Cliches.....are they really all that bad?

[GOLLUM]

Yes I see what you mean by the cover, looks like something out of Grimms Fairy tales.

[Jarshen]

Well this has certainly thrown up some ideas and I will definitely read Lud-in-the-Mist, so thanks Teresa, never heard of it.

I guess I am your pretty average fantasy reader (actually this is not true, but hey, whatever.) I do think my perception of the genre is limited, I would never have though to inlcude Lovecraft there, so will search out some of the other people you mention Mr.Worthington, makes me wonder about Peake and Bulgakov. This is good news 'cos I was getting very tired of reading some new fantasy.
Read Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley, nice writer and great feel for his setting, but you know who is going to die, who survive and what they need to do. Maybe the story itself has become a cliche.

This said a cliche reinvented is a powerful tool, (I always think of Han Solo in this regard, a wonderful character/cliche reinvented by Harrison Ford that was so strong it becomes an archetype and moves into cliche at the same time) and I think we do re-examine and re-intepret both cliches and the past. To some degree Gio this is what I meant about the Golden Age, every age has one and its representation has as much to do with the current times as it does with history. On this point, and to the despair of academics, pedants, historians and anyone else with more knowledge than me I think we have to be very careful with being too concise, too correct. Rules stimulate and control, they can also inhibit, I have seen a lot of accurate and worthy commedia dell'arte shows with all the 'right' movements acted out and it was dull. The one thing commedia was not was dull.

I certainly have no answers to your original question Thor Doomhammer, but it has got me thinking and I will come back with a few questions of my own (have a particualar thing about the politics of fantasy.)

That said I reckon in terms of writing, write what inspires you and what you want to write about, what you want to read. And your thread has certainly proved that if the form is cliched, there is in interest in changing that.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Jarshen

...makes me wonder about Peake and Bulgakov.

Oh, yes, I think Peake and Bulgakov (at least some of their work) would definitely be labeled fantasy, and was for a very long time; but they're not "typical" fantasy in the modern sense....

This said a cliche reinvented is a powerful tool [...] and I think we do re-examine and re-intepret both cliches and the past. To some degree Gio this is what I meant about the Golden Age, every age has one and its representation has as much to do with the current times as it does with history. On this point, and to the despair of academics, pedants, historians and anyone else with more knowledge than me I think we have to be very careful with being too concise, too correct. Rules stimulate and control, they can also inhibit, I have seen a lot of accurate and worthy commedia dell'arte shows with all the 'right' movements acted out and it was dull. The one thing commedia was not was dull.

That said I reckon in terms of writing, write what inspires you and what you want to write about, what you want to read. And your thread has certainly proved that if the form is cliched, there is in interest in changing that.

Some very good points here, I'd say. My only differences with you are that I'd say a cliché that's been reinvented has moved from cliche to type, as it is no longer simply a hackneyed, overused, and unimaginative repeat of what's been done before, and I'd make a distinction between being too concise and too correct (at least, in one sense of the latter) in that concision (and, necessarily, precision) allows for a better understanding of terms and the possibilities of words, thereby allowing for a much better use of the language and its nuances, shadings, and variety in general; it's like a carpenter (or a sculptor) knowing the difference between an awl and a chisel. If you are precise in your terms and use them with such knowledge, you can use them much, much more effectively because you have much better (though not total) control of their effect, and therefore of communicating what you desire to communicate.

And I think your final statements reiterates the distinction between cliché and archetype (or type), in that, if something inspires a person, they usually bring something of their own, something individual (not original in the purest sense, but with a tinge of originality because it's filtered through their own individual perceptions and use of language, etc.), and therefore won't truly be a cliché ... unless the person him- or herself is extremely clichéd in their way of thinking....

Oh, and you're right: the commedia was never dull.....

[Jarshen]

Oops absolutely right, being 'too concise' is almost an unachievable state of enlightenment, something to be aimed for.

I think I meant too defined, thereby absolutely proving what you are talking about in terms of the shades of meaning.

[Giovanna Clairval]

No one reacting on Ursula LeGuin and Mrs. Brown?

Why is Mrs. Brown (and her like) so rare in Fantasy novels?

And do Fantasy writers actually write novels?

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, actually, my post was in response to the question of Mrs. Brown.

One of my favorite books -- and, in my opinion, one of the best fantasies ever written -- is both a novel and populated with a whole town full of Mr. and Mrs. Browns.

Another author whose work I admire is James P. Blaylock. He doesn't write about Mrs. Brown, but he's been known to write about her somewhat-befuddled slacker sons.

[Teresa Edgerton]

I also think, if we are going to be able to discuss whether fantasy writers do write novels, we need to come up with a definition of "novel" that we can all agree on.

Is The Count of Monte Cristo a novel? What about Virginia Woolf's Orlando?

[j. d. worthington]

First, not having looked up the date of the essay, it rings like something that was written in the 1960s-early 1970s, when such an approach was very common in sf, especially with the newer writers (like Le Guin); something of a polemical approach to set themselves off from the Old Guard, if you will; necessary, but also necessarily modified as time has gone on. (I repeat, this is my impression, and may not be accurate.) And, in fact, the New Wave writers quickly set about doing just that: making the sf story about characters, often very mundane characters, though sometimes still using archetypal characters (or, as has been said of Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius, portmanteau characters), though they, too, fell into certain clichés over time (as well as creating some of their own, very well satirised by John Clute in his encyclopedia, as I recall).

I also strongly question her statement about novels as being somehow a better species of prose than any other -- that smacks (even from such an intelligent and insightful commentator) of personal prejudice rather than reasoned critical judgment. I'd argue that -- at least from this bit here -- it's again an hyperbolic statement to bolster a particular position, and that short stories, novellas, novelettes, and novels each have their strengths and weaknesses that make them uniquely appropriate for a particular type of story, and that novels are, in the final analysis, no better for what they are designed to accomplish than a short story or a prose poem is for their purpose. Each is extremely exacting if done well, and in some ways short stories may be said to be more so, as they require the ability to accomplish much of what a novel accomplishes with much less room -- an extreme precision of language (with all its attendant power) at best. But, again, this is because of the special constraints of the form, and does not actually say short stories are better than novels, any more than the reverse is true.

As for whether fantasy writers write novels.... well, for one thing, I object to any writer being pigeonholed as a fantasy or a science-fiction or horror or thriller or whatever writer, as a writer writes all sorts of material in their lifetime, and by so categorizing (as we have come increasingly to do) we've cut off a fair amount of flexibility in some of our best writers by forcing them to either stick with one branch of fiction or suffer economic consequences, when they may be extremely versatile and able to do quite well in many. I'd much rather consider them as writers who often work with fantasy or whatever -- again, Moorcock is one example, as a lot of his work is fantasy, but he has also written polemics, satires, western, slice-of-life, sf, romances (in the older sense of the term), and so on.

As for whether they write novels... not as much as they once did, no. Again, I'd say this is more something that's a result of trying to make it as a professional writer in an increasingly narrowly-focused field (or set of fields), where readers are once again demanding a much narrower range of stories (but will eventually find this to be too stultifying and emotionally and imaginatively unsatisfying -- something we are indeed witnessing increasingly from those who have been reading in the field for any length of time). But it used to be much more the norm, yes, and could be again.

And last: the definition of novel given in the essay is also rather limited, as there are many things that come under the rubric "novel", from Petronius' and Apuleius' works to the "fragmented" novels of the post-structuralists or the modernists, the picaresque novel, etc.... all of which rely heavily on saying what the writer has to say through character. In fact, I'd say this, too, falls under what I mentioned earlier: that attempt to set themselves apart from the Old Guard, with their roots in the pulp tradition, as a great deal of any fiction does this.

In other words, while the essay is certainly thought-provoking, and has a certain amount of truth to it, many of the ex-cathedra announcements made there strike me as somewhat rhetorical and having something of the cliché to them themselves, as they echo many statements I've run into from the Modernists and those who were criticizing them at the same time, without truly adding a great deal....

[Wiglaf]

Actually, I thought the "wrong" cliches came from old stories (fairy tales, epics, whatever) in which a traditional story was written down much later with many later elements having crept in. I figure we have merely adopted modern characterization, writting styles, etc. to the process. The conventions are basically passed down from when Beowulf, the Volsung Saga, El Cid, and numerous others were written. Elvish civilization resembles Celtic on occaision because, elves predate humans and Celts predated Germans in Western Europe. Glimpses of a now-fallen, but in-the-past great civilization come from Rome. Shiny plate mail from the late middle age practice of changing the armor and weapons from older stories. At least, this is what I always believed.

As for the definition of a novel, I always went with a fictional story too long to be a short story. Of course, I only worry about if I want to read something, not its category.

[HardScienceFan]

it's BAD cliches I object to

[Flavia]

The definition of "novel" I offer here is limited, of course.

First, I'll say that Proust doesn't write novels, but Sthendal does, because there is no drama, and no proper story in A la recherche du temps perdu", but Le Rouge et le Noir is a novel with characters, and dramatic tension, conflicts, a beginning, a middle, and an ending where something happened to the characters, a more or less complete tying up of the plot.

As JDW says, Le Guin was certainly writing in reaction to mainstream SFF.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Over the years, I've tried to read Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme, and in each case I found the plodding prose of the translation unbearable and didn't get very far. Possibly due to the sins of his translators, Stendhal isn't really well-known over here. Could you give another example, Flavia?

[Flavia]

Im' sorry about the bad translation. The Red and the Black is beautifully written.

The Three Musketeers is a novel

and

The Count of Montecristo is, too



but I was looking for a more literary--and known--one...

Les Miserables

The Name of the Rose

I think it would be more difficult, and interesting, to make a list of the non-novels.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Flavia

I think it would be more difficult, and interesting, to make a list of the non-novels.

Well, one might start, of course, with Alain Robbe-Grillet....

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by Flavia

I'm sorry about the bad translation.

Unless you were the translator, I see no reason for you to apologize. (This is where I would put in a smilie, if I used them.)

We Americans are very unfortunate in that our schools don't insist on our learning other languages while our young brains are still malleable. I'm sure that we miss a great deal because of it.

I asked about The Count of Monte Cristo because I wondered if some might consider it too much of a romance -- in the old sense of the word -- to qualify as a novel. But if the Count is in, then I think most, if not all, SFF works of novel length would qualify as well.