What a delightful conversation! I was very happy to hear that young Patrick’s literary style is very similar to yours. It means that the world will continue to be graced with Harts’ majestic writing long after I am gone.
I couldn’t agree more with your harsh critique of publishing houses’ practice to provide abridged versions of classical literature. My daughter is currently studying the Iliad in school, and since only chapters I, VI, XXII and XXIV are included in the curriculum, I caught her in the act of attempting to read a booklet containing only these particular parts. Needless to say, I persuaded her to read the whole masterpiece. Regretfully, she was the only one in class to do so.
Since you have mentioned several countries that have produced great children's literature (UK, France, Germany), I believe that Sweden should also rank very highly with Astrid Lindgren, Selma Lagerlöf, and even Tove Jansson (she is, of course, Finish, but wrote in Swedish). I lived at the other end of Europe behind the Iron Curtain and I can guarantee that at that time there was hardly a child in my country (at least in the big cities) that hasn’t heard of Pippi Longstocking or Karlsson-on-the-Roof.
I wish you had more time to elaborate on the criticism of George R.R. Martin. I don’t particularly like his prose, but at least he has a talent for worldbuilding and is sufficiently educated in history to create an epic quasi-realistic war narrative within a rich fantasy framework. But then I don’t think the Song of Ice and Fire is his best work. I actually like more some of his short stories and his early novel Dying of the Light. And his children book the Ice Dragon is also not bad.
Thank-you. I have not read the books but did try to watch the series. I could not not stand the gratuitous scenes of sexual violence, often explained away as “well, that’s how the world is.” It needn’t be. Better stories can be told.
He is not a great stylist, but I think that his plots and some of his characters are pretty good. There is a reason why HBO is eating out of his hand. The shows based on his works are the among greatest hits on their streaming services and won them plenty of Emmys. Also, his fan forums and wikia are as popular as Tolkien's and second only to Harry Potter's ones. Whatever we can say about mass taste, one cannot achieve such levels of popularity and critical acclaim by being completely talentless.
As regards his presumed sadism, I agree that his writings are disturbing on many levels (in addition to what you already mentioned, some of the characters depicted in the more explicit scenes are actually underage). However, I thought this is a result more of two other factors: his intention to show the reality of medieval life and warfare (as he understands them) and the fact that such scenes simply sell a lot. Writers like Joe Abercrombie or N. K. Jemisin are even worse in depicting acts of cruelty and, unlike him, don't even balance that with classical "noble" characters. Overwise he doesn't seem like a bad person and his blog actually reveals him as a genuinely nice man, whose love for NHL rivals your baseball affections and who likes eating and drinking, collecting toy soldiers and enjoying a peaceful life.
Well I mean fifty Shades of Grey was extremely successful, now where is her talent as a writer? I actually think the success of GOT has the same foundation: Depicting things like rape and torture and making it seem like it has an actual plot while all there is are violence and cruelty covered by pseudo philosophic speeches by characters like Littlefinger.
Now I say that as someone who was forced to watch 5 seasons of that rubbish, before being granted absolution. It is what it is: A highly sexualised medieval fantasy of an old man, mixed in with some magic and dragons to make people feel it has something to do with LOTR.
I wanted to indulge myself to add, as someone who has read all the books and watched the whole show, that a characterization of GOT as only violence and cruelty becomes more and more obvious the further one reads in the saga. The first three books are based on the War of the Roses, and end with the “satisfying” denouement of Red Wedding - satisfying, of course, in the same sense that pornography is satisfying. But for the subject it was apt: Rob’s marriage to a peasant represented as the ultimate stupidity on a continuum with his father’s own idiocy. This idiocy, in Martin’s view, is consummated in cruel slaughter. That is the end of the story - where plot and story are literally the same thing.
After the Wedding, though, Martin faced the serious problem of how to write four more books about these characters. The result has been, in A Feast for Crows and A Dance of Dragons, a very confused, haphazard, and ultimately meaningless sprawl of events that don’t even quite make sense as pornography. I think the first three books are also ultimately meaningless, but that was hidden by the fact that Martin was so focused on the “plot of passions” that results in the Red Wedding that he apparently didn’t even pause to consider the fact that passions only have interest or meaning in literature insofar as they are at least implicitly acknowledged to be tragic, misshapen participations in virtue.
There is no acknowledgement of virtue in GOT. It tells the story of kingship without sacrality, medievalism without a church, and spirituality without transcendence. The closest you get in the books to an acknowledgement of the existence of virtue is when Joffrey (I think) dismisses the aged Ser Barristan Selmy. There you get the whisper of a tragic pathos as the old knight is publicly humiliated because his honor makes him too inflexible for the Lannister regime. But still: Martin is concerned to grind Selmy’s honor to powder in Dany’s bloodbath on the other continent. Even Ser Jorah’s apparently selfless defense of Dany throughout the books is suggested to be a repressed sexual desire for her.
I would even go so far as to say that the last two books are an example of Martin consciously or subconsciously realizing that, for the above reasons, he has no meaningful story. Or, to say the same thing a different way, that the only way he could make a meaningful ending of his saga is by aping a grammar of transcendence and virtue through the danger of the White Walkers. The confused nature of the last two books (Martin himself has admitted how difficult it was to write them; and how perhaps impossible it will be to complete the final installments) demonstrate Martin trying to write a story that is not merely one damned thing after another. He’s grasping, I think, for some grammar that will give weight to the end of the story. And he’s still grasping: he’s come up with a prophecy devoid of morality (cyclical war against the undead), resurrection through mere elements (fire and ice for Catelyn and Jon), and perhaps, just perhaps, a sentimental neoliberal alliance against a mass extinction event.
Once one grasps that there is no grammar of transcendence in GOT I found it difficult to unsee the whole saga as devoid of actual meaning, and thus probably entirely worthless as literature. Tolkien isn’t perfect, but comparing GOT to LOTR is simply a category error.
Wow, thank you for the great analysis. As a progressive liberal GRRM was always going to struggle with the concept of transcendence, though he did introduce several divinities and even had its own version of the Trinity. Since we do not know yet how the books will end from the point of view of the divine realms (Is there a one true God or just warring demigods? And, if the latter, who will win at the end?) I think it is too early to judge the narrative as meaningless. The TV series resolved only the "historical" conflict. Still, judging by the show, the pagan religion of the Old Gods (through Bran's kingship) will have its day, at least temporarily.
But even if no higher purpose is revealed, so what? Are we going to dismiss all atheist war fiction?
I also agree that he is notorious for needlessly complicating the plotlines (for instance the so-called "Meereenese knot"). He even planned to introduce a time jump of several years after the end of the third book, but couldn't make it work, so he declared something along the lines of "If the world must be saved by children, so be it.". The reason for this predicament is that he doesn't plan the narrative structure in detail and mostly takes it as it goes. He calls this the "gardener" approach (as opposed to "architect" one"), but I call is laziness.
But I must state again that my impression from him (judging from his political positions and his blog) is that he is by no means a bad man.
Fifty Shades of Grey is a hugely popular trash but with a very "specific" audience. The film based on it didn't whin any awards (other than the Raspberries). It's IMDB score is 4.2/10 (for comparison GOT's is 9.2/10). GoT is the show with the second highest number of Emmys ever (after a very long running show such as Saturday Night Live) and first, if we count only fiction shows with actual narrative. That's why I said that it enjoyed both mass and critical appeal.
BTW, show's Littlefinger is a badly written character without much subtlety unlike the book one. There were much more nuanced and interesting characters in the show, such Tyrion, Davos, Jaime, Varys, Brienne, the Hound, Sam, etc..
Of course, you have legitimate reasons not to like the show, but I can assure you that I didn't watch it for the torture and rape. I tend to skip such scenes. I doubt the person who forced you to watch it for 5 season picked it up for these reasons either:).
Sorry. I watched some of the show early on out of curiosity. I think it was trash from beginning to end, without a single redeeming feature. We’re simply not going to agree on this.
I personally love Joe Abercrombie. I don't find it sadistic, but a nihilistic world wrapped in a struggle for meaning and relationships. Haven't read his latest trilogy though.
Of his novels I've only read The Blade Itself, which I thought was entertaining enough. I think he's better as a short story writer, where your point about the struggle for meaning and relationships is more obvious. In the stories I think at times he can achieve a frenetic, chaotic energy that complements that theme well.
No, I agree that he is good, but some of his torture and mutilation scenes are hard to read. I also think that not a single genuinely nice character survived the first trilogy. At least in GRRM’s books there were several sympathetic characters with strong personal integrity.
The name of The Wind in the Willows chapter that you couldn't remember is called Wayfarers All (which happened to be my son's favorite chapter, so it's a mystery to me why this is regularly omitted in abridged versions.)
I love that you mentioned Michael Ende's Neverending Story. Another great story by him is Momo, which I feel has become more and more pertinent as time goes on.
Also, on the topic of gorillas and mysteries in children's literature, I wholeheartedly recommend "The Murderer's Ape" by Jakob Wegelius.
Momo is such a wonderful book which, much to my regret, is rarely mentioned these days. It perfectly illustrates DBH's position in the interview that you don't need to dumb down important concepts in order to accommodate children audience. I don't think I have read a better critique of capitalist work ethics in a children's book.
I think people want to cut back and domesticate that element in works like TWITW etc in that way because something about it frightens them, and they are projecting that fear onto children. It's sadly misguided at best and at worst it's cretinous, but it doesn't help that the world we live in often seems such a frightening place today.
What a delightful conversation! I was very happy to hear that young Patrick’s literary style is very similar to yours. It means that the world will continue to be graced with Harts’ majestic writing long after I am gone.
I couldn’t agree more with your harsh critique of publishing houses’ practice to provide abridged versions of classical literature. My daughter is currently studying the Iliad in school, and since only chapters I, VI, XXII and XXIV are included in the curriculum, I caught her in the act of attempting to read a booklet containing only these particular parts. Needless to say, I persuaded her to read the whole masterpiece. Regretfully, she was the only one in class to do so.
Since you have mentioned several countries that have produced great children's literature (UK, France, Germany), I believe that Sweden should also rank very highly with Astrid Lindgren, Selma Lagerlöf, and even Tove Jansson (she is, of course, Finish, but wrote in Swedish). I lived at the other end of Europe behind the Iron Curtain and I can guarantee that at that time there was hardly a child in my country (at least in the big cities) that hasn’t heard of Pippi Longstocking or Karlsson-on-the-Roof.
I wish you had more time to elaborate on the criticism of George R.R. Martin. I don’t particularly like his prose, but at least he has a talent for worldbuilding and is sufficiently educated in history to create an epic quasi-realistic war narrative within a rich fantasy framework. But then I don’t think the Song of Ice and Fire is his best work. I actually like more some of his short stories and his early novel Dying of the Light. And his children book the Ice Dragon is also not bad.
He can’t write. He’s also a sadistic writer who clearly gets a thrill from fantasies of rape, torture, and mutilation.
Thank-you. I have not read the books but did try to watch the series. I could not not stand the gratuitous scenes of sexual violence, often explained away as “well, that’s how the world is.” It needn’t be. Better stories can be told.
And by better storytellers.
He is not a great stylist, but I think that his plots and some of his characters are pretty good. There is a reason why HBO is eating out of his hand. The shows based on his works are the among greatest hits on their streaming services and won them plenty of Emmys. Also, his fan forums and wikia are as popular as Tolkien's and second only to Harry Potter's ones. Whatever we can say about mass taste, one cannot achieve such levels of popularity and critical acclaim by being completely talentless.
As regards his presumed sadism, I agree that his writings are disturbing on many levels (in addition to what you already mentioned, some of the characters depicted in the more explicit scenes are actually underage). However, I thought this is a result more of two other factors: his intention to show the reality of medieval life and warfare (as he understands them) and the fact that such scenes simply sell a lot. Writers like Joe Abercrombie or N. K. Jemisin are even worse in depicting acts of cruelty and, unlike him, don't even balance that with classical "noble" characters. Overwise he doesn't seem like a bad person and his blog actually reveals him as a genuinely nice man, whose love for NHL rivals your baseball affections and who likes eating and drinking, collecting toy soldiers and enjoying a peaceful life.
Well I mean fifty Shades of Grey was extremely successful, now where is her talent as a writer? I actually think the success of GOT has the same foundation: Depicting things like rape and torture and making it seem like it has an actual plot while all there is are violence and cruelty covered by pseudo philosophic speeches by characters like Littlefinger.
Now I say that as someone who was forced to watch 5 seasons of that rubbish, before being granted absolution. It is what it is: A highly sexualised medieval fantasy of an old man, mixed in with some magic and dragons to make people feel it has something to do with LOTR.
I wanted to indulge myself to add, as someone who has read all the books and watched the whole show, that a characterization of GOT as only violence and cruelty becomes more and more obvious the further one reads in the saga. The first three books are based on the War of the Roses, and end with the “satisfying” denouement of Red Wedding - satisfying, of course, in the same sense that pornography is satisfying. But for the subject it was apt: Rob’s marriage to a peasant represented as the ultimate stupidity on a continuum with his father’s own idiocy. This idiocy, in Martin’s view, is consummated in cruel slaughter. That is the end of the story - where plot and story are literally the same thing.
After the Wedding, though, Martin faced the serious problem of how to write four more books about these characters. The result has been, in A Feast for Crows and A Dance of Dragons, a very confused, haphazard, and ultimately meaningless sprawl of events that don’t even quite make sense as pornography. I think the first three books are also ultimately meaningless, but that was hidden by the fact that Martin was so focused on the “plot of passions” that results in the Red Wedding that he apparently didn’t even pause to consider the fact that passions only have interest or meaning in literature insofar as they are at least implicitly acknowledged to be tragic, misshapen participations in virtue.
There is no acknowledgement of virtue in GOT. It tells the story of kingship without sacrality, medievalism without a church, and spirituality without transcendence. The closest you get in the books to an acknowledgement of the existence of virtue is when Joffrey (I think) dismisses the aged Ser Barristan Selmy. There you get the whisper of a tragic pathos as the old knight is publicly humiliated because his honor makes him too inflexible for the Lannister regime. But still: Martin is concerned to grind Selmy’s honor to powder in Dany’s bloodbath on the other continent. Even Ser Jorah’s apparently selfless defense of Dany throughout the books is suggested to be a repressed sexual desire for her.
I would even go so far as to say that the last two books are an example of Martin consciously or subconsciously realizing that, for the above reasons, he has no meaningful story. Or, to say the same thing a different way, that the only way he could make a meaningful ending of his saga is by aping a grammar of transcendence and virtue through the danger of the White Walkers. The confused nature of the last two books (Martin himself has admitted how difficult it was to write them; and how perhaps impossible it will be to complete the final installments) demonstrate Martin trying to write a story that is not merely one damned thing after another. He’s grasping, I think, for some grammar that will give weight to the end of the story. And he’s still grasping: he’s come up with a prophecy devoid of morality (cyclical war against the undead), resurrection through mere elements (fire and ice for Catelyn and Jon), and perhaps, just perhaps, a sentimental neoliberal alliance against a mass extinction event.
Once one grasps that there is no grammar of transcendence in GOT I found it difficult to unsee the whole saga as devoid of actual meaning, and thus probably entirely worthless as literature. Tolkien isn’t perfect, but comparing GOT to LOTR is simply a category error.
(Sorry for the wall of text...)
Wow, thank you for the great analysis. As a progressive liberal GRRM was always going to struggle with the concept of transcendence, though he did introduce several divinities and even had its own version of the Trinity. Since we do not know yet how the books will end from the point of view of the divine realms (Is there a one true God or just warring demigods? And, if the latter, who will win at the end?) I think it is too early to judge the narrative as meaningless. The TV series resolved only the "historical" conflict. Still, judging by the show, the pagan religion of the Old Gods (through Bran's kingship) will have its day, at least temporarily.
But even if no higher purpose is revealed, so what? Are we going to dismiss all atheist war fiction?
I also agree that he is notorious for needlessly complicating the plotlines (for instance the so-called "Meereenese knot"). He even planned to introduce a time jump of several years after the end of the third book, but couldn't make it work, so he declared something along the lines of "If the world must be saved by children, so be it.". The reason for this predicament is that he doesn't plan the narrative structure in detail and mostly takes it as it goes. He calls this the "gardener" approach (as opposed to "architect" one"), but I call is laziness.
But I must state again that my impression from him (judging from his political positions and his blog) is that he is by no means a bad man.
The reason for dismissing Martin is that there are actually good books in the world worth reading, and he has written none of them.
Fifty Shades of Grey is a hugely popular trash but with a very "specific" audience. The film based on it didn't whin any awards (other than the Raspberries). It's IMDB score is 4.2/10 (for comparison GOT's is 9.2/10). GoT is the show with the second highest number of Emmys ever (after a very long running show such as Saturday Night Live) and first, if we count only fiction shows with actual narrative. That's why I said that it enjoyed both mass and critical appeal.
BTW, show's Littlefinger is a badly written character without much subtlety unlike the book one. There were much more nuanced and interesting characters in the show, such Tyrion, Davos, Jaime, Varys, Brienne, the Hound, Sam, etc..
Of course, you have legitimate reasons not to like the show, but I can assure you that I didn't watch it for the torture and rape. I tend to skip such scenes. I doubt the person who forced you to watch it for 5 season picked it up for these reasons either:).
Sorry. I watched some of the show early on out of curiosity. I think it was trash from beginning to end, without a single redeeming feature. We’re simply not going to agree on this.
Lyks se kirimves issa raqiros:)
I personally love Joe Abercrombie. I don't find it sadistic, but a nihilistic world wrapped in a struggle for meaning and relationships. Haven't read his latest trilogy though.
Of his novels I've only read The Blade Itself, which I thought was entertaining enough. I think he's better as a short story writer, where your point about the struggle for meaning and relationships is more obvious. In the stories I think at times he can achieve a frenetic, chaotic energy that complements that theme well.
No, I agree that he is good, but some of his torture and mutilation scenes are hard to read. I also think that not a single genuinely nice character survived the first trilogy. At least in GRRM’s books there were several sympathetic characters with strong personal integrity.
Yeah. Fair point. I guess I did somehow block out that one of the main characters of The Blade Itself is a torturer.
The name of The Wind in the Willows chapter that you couldn't remember is called Wayfarers All (which happened to be my son's favorite chapter, so it's a mystery to me why this is regularly omitted in abridged versions.)
I love that you mentioned Michael Ende's Neverending Story. Another great story by him is Momo, which I feel has become more and more pertinent as time goes on.
Also, on the topic of gorillas and mysteries in children's literature, I wholeheartedly recommend "The Murderer's Ape" by Jakob Wegelius.
Yes, it came back to me the moment the interview ended. And Momo is brilliant.
Momo is such a wonderful book which, much to my regret, is rarely mentioned these days. It perfectly illustrates DBH's position in the interview that you don't need to dumb down important concepts in order to accommodate children audience. I don't think I have read a better critique of capitalist work ethics in a children's book.
I think people want to cut back and domesticate that element in works like TWITW etc in that way because something about it frightens them, and they are projecting that fear onto children. It's sadly misguided at best and at worst it's cretinous, but it doesn't help that the world we live in often seems such a frightening place today.
As a German I appreciate that you mentioned Michael Ende - Jim Knopf was my favourite book as a child.
Cornelia Funkes The Thief Lord and James Krüss Timm Thaler were also pretty high up on my list.
So I agree that almost all the good German childrens literature appeared rather recently.
It’s encouraging, though.
Let's not forget that Michael Ende's generation also produced Erich Kästner. I was very fond of The Flying Classroom.
Yes indeed.
Any good children's literature you'd recommend that was originally written in Spanish?
Hmm. I think I can recognize the younger-reader novels of Carlos Ruiz Zafón, starting with The Prince of Mist.
Finally, Thales gets some respect!
thanks for sharing