Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Thoughts on/from Jack Vance's Suldrun's Garden
I am currently listening to Suldrun's Garden from Jack Vance's Lyonesse series.
Jack Vance is my favorite author, regardless of genre. He is literary and imaginative, and I think I've finally figured out what it is about his writing that I love so much. His attention to detail translates into vivid imagery, brilliant turns of phrase, wit, and sly social commentary. His humor is wry without the sharp elbow to the ribs that Fritz Leiber is sometimes guilty of. This attention to detail results in rounded characters and world building without the simple formulaic fractility that seems to be the crutch of the current glut of best-selling authors.
Attention to detail is nothing new; the specificity of focused vision is the hallmark of keen writing, but also tiresome writing. That's not it. He is able to focus his vision on a story set in a lush garden o ideas. The garden is--gasp: cliché--organic. For me it isn't the detail of visual imagery that I find so compelling it is the way he grows and interweaves cultures.
For example. In Lyonesse a certain king has an affection for birds. An affection that has become an affectation grown to an obsessive madness: he has passed laws forbidding eating eggs, courtiers wear decorative feather plumage, he has an implied encyclopedic knowledge of birds.
So what? Every dm's campaign has people like this. Yes, that is partially true. This can be found in many campaign settings, but often those cultivated eccentricities overrun the garden with weeds and the setting begins to feel like the marvel universe with every pet character clamoring for special attention. In Vance's creations the natural hierarchy is preserved and the eccentricities manifest from and according to the permissiveness of the power structures, while varying according to the local constraints. We see this in real life too.
Everyone has their particular interest or hobby, outside of their vocation, to which they would love to devote more time, or even turn into their primary occupation. This interest is a matter of emotional feeling and interest and submits only to logic in terms of budgetary, time and social constraints. A king so disinclined to regard social approbation, indeed even encouraged in the their benign diversions, has a freedom of excess to an extreme that can corrupt social norms, and form cultures. It is not hard to imagine such a source for many real life cultural norms. It is the affect of individuals in power, whether on the small scale or large, in times of crisis and peace, whether powerfully acute or gently chronic, which, through their influence, generate these customs, idioms, rituals, philosophies. Each incident a thread in a tapestry upon which individual dramas play out. This is what Vance does: he takes an observation, exaggerates a quality, then deconstructs it, then lets it form the living background for his stories.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
A Campfire tale
Some things never change. Clichés for one; ogres for another. No matter how many stores he hiked through he couldn’t find a backpack that fit right. Now his back menaced him with a stab of pain between his shoulder blades with each step. But it was a beautiful day and he could forgive little pains, and the egalitarian assumptions of stoned backpack designers.
The trail had wearied his legs, but invigorated his spirit. The ogre sat on a granite boulder at the edge of the sky blue mountain tarn, drew a soiled burgundy kerchief from his belt and dabbed the sweat from his brow. He doffed his deep lugged hiking boots, tilting them one by one until bits of gravel rolled free, a libation for the gods of the earth and sky. He set his boots next to him, waved his feet, and wriggled his toes to loosen the sweaty socks. His feet drying he lay one arm across a belly that refused to diminish, encouraged in its rotundity by late night snacks, and let the other stroke his wire haired pointer. The ogre’s sigh of contentment sailed along the surface of the tarn and vanished in the cool mountain air. He could relax for an hour or so before he built a fire and ate dinner.
The sky was clear and he eagerly anticipated the night’s heavenly jewelry display. He had money in the bank, a tan skinned Hummer, a Rolex on one wrist and a rolodex of blondes to wear on the other, but this was his real treasure. A sapphire sky turning amethyst as the sun set, and later a silver moonlit lake set in a band of granite beneath a diamond twinkling sky. It had been too long since he’d done this. He’d promised his father he’d do it more, to keep his memory alive, to keep the old ways alive.
Some things change. It was too bad the homesteaders had used all the trees around the lake, though there had been scant few to begin with, for he would dearly have loved to roast his meal with a spit. That was okay though. The children would taste fine raw. He had preferred them that way since he was a kid. One crack on the skull with a rock at the right angle, purse the lips just so and the brains leapt into your mouth, warm and squishy if fresh, snotty and slippery if allowed to cool. That was the best part, like eating the inside of a marshmallow first. His mother hated that, said it was bad manners. Ma and Pa homesteader could simmer at the edge of the fire pit for a while.
He cracked open a keg of Coors. To get a taste of the Rockies. He took a sip, smiled and held the beer up with one hand, tilted it and nodded to his father’s memory, “To you dad.”
Some things never change. Clichés for one; ogres for another. No matter how many stores he hiked through he couldn’t find a backpack that fit right. Now his back menaced him with a stab of pain between his shoulder blades with each step. But it was a beautiful day and he could forgive little pains, and the egalitarian assumptions of stoned backpack designers.
The trail had wearied his legs, but invigorated his spirit. The ogre sat on a granite boulder at the edge of the sky blue mountain tarn, drew a soiled burgundy kerchief from his belt and dabbed the sweat from his brow. He doffed his deep lugged hiking boots, tilting them one by one until bits of gravel rolled free, a libation for the gods of the earth and sky. He set his boots next to him, waved his feet, and wriggled his toes to loosen the sweaty socks. His feet drying he lay one arm across a belly that refused to diminish, encouraged in its rotundity by late night snacks, and let the other stroke his wire haired pointer. The ogre’s sigh of contentment sailed along the surface of the tarn and vanished in the cool mountain air. He could relax for an hour or so before he built a fire and ate dinner.
The sky was clear and he eagerly anticipated the night’s heavenly jewelry display. He had money in the bank, a tan skinned Hummer, a Rolex on one wrist and a rolodex of blondes to wear on the other, but this was his real treasure. A sapphire sky turning amethyst as the sun set, and later a silver moonlit lake set in a band of granite beneath a diamond twinkling sky. It had been too long since he’d done this. He’d promised his father he’d do it more, to keep his memory alive, to keep the old ways alive.
Some things change. It was too bad the homesteaders had used all the trees around the lake, though there had been scant few to begin with, for he would dearly have loved to roast his meal with a spit. That was okay though. The children would taste fine raw. He had preferred them that way since he was a kid. One crack on the skull with a rock at the right angle, purse the lips just so and the brains leapt into your mouth, warm and squishy if fresh, snotty and slippery if allowed to cool. That was the best part, like eating the inside of a marshmallow first. His mother hated that, said it was bad manners. Ma and Pa homesteader could simmer at the edge of the fire pit for a while.
He cracked open a keg of Coors. To get a taste of the Rockies. He took a sip, smiled and held the beer up with one hand, tilted it and nodded to his father’s memory, “To you dad.”
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