Ntuple Indemnity

Rejoice, ye citizens, for here be a literary post.

A series is an interesting thing to commit to (terminating preposition fully intended). Theoretically, the easiest to get into are the ones that lack an overall narrative arc, where the brand-name power resides strictly in a central character or characters. If you take Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels, for example, you don’t necessarily have to start with The Mysterious Affair at Styles to have a grasp on what the Belgian sleuth is up to in Murder on the Orient Express (though admittedly, a familiarity with Styles is a necessity prior to tackling Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case). In fact, someone who begins with Orient Express will notice nothing familiar about it being told in the third person rather than narrated by Poirot’s analogous Watson, Captain Hastings.

The trouble with these, of course, is knowing what to read first. I keep hearing people tell me how well Pratchett and I would go together, but they all scurry away as soon as you ask them where to start. It’s always tempting to start with the earliest-published work, but it’s like trying to evaluate Star Trek: The Next Generation based on the first season – you risk an unfair appraisal because often, the author has yet to find his footing. Occasionally you will have a genre-defining maven like Raymond Chandler who had his rhythm in order right away (that being Philip Marlowe’s debut in The Big Sleep), but that’s hardly a common occurrence. Sometimes the first book in the series is a really good read, but lies prior to the establishment of any conventions that only come out through repetition; this is the likeliest explanation of why Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale has yet to be adapted to film, the Peter Sellers-starring spoof aside. And sometimes, an author’s early work is just plain bad; of this, there are too many examples to list.

The type of series you hear a lot more about nowadays is the one where each successive volume may have a self-contained unity of its own, but claims as its primary purpose to develop an overriding story arc where each entry keeps you guessing about the next. As before, sometimes it takes a few books for an author to really start delivering the goods, but the constant here is that in order to make heads or tails of what is going on, it is in your best interests to start with the first one. The overriding continuity drives both the story and the sales.

This creates an interesting trap. Let’s say an author builds moderate success with his first few books and establishes a dedicated fan base that expands via word-of-mouth. He opens up a number of dangling plot threads that yearn to be resolved, and pull you onwards. The series reaches a saturation point where every new release is going to sell. Once an author develops this hit-churning momentum, the editors offer less scrutiny. This can lead to one of two things: either the author refines her craft and sharpens her wit like a knife, adding dimensions to the story that are unexpected, yet insightful and consistent (see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix); or conversely, spirals out of control and goes patently nuts for several hundred content-free pages at a time, but compels you to read on anyway because those plot threads remain unresolved (see any of Robert Jordan’s later works – the exact point whereat he falls apart depends on how much you let him tax your patience).

I just finished A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin‘s first volume in his saga A Song of Ice and Fire (currently consisting of three volumes, with a target of six). It was recommended to me by someone who reads a lot of fantasy, but would benefit (as I believe everyone would) from being a cross-genre reader who dabbles in everything. To his credit, this was one recommendation that was on the ball. I came out of this first book with a very positive impression, and I think I know why. Martin captures everything that worked for Robert Jordan – the backroom squabbling of prissy nobles in overvalued estates, pre-Westphalian kingdom-to-kingdom “international relations” if you will – and dispenses with most of the annoyances.

What Martin has that Jordan doesn’t includes, but is not limited to, the following: controlled shifts in perspective that present new information in a logical manner; conscious discernment between characters who matter and characters who don’t; no silly names with random apostrophes; seven hundred pages of action and development, not ten at the beginning and ten at the end; minimal internal monologue that does not beat the reader upside the head; chapter endings that keep you interested without trailing off in ellipses; the conspicuous and welcome absence of Mary Sue; an overall narrative flow that contains the polyphony of stories being told; a demonstrated ability to write prose.

(Admittedly, Jordan does have Martin beat when it comes to video-game boss battles. I say that flippantly, but it is honestly and tellingly one of The Wheel of Time‘s recurring highlights.)

On that point about the silly names with random apostrophes: the consistency with which Martin’s nomenclature falls into a schema that reminds one of Middle English (yet demarcates cultural distinctions in language, as with the Dothraki) is quite remarkable. Mind you, this is something that we should normally be able to take as given, but nomenclature in modern fantasy is so wildly out of control nowadays that it’s a relief to see an author do it in a way that doesn’t outright suck.

His prose is fairly standard fare, and while it leaves a lot of room for study, style is not in any way the locus of his literary depth. Martin’s storytelling manner won’t wet a critical reader’s pants, but to its credit, it fails to annoy. This is clearly the kind of book where the narrative is at the service of the plot. As far as thick paperback tomes go, A Game of Thrones is highly readable, and part of it is because the plot is so well constructed. It’s a risky, gutsy story that treads in a murky sea of moral ambiguity. The best kind of plot for a Romantic tale of this overarching scope is where it feels very much like the author tossed all the characters in a cauldron and let them boil amongst themselves; the reader should never see him stir. If you start caring about certain characters that meet untimely ends (and in this book, do they ever), it comes off as your own damned fault.

I hear that in A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, Martin stays on track. I’ll evaluate that claim soon enough, but classify it as good news.

The other series opener I just read was the first in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (The Bad Beginning). Apparently, the upcoming film will also incorporate events from The Reptile Room and The Wide Window, which isn’t entirely surprising, given the brevity of the first book. That is to say, it’s really short. On the upside, it’s also the soul of wit.

Snicket (or would that be his “representative,” Daniel Handler?) writes at a level that is readable by an audience younger than Rowling’s, but his control of the language (even amidst self-imposed limitations of length and vocabulary) is masterful. But that’s only one aspect of what I managed to glean from 162 pages in large print.

Maybe this comes from writing a recent paper on the assessment of performative speech acts in “Signature, Event, Context” – but I can’t help but feel that Lemony Snicket is Jacques Derrida for kids. I kid you not. In the key sequences of The Bad Beginning we see a fictitious enactment of precisely what Derrida says in celebration of contexts for performative acts (in this case, the classic example of the “I do” of a wedding ceremony) that J.L. Austin dismisses as parasitic. This isn’t even a matter of analogy – the example comes directly from Austin’s claim that a theatrical performative isn’t valid or legally binding, and Derrida’s response that we would never recognize it as felicitous in the first place were it not a repeatable formula.

Then we get to Violet’s coup de grace at the climax of the novella, which I will not spoil here, but hearkens back to what Derrida says in the same essay about the validity of a written signature acting in the absence of a speaker. This isn’t just kid lit, guys – this is a tour de force of twentieth-century thought condensed into the most deceptively elementary package imaginable.

In conclusion, I really should have started reading Lemony Snicket a long time ago, because I could have written a much, much better term paper. I do plan to get through the rest of the series soon in conjunction with the considerably more voluminous second and third parts of A Song of Ice and Fire, among other books – The Bad Beginning is short, sweet and readable in one easy sitting, and its ten sequels don’t look much longer.

I already suspected Nintendo had gone completely nuts when I spent an hour or two drawing trampolines on the lower screen of their latest handheld. To quote Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, “He no nuts, he’s crazy!”

Further evidence of the company returning to being as delightfully bonkers as it was in the glory days is its Metroid haiku contest. You know the drill – “Five in the first line / Seven in the second line / Five in the last line.” Apparently, the entries are going to be adjudicated by a bona fide black-belt haiku master. Due date: 6 December.

You can never have enough writing competitions, really. Speaking of which, I would like to remind my audience that tips concerning local writers’ circles or workshops are always welcome. And for that matter, chess clubs.

Speaking of chess, here’s a link from a while back that I never posted: for all you Harry Potter fans out there, check out the full, uncut Weasley-McGonagall position as designed for the film of The Philosopher’s Stone, and this accompanying analysis by games expert Jim Geary.

Next: A review of Alexander by someone who knows what he’s talking about.

Leaving for a weekend means there is a lot of catching up to do in terms of current events, happenings that had or will have a dramatic impact on the world.

When the dramatic impact I speak of is possessed of a physicality like the flurry of Wong Fei-Hung’s legendary No-Shadow Kick, you have Yuen Wo-Ping to thank for that. As every martial arts aficionado knows, Yuen is possibly the greatest fight choreographer in cinematic history. Over the past few years he has finally gotten more attention in North America, thanks to his work in The Matrix and Kill Bill as well as the overwhelming success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at the domestic box office. Well, it looks like he’s about to make his English-language directorial debut in the Disney-financed Snow and the Seven, which is reportedly an iteration of Snow White featuring seven Shaolin monks and set in late-nineteenth-century China, a setting that immediately brings the braided hairstyles of the period to mind.

Unfortunately, whenever the best in Asian film come do a stateside project, studio pressures and fundamental misunderstandings of how Hong Kong cinema works the way it does impede their movies from ever being nearly as good as one would expect. Once Upon A Time In China director Tsui Hark has since been damned (or rather, van Dammed) to B-movie hell; Jackie Chan’s career has been limited to buddy-cop culture-clashes and inexplicably, Passepartout; and someone should tell Revolution Studios that Jet Li and DMX aren’t exactly Freddy and Ginger. There’s a lot of talent going to waste here. Hopefully Yuen Wo-Ping is given the directorial freedom he needs, and moreover, a good writer.

But if you read that story to which I linked, you’ll see that the “good writer” part has already been covered. They’ve signed none other than Michael Chabon, whom I never hesitate to identify as the best American novelist this generation. As such, there is plenty of reason to be optimistic about how this will turn out.

Speaking of Chabon, I never ended up ordering my Amazing Adventures of the Escapist #3 and #4. I’ll get on it, unless I spot it at a local retailer first.

I got started on Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. back when I was about thirteen. Without knowing that it was to be his last novel – it would be a few weeks before he announced his retirement – I picked up a hardcover copy of Timequake in its first printing, as that was the year it saw release. Much of the novel is about the author’s failed attempt to make heads or tails of a workable first draft of that same novel; Vonnegut intermittently pulls himself out of the narrative – or inserts himself in, one might just as accurately say – and speaks at length about his own travails in the writing process.

There’s one specific passage in Timequake that has stuck with me ever since. Allow me to share:

Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers. Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. They they go over it painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done, they’re done.

Like Mr. Vonnegut, I am a basher.

National Novel Writing Month, however, was designed for swoopers. It’s an admirable project, mind you, and I would not hesitate to sign up for it if it were not for the volume of other commitments I have ahead of me in the very immediate future. NaNoWriMo, as it is called, is basically a pledge to produce 50,000 words of fiction by the end of November. Let me say this: I very much admire the spirit of the project as they lay it down in the FAQ. It involves the regimented self-imposition of an artificial deadline in order to overcome writerus blockitis, a disease that has more to do with reluctance or laziness than a lack of inspiration. But, as they say themselves, the emphasis is on quantity, not quality.

So if you are a basher in the Timequake sense of the word, thou art screweth. Not for everyone do words flow out like endless rain into a paper cup. For some, they trickle. But like spurts of creek water pumped through a filter, the trickles are clean.

On a completely different note, for those of you who don’t know, not only did Roman emerge victorious at the University of Calgary’s Fall Open tournament (with his partner from Simon Fraser University, first-time debater Xenia Menzies), he did it whilst dressed as the Bee. I went with a new recruit of UBC’s that I also did not meet until arriving at the tournament itself, James Lawson. We only posted a 2-3 record, but placed well in individual speaker standings.

In other news, I hear there’s an election coming up.

Earlier today I read Janet Lo’s life story (in thirty seconds, but re-enacted by something quite different from bunnies). It’s one of those blog posts, the sort of which you will probably never read on this page, where she charts her course through those formative years of K-12 schooling and fluctuating levels of involvement. I could get into how she is now herself an educator in the making and correlate it to the circular journey of the Campbellian hero, but I won’t. Instead, I want to focus on what she says as she brings the story to its conclusion and ties it up in a neat little knot: she calls the one who first offered her a volunteer position in the Education Students’ Association “the catalyst that changed my life” – not at all an inaccurate assessment, given that it eventually led to her serving an entire year on the Students’ Union Executive.

But let’s consider the word “catalyst” for a second.

Whenever we examine literature – and for the purposes of this post, I’ll relegate the discussion to narrative works of fiction – we ask ourselves about the premises of the piece: the questions it poses and how it answers them, if it does at all. Placing different narratives in juxtaposition is a matter of finding common questions, and comparing or contrasting the respective approaches.

One of the questions that exists in such abundance that it could justifiably be termed universal is this: How do people change?

Is it by catalysis? Are we shaped by catastrophic events, plot twists, critical moments of paradigmatic unhinging? Janet seems to think so, and she’s not alone. The supposition that people’s lives and characteristics are residual effects of things that happened to them is the hallmark of the “origin story” that we so commonly associate with the comic book superhero. Batman would have been an ordinary spoiled kid with a stratospheric inheritance had Joe Chill not knocked off Thomas and Martha Wayne. Peter Parker would still be an isolated gifted kid, dwelling in loneliness until the day he enrolls in post-secondary and volunteers for his faculty association, had he not taken a nipping at the hands (legs?) of a radioactive arachnid.

The singular catalyst is perhaps most easily discernable in comics and pulp adventures where the archetypes are broadest, but appear in all forms. You’ll often see some readers or editors of fiction draw a line between plot-driven and character-driven stories. I would posit that the two are never mutually exclusive, though one often comes out on top as the dominant narrative thread.

The other model of character development is evolutionary, and works by way of one’s gradual responses to circumstance. I find it curious that more often than not, it is a process of decay. To cite an interdisciplinary example, one could make a case that Michael Corleone stopped being the detached and indifferent war hero the moment he killed Solozzo in the restaurant, but the real progression of who he becomes can hardly be pinned on one incident alone. He was conditioned by his immersion in a culture of crime, fear and fratricide.

The real puzzle, in the end, is what the relation is between how literary characters are defined and how is it we change as people – be it in our involvements, our sociability or whatever makes us unique. Perhaps marking out the turning points, the catalysts, are a purely retrospective analysis when we engage in the act of storytelling.

Do we tell stories, or do they tell us?