When Did All the Great Fantasy Authors Turn Into Andy Kaufman?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one
“Andy Kaufmann” was a famous stand-up and comic television actor, who became best known for taking his career in the direction of performance art. For example, he performed as various alter-egos, and staged seemingly “live” fights on camera during talk shows and in exhibition wrestling matches (against professional wrestlers, which was a hint). Jim Carrey starred as him in his biopic, In the end, his name became synonymous with punking the audience.
I find, more and more, that really seems to be what many authors and publishers seem to be doing. Absent the occasional false-start or “trunk story” that ended up nowhere, creatively — when a story comes to me to be written? I write it.
I mean, that’s it: I feel obliged to finish it. Even if no one else will read it, the obligation is still there, a priori to any marketing or publishing enterprise there might be.
CLARKE
But, I just read a review of Piranesi, a Hugo and Nebula nominated 2021 novel by (the acclaimed) Susanna Clarke. Full disclosure, I was not a fan of Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell. The TLDR (ironically) for my review is: It took her ten years to write and it felt like ten years to read, with an on-the-nose ending that fell so flat it crossed the line from anti-climax to shell game. So, for me, bottom-line: there is little chance I will read her sequel in full.
Still in that review, the reviewer touts it — even while admitting that:
“Clarke leave[s] [the reader] totally in the dark for a significant portion of the book as to when, and especially where, we are, we actually don’t know who (in the conventional sense) is telling the story until it is nearly at its conclusion.”
Look, as someone who sat through the nonsensical abomination that was Marvel+’s Secret Invasion because I was a fan of the source material, I get when something is nonsensical but you push through, anyway. What I don’t understand is praising it because it is eschewed actual storytelling.
So I started reading it — I had to see this.
And it turns out — just as with JSAMN — the author has created another excuse to fill pages with exposition. This time, instead of Austenian literary voice and Victorian (Elizabethan? history buffs please check me) prose, the excuse is the elaborate environment, a magical fantasy realm — which, combined with convenient amnesia — amounts to an elaborate escape room scenario. That being the case, I must paraphrase Hitchcock and say: To keep the audience in the know while keeping the character in the dark is suspense; but, to keep both in the dark is just bad story-telling.
I’m sure it’s all very clever. Yes, yes, if I allow it, maybe she’ll even trick me, like a trained monkey, to turn the pages; but, no thanks. In my middle-age, I’ve grown wary of such shenanigans.
“Oh sure the banner may be torn and the wind’s gotten colder,
perhaps I’ve grown a little cynical”
— “Run-Around”, Blues Traveler (1994)
But this isn’t to critique Clarke or her reviewer; really, I guess my concern is that storytelling itself no longer seems to matter. I know I present as a philistine; but, I come at it honestly. Let me review a few of the times I’ve been “Kaufman”ed by mainstream authors:
ROTHFUSS
Since 2007, the best fantasy author/series going, to my mind, is clearly The Kingkiller Chronicle, the amazing fantasy trilogy by Patrick Rothfuss. Except, as you all know: the trilogy is only two books (!). Book Three: The Doors of Stone has, apparently not been written, yet.
Rothfuss was 34 when book one, The Wise Man’s Fear, was published; and he is in his 50s now. There’s time, but he’s released other written works in the interim eleven (11) years since book two was released. And, mind you, he’s already been paid by the publisher to write that third novel. To add insult, he has raised money for a charity for just releasing a promised chapter. A chapter he hasn’t yet released…that was back in 2021.
To date, no on has seen a word of book three. Hilariously, despite being unreleased, it currently has 3.56 stars on Goodreads from nearly five-thousand ratings.
The first two books are so good, he literally just needs to find any kind of passable ending and he’ll go down as one of the greats. But — I don’t know, is it just me? — it’s beginning to look like maybe he’s not going to do it. And if he doesn’t, then I will be forced to regard him as something of a creative charlatan.
But, hey, who cares? He sold some books.
Andy has me in a head lock.
DONALDSON
I regarded the First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, combined, as the best fantasy series of all-time. Seriously, buy them. Read them.
I had various email exchanges over the years with Stephen. He was always gracious to me (and to everyone —long before social media, he had an entire “gradual interview” with his readers over those interim years on his website). My questions were mostly sophomoric; but, one thing was very clear: he had a story in mind. The Second Chronicles, he reported, were conceived at the same time as a “Final Chronicles”.
And, then, amazingly, after twenty-one years he undertook it. He had delayed it, he said, because he didn’t feel his skills were sufficient to do it justice. But, he felt he had to complete it.
Now, that’s what I’m talking about. Right?
Well, sort of. Ultimately, IMHO, it ran aground:
Two books worth of story were expanded into four books; the entire cosmology of the first two series were somewhat bastardized (ie, what happened to the Creator?); a lot of characters and plot points from the previous six books were recycled (think “The Force Awakens”); and — here’s the kicker — I believe he blinked the ending. And I mean, something fierce. And I’m not alone:
“[Ten novels worth of] world-building has been done; the ground has been laid. Lord Foul enters Covenant and tries to take him over; and according to rumours circulated outside of the books by Donaldson’s closer fans, and hints dropped in interviews by the author himself, this encounter was ‘the test of acceptance’, in which Thomas Covenant would acknowledge his own inner Despiser, and he and Lord Foul would become one. I had been looking forward to this scene for years —
— And I got one sentence. That was it. Lord Foul disappears and the battle ends in fewer words than there are in this paragraph.”
And so it went. That was the penultimate climax, by the way. The ultimate climax — OF THE ENTIRE SERIES, I’m talking about — happened off the page. I. Kid. You. Not.
So, now the overall Chronicles, all ten books, while of course a remarkable achievement — and with some of the most amazing writing anyone will ever encounter, therein — ended up being…
— not great story-telling. Not en toto. Oh well. While I completely respect the instinct to finish his work: in practice, he didn’t. Not really.
But, hey, he just sold some books. In his case, I blame the industry…I really think they rushed him on that last book.
Andy throws me against the ropes…
MARTIN
And, of course, there is the ultimate Kaufman, the Grand Master of the audience punk, the GRRM-ster himself: George R. R. (even his name sounds like something that won’t go) Martin! Big hand, ladies and gentlemen — and his series so epic that, well, um, I guess we’ll likely never know how epic it is*: A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF).
Let’s be clear, like the other two previously mentioned, Martin is regarded as a modern master. But, like a ship blown off course by magical trade-winds, is seems like their creativity has been commandeered by the market forces at play.
The defining features of ASOIAF are 1) How major characters are killed seemingly randomly. For the record, I do know it is all part of the Grimdark, nihilistic vibe (“Dummy, there is no point! There’s not supposed to be a point! Life is random and then you die! So, are you here for the Bride or the Groom?”). I just think that’s a childish world-view; and 2) Speaking of world-views, there are at least two dozen different viewpoint characters.
And, no matter how good Martin is, he doesn’t make all of their voices that unique. This meant I often would have to wade several pages into a chapter before I knew whose viewpoint I was in. Anyway, I made it most of the way through book three before DNF-ing it, and the series.
But, even (or especially) for loyal fans: There will supposedly be seven novels. So let’s do the math: the first five all came out between ’96 and ’11. And nothing since then. Please keep in mind that the average size of the five novels that have already been released thus far, average almost 350K words each — which is a tad under three times the average size for a fantasy novel. And please also note that Martin is seventy-five.
Hey, ASOIAF fans, that feeling you feel might be: Andy body-slamming you to the mat.
One! Two!…
~~~
My overall take is: just as with comic books since the ‘90s, the storytelling has becoming decompressed. And while there are always reasons (For comics…it’s more cinematic, it allows for the artist to take the lead in the storytelling, etc.), there is no denying that the publishers make more money telling a story in two books than they do in one (in fact twice as much, I believe). It’s like buying tacos, post-pandemic.
So it is, too, with genre fic.
Whether it is (allegedly) to enjoy the beauty of the prose as with Clarke, or to give the auteur a wide berth in order to enjoy the complexity of the world-building as with Martin (and, hey, I didn’t even mention Steven Erikson**), color me cynical, I still think they might be prioritizing sales.
FOR MY PART: I still keep my ear to the ground for great new reads; but, my key is: for most of the twentieth-century there have been master story-tellers telling great genre-fiction — so I also resolve to visit my local used bookstores, on the regular.
What say you?
Best,
_Mark
~~~~~
*- And no, please, the tv show’s ending doesn’t count. Although I’d actually love to see GRRM write the novelization of it and make that his ending, ha ha. That would be kind of retro, wouldn’t it?
**-”Malazan Book of the Fallen” is supposed to be tremendous. And, also, everyone says you need to wade at least 1.5 to 2.5 books into the series before you start to figure out what’s going on. Really? I have to pass. Too many good, old books out there to discover…
