I ♥ Fantasy Novels

I would like to point out that this is a tiny excerpt from a giant — let's call it an "article" — which covered every element of fandom that I could think of — including Star Wars! for some reason! — and which I spent about four months aimlessly fondling before I noticed it was, you know, completely insane (and also totally incorrect, which is worse). So: context!

Also, I am by no means suggesting that Rachel Corrie's life didn't 'matter' in non-symbolic terms, because what the fuck; I just wanted to mention that, in the event that the universe suddenly began responding to injustice according to the rules laid out by fantasy fiction, we would be fighting three Ragnaröks a week. Despite its multitude of apologists (hi!), fantasy is the least inhabitable genre on the shelf. Which is, see, exactly the opposite of my thesis here.

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…[W]hen it comes to amusing myself, I've always really loved to read, and what I read more often than not are fantasy novels. And by 'fantasy novels,' I mean stories about angels, trolls, aliens, fairies, etc., whose characters are broad, caricature-like luminaries with conflicted histories and inexplicable motives. That's actually my favorite part of fantasy novels — the movement toward prosaic abstraction that results in wizards and elves and talking trees. I find it far more truthful than less creative styles of characterization, in which fictional people sort of diddle around in human-like ways or in ordinary scenarios but are ultimately very far from being interesting enough to look realistic. Reality, as I perceive it, is a kind of generalized, communal madness. Mankind has got all kinds of violence and hilarity rolling around in its collective head, posing as thoughts and feelings and beliefs — and in our hearts, in our pants, in the places where it really counts, we're all fantasy characters. Even dull people, even really dull people, even the people who are trying very hard to live the fictions they've absorbed through the propaganda of our consumption-glazed culture, are secretly Martians and hobbits. I truly believe this to be the case. Here is a random example of our overwhelming American dependence on the authenticity of fantasy: On the most basic wordless level, every idiot in the country self-mythologizes to the psychotic point that a representative percentage of the population felt "betrayed" by a dimwit who "lied" in his memoirs. And because we've read and watched so many small men overcome impossible odds exhilarated by the pens of fantasy writers, we all seem to believe that we can truly make a difference in the world — even though that does not, in fact (& sadly enough), appear to be the case. By the same Tolkien, bellicose religious bigots remind the Reader in me of nothing so much as warmongering orcs, twisted out of shape by rage and pain and refusing to question the all-seeing, supernatural eye of their Master. And it's common knowledge that every bride is a fairy princess, buoyed up by the traditional balance of malice, pride, envy, greed, anger, and delight which is reported to comprise the classical fairy temperament. Fantasy characters are the Halloween masks we wear under our faces. When you strip out the normalizing behaviors that make real people look sane to one another, you end up with the fee and the gnoles. Which is why I like to read about them, of course; I get to skip the boring parts.