the
city for an organic goat. Oh the irresolution, if not suspense!
Luckily
we get a couple of chapters of Czar Imperator killing, fornicating,
etc. etc.
To avoid
making “breaks with convention” a cliché
(yikes the paradoxical horror) let's just finish off the review like
this:
Here are
the remainder of the ways in which this novel annihilates all
fantasy-writing custom:
- They just buy an organic goat at the store, rather than undertaking some insipid quest to find it.
- Czar Imperator's violence attains ever-sublimer peaks of biological-instinct-satisfying intensity, instead of becoming some kind of edifying satire. As these scenes reach their climax, Schitterend's deft literary imagery really sparkles.
- Coal prices do skyrocket but luckily they find an unused piece of land and start an organic farm, and even more luckily Czar Imperator whips the snot out of his scientists until they develop cold fusion. Sure the hero and heroine had already gone organic but at this point Schitterend has spent about 500 pages explaining how grinding their poverty is under the boot of the Czar's taxation and how their neighbor suggests a strike but they just laugh because is he some kind of communist or worse, anarchist? One is tempted to compare this portion of the novel with Rickshaw or Oliver Twist or some other outdated preachy novel but in the end Czar Imperator is the real hero because he gives everyone a cold-fusion-powered goat.
- Is it “happily ever after”? Thankfully the two eternal children come down with polio and are crippled and poverty-stricken once more. The Czar flaunts his shades of gray by not giving a damn about it. And the original prophesies that they will become Lord and Goddess never come true, rather than predictably satisfying our expectations that they will.
No epic
fantasy more original has ever been accepted for publication.
Granted, some of its “originality” is a bit hard to swallow. Come
on, cold fusion? In a fantasy novel? But ultimately, in fantasy as in
economics, plausibility is far less important than style. As one award-winning sci-fi magazine puts it in their submission guidelines, "Style is
substance." What says style like teasing
your reader with would-be messages like “fossil fuels are running
out” or “go sustainable” or “violence and rape are not cool
even during a collapse of civilization” and then showing that in the end who
cares? What could be more fantastical? We may yet succeed in
saddling Europe with the kinds of heart-pounding, brain-quieting
illusions that provide the U.S. economy its self-confident grace.