So I just got done reading a rather discouraging (and certainly rather old) comment from the fantasy author Michael Moorcock - 77 years of age as I write this -- in regards to the fantasy genre, where he said something along the lines of "...if I were a young writer now, I would not even go anywhere near fantasy. For when I got started with it, it was a young genre and, much like rock and roll, it hadn't really been created yet. So you could do your own thing with it..."
I must say,since I do dearly love Moorcock's tales of Elric of Melnibone, and often skim through them when in need of inspiration, I do find his comments very debilitating, but at the same time I also find them somewhat ironic (I think that would be the word) if only because, well, even here in 2017, guess what? One of the big reasons I took to the fantasy genre recently, after many and I mean many years of utterly ignoring it (basically since I was a teenager) was basically for the precise reason Moorcock claims to have taken to it all that time ago in his youth: The genre actually still feels young, and in many ways, hardly touched, depending upon which angle you look at it from.
To Moorcock of course, I suppose this would seem ridiculous, since he has, over the course of his life, watched the fantasy genre go from a little seed of a few scattered books and fairy tales, to something that now *seems* rather all encompassing with blockbuster films, video games, a wide variety of books, action figures at Toys R'US, and certainly TV shows, et cetera. And all of that is true...the fantasy genre has certainly grown exponentially over the years, and it definitely has far more of a mainstream flavor. Significantly more. Many, many people, especially in the west, are definitely very aware of all of this stuff now. It's not a secret anymore.
Still though, in many respects, the genre does actually remain fairly untouched in my opinion, if only because, when you really look at it, it is not actually as mainstream as it seems. The fact of the matter is that most of these characters have yet to be taken seriously still (notice how most mainstream actors don't really play wizards) and I personally am of the belief that pushing characters like Elric of Melnibone and others into a mainstream sphere is just as much of an interesting battle as initially creating them ,in Moorcock's time, must have been. There is also something else I think, which is this: Many of the early fantasy stories were horrifically trapped in a sort of "medieval" prison of sorts (i.e. the men had to be chivalrous or the women had to be in long robes etc.)
Now Moorcock did, in fact, do a lot of pushing forward with this, which is one of the reasons I began to read him (as Elric of Melnibone takes drugs, and is not necessarily chivalrous) but it still doesn't change the fact that even Elric is more than a bit bound by a type of convention that Moorcock, writing largely in the 70s and 80s, simply couldn't have gotten him out of at the time.
One thought that occurs to me continually whenever I read or think about fantasy tales, especially those written in the past, is the manner in which, though you can't see the time period in which they were written painted all over them (like you can if you read,say, a mafia story from the 70s) you can still see it once you actually look close enough, and this is really why I think it is actually more important than ever that something like the fantasy genre not just be randomly abandoned now that we are at a point where we have a heavy shelf filled with fantasy books behind us, from the past. Moorcock is essentially shaming the modern, young writer with his statement, acting as though, just because there is a wider and more significant foundation to fantasy now, and thus more to work with and less to single handedly create, one shouldn't be bothered with it. This is ridiculous, however.
For the real truth is that a writer should rejoice at how the bookshelf is filling up and getting heavier. I don't believe it should be looked at as a damning thing. It should instead be looked at as a saving grace. If we were to follow Moorcock's philosophy, we would have to create a new genre every five years. We would also have had to cease writing stories set in actual reality tens of thousands of years ago, since those obviously have nothing original about them. Therefore I can't help but wonder: Since you wouldn't have done fantasy, what would you have done, exactly? What other genre would you, in your great genius, have possibly created? And would you also abandon that genre the second three other people were writing in it? It doesn't make any sense.
There is also the additional fact that Moorcock, as good as some of his Elric stories are, really isn't as "original" as he perhaps falsely seems to think he is. Put simply, the guy wasn't working with as new of a genre as he seems to want to lead people to believe he was. This is the biggest and most curious fact of all with fantasy writing: In a certain sense, though it is new to literature, it isn't actually new in terms of world history. For, you see, by the time he came around in the late 60s or early 70s, fantasy had already been something that, again, though it wasn't really being written of in many novels that the New Yorker would want to review, was definitely available to the scholar who was studious enough to head backwards in time and read of almost literally any folklore or fairy tale that history had to offer. Fantasy tales have always been around; you merely had to know where to look for them. The only thing thats really changed in our time is that now serious artists feel like they can pursue them in very long winded novels without being laughed out of the room. In a sense, fantasy is really taking a similar leap to something like - and you'll find this shocking - cross dressing. In the 1950s, nobody was going to be caught dead cross dressing. Now its a serious political debate that people cannot wait to discuss and participate in and start nightclubs around, etc. The characters are beginning to invade new and ever more glorious rooms. They're escaping the "ghetto".
Alas, this all sort of reminds me of an argument I had recently with someone who tried to tell me that RA Salvatore "invented" the dark elves single handedly. It sounds like a silly argument to be having, I know...but it's annoying because, well, RA Salvatore did not invent dark elves, German folklore did, and they were originally called the 'dokkalfar'. RA Salvatore did an extraordinary job taking the dark elf myth to the modern idea of a novel, and then successfully popularized that novel in many circles; what he did there was fantastic; but it still doesn't change the fact that the idea that he "invented" them is an absurdity. But so too of course wuld the idea that JRR Tolkien invented the elves, the wizards, the idea of small men with hairy feet, and these other things, be an absolute absurdity - and yet I am sure many people believe just that, since the idea of the folklore has been all but lost in our modern day.
People look at the Lord of the Rings and Game of the Thrones as though they are these masterful inventions that have never existed outside of the minds of the two authors who created them, and this is, in my opinion, dreadfully annoying, especially in terms of Game of Thrones, which is really just a story of kings and queens doing what real kings and queens did in the Dark Ages. In fact, much of Martin's inspiration is said to have come from an actual historical event which you can see in the White Queen from Starz, an event called 'the War of the Roses'. To me, watching Game of Thrones is often akin to watching literally any Shakespeare play I've seen a million times before. I'm not fathoming the great originality the masses are seeing; because I have read the **real** history of this all that the author has, I suppose you could say, stolen.
The truth when it comes to myself and the fantasy genre is that men like Moorcock, Tolkien and George Martin, as interesting and skilled as they all are, simply weren't enough to push *me* personally into the genre, and neither was the modern counterculture or pop culture/Comic Con thing, as cool as it is, either. For whatever reason, perhaps arrogance, I do not know, I needed some other sort of foundation to exist in my head in order to convince myself that fantasy was worth writing, and ironically my reason is the exact opposite of Moorcocks: I am deeply invigorated by the fact that these tales actually, in some form or other, go back thousands upon thousands of years. and have deep traditions all around them.
I am not disturbed by it, nor do I think it is a reflection on my lack of "originality". I am actually invigorated and intrigued by it, and it makes the tales that much mor interesting -- and more mysterious -- to me. It connects me to an old line and makes me feel like I am not just working with some stupid thing that, you know, only gets sold at Wal-Mart for a season, and then finds itself in the bargain bin. For most people, Lord of the Rings seems as though it was some silly trend that belonged solely to the early 00s at this point, and the same thing can be said for Moorcock's novels, if we are to apply the sort of rules he wants to apply to it saying what he is about young writers. We would have to trap Elric of Melnibone as a part of a silly early 70s trend, instead of letting him breathe as a single part of a huge and very long line of fantasy storytelling that stretches back thousands of years before him, and shall stretch on thousands of years after him, and after World of Warcraft is gone, and another game arrived, as well.
Hence, you see, fantasy actually serves and helps to inspire me, just like it would seem it did George Martin, to simultaneously thumb through old Dark Age history as I go about trying to craft my stories. I enjoy plucking freely from these old things, and trying to spin them as best as I can in new ways....
With Moorcock, however, it is almost as though he is saying he wouldn't want to work with the mythology of the elves just because they are, well, mythological and date back thousands of years. Are you not going to include mountains in your stories either then? Strawberries? Plants? Rivers? Streams? Horses? Dogs? Swords? I mean, again, going by this criteria, you would have to rip up everything, as nothing could possibly be "original" enough.
Absurd.
-- signing off
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