On China Miéville's Fantasy Fiction ... ... [back] I honestly don’t find Miéville’s novels subversive in any significant sense. Miéville himself pushes this line; Henry takes it up on his behalf. But I think it is sort of – well, not quite it. First, I don’t think Miéville holds a mirror up to our own society, culture, politics. The specific lessons he teaches are about how to stop slakemoths, raise giant avancs from the bottom of the ocean, etc.; which is 'how-to' of dubious export value. The general and genuinely exportable morals – e.g. people with power are usually calculating, self-centered bastards – are interesting and important; but, I think, too well known and documented to credit Miéville with their significant advertisement. Second, I don’t think his books function as literary reproaches to, say, Tolkien – no more so than an apple reproaches an orange. Henry talks about how political economy is ‘airbrushed’ out of Tolkien, but there is a sense – I think Henry would be the first to agree, actually - in which this is not strictly correct. Because, of course, if one tries to fill back in the political economy of Gondor – was there ever trade with Mordor? – the result is parody (thanks for the link, Cosma.) But I don’t think this proves Tolkien is secretly, under some airbrushing, a parody of himself. Rather, he is intensely himself. (A large and doubtful point. More momentarily.) The studied absence of certain elements is … well, a feature, not a bug. (In Miéville, many of the characters are so grotesque one almost wishes that line got used. Q: What’s that on your face? A: It’s a feature, not a bug.) There is a strong point to be made in Miéville’s favor in this vicinity. Henry effectively made it a month ago when he quoted this fine paragraph from Mike Harrison. Before the word “fantasy” came to describe a monoculture, it was an umbrella term for work actually fantastic in nature. Nobody “wrote fantasy”. They wrote personal, strongly-flavoured, individual stuff, and the term was applied at a later stage in the proceedings. Unpredictability, inventiveness, oddness, estrangement, wit, could all be found there, along with machinery for defamliarising the world and making it seem new. What we have now—or what we had at least until very recently—is long, evenly-planted fields of potatoes, harvested by machines in such a way as to make them acceptable to the corporate buyers from Sainsbury’s, McDonalds, & HarperCollins. Two things about this. First, 'dreary monoculture' pegs it dead-on; that is the problem with genre fantasy, and Miéville deserves all credit for doing his part to muscle the cart out of horrid ruts. (If there's a new Robert Jordan novel, it must be Saturday!) And, of course, Tolkien is sort of at fault for all of this, providing the blueprint for the factory farm. But, then again, he isn't at fault. He did nothing of the sort. He's practically an outsider artist (there, I said it) with his obsessive, borderline Asperger linguistic and historical constructions and conceits. His wilful refusal of the 20th century; hell, of the 19th century. I think part of him feels that everything after Beowulf, in English literature, is sort of a misstep. It is hard to make fun of such a man by poking him in the ribs with his inadequacy, compared to Proust and Joyce and so forth. He is too far away from you for you to reach his ribs. This is a large part of the explanation of Tolkien's substantial immunity to criticisms of the sort brought against him since Edmund Wilson's day. He is just too intense and authentic. Tolkien is so true to himself that he simply can't be untrue to anyone or anything else. So when he seems to lack technique, for example ending chapter after chapter by bonking hobbits on the head - 'A great blow fell, and Frodo saw no more'; or sort of stipulating that unfunny jokes are funny - 'And they all laughed heartily'; or pointlessly grammatically inverting - 'Ever have I wondered,' 'Never have I witnessed' - I forgive him all. Funny as it sounds, when I never ever get to hear about sex, I feel that I am being shown the man's bared soul. That it is a very odd, in some ways crabbed and cramped and limited soul ... well, that's just how he was. It wouldn't be better if he airbrushed these features out, merely less honest. And the genre of fantasy is, in a weird way, just a dull formalization of many of Tolkien's intense limitations as a man and a writer. So it seems to me. (I think Henry and perhaps Miéville would grant there is something to this, though I am sure I have not got it quite right. I'll probably seriously regret this paragraph in about 24 hours.) Second, it isn't that Miéville is subverting the factory fantasy farming. He's just found a setting off the farm. This is a small point but, it seems to me, one worth making. Writers like Terry Pratchett (affectionately) subvert genre fantasy. Miéville turns his back on it. One can sort of wad up all the points I just made into a ball, like so: Miéville has written fantasy novels that won't set Marxist teeth on edge. This is good, especially for the Marxists (who don't get to have enough fun in my private opinion.) But the fact remains that the arena of fantasy is an inherently unsuitable one in which to air - and vent - fundamental ethical and political differences. Two big burly guys having a duel by means of those little plastic swords you use to hold sandwiches together - that just looks silly. Well, that last point is seriously debatable, and too slighting of fantasy. But this much seems right. If Marxism is right, then Tolkien is wrong - he has written morally bad literature. But you can't prove Marxism is right by kicking Tolkien around, even if Marxism is right. Let me just make one final observation about Miéville and call it a night. The two Miéville novels I've read are both, basically, monster-hunts. (I won't spoil any plots for once.) And there is a thing about monster-hunts, which is basically: there is a reason Jane Austen never wrote about monster-hunts. Monsters are so big they distort, with ineluctable, gravitation-like force, nuanced presentation of character, psychology and manners. One is practically obliged to falsify and oversimplify humanity in the face of monstrosity, because the answer to the question, 'what would you do in the face of such a thing?' is, 'collapse into a useless mass of quivering human jelly,' which sort of brings the story to a crashing, disappointing halt. (A considerably shorter Perdido Street Station that ended, 'And then the slakemoths ate them all', would not have satisfied.) So you've got to prop the humans up artificially, by means of genre clichés, and send them into atrociously one-sided combat, from which they will emerge victorious. And this is really the thing that makes Miéville's backdrops more impressive that his foreground action. And (as Belle pipes in over my shoulder) he tries to make up for allowing his heroes to defeat monsters by gratuitously torturing them in various ways. But, frankly, that is just sort of annoying because it feels forced. (I think, in many ways, Tolkien's handling of human/monster relations is more human and less artificial-feeling than Miéville's.) Miéville produces stages that are more free of genre cliché than the characters that strut upon them. So he ought to go into staage-design full-time. Write Das Silmaril. Well, that's not quite it. And really I've got a lot to add right about now about how, when and why it is often possible to write fantastic fiction - even with wild, monstrous elements - that doesn't distort psychology and character. (Think John Crowley, just to mention someone I've blogged before.) I think the short answer is: Miéville might consider not writing thrillers any more. He's lost the dwarves and elves, which is fair enough, but he is still shackled by genre in ways that make him - lots of fun, to be sure - but not truly groundbreaking. I think he does have it in him to be a truly groundbreaking fantastic fiction writer. Now. Fall. Into. Bed.