Black Gate

Episodic novels (or fix ups) have a bad reputation these days, and I don’t think that’s entirely undeserved. For instance, I find the individual “weapon shop” stories of A.E. Van Vogt sort of intriguing, the way Van Vogt can be intriguing before he lets you know what he’s really driving at (usually something like Tyrants Are Nice People, Really). But The Weapon Shops of Isher, based on the same stories, is a chunk of dreck by comparison, and its sequel is even worse.

Van Vogt was always mutilating his best short stories by trying to make them part of something bigger: consider the sad fate of “Black Destroyer” and “Discord in Scarlet”, welded into the bulk of an ungainly construction dubbed The Voyage of the Space Beagle. (Although that’s an awesomely tone-deaf title. One envisions an indefinite series of sequels: Bride of the Space Beagle, Son of the Space Beagle, Revenge of the Space Beagle, etc., all featuring the further adventures of the star-spanning canine suggested by the original title.)

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Clint Eastwood never starred in or directed a sword-and-sorcery or heroic fantasy movie, and since he’s declared his retirement from acting with 2008’s Gran Torino, chances are he never will. That’s too bad, since the leathery, iconic actor might have made a nice fit into certain dark fantasy worlds. Michael Moorcock thought he would have made an excellent Eric John Stark; I agree. But Eastwood as a performer and director was more interested the realistic American landscape, and he never got near the world of the overtly fantastic.

Except once. On a poster. A really damn awesome poster. From one of the legendary fantasy artists. And therein lies an interesting little tale of marketing and artwork.

In 1977, Eastwood had just come off two large financial successes: The Enforcer, the third Dirty Harry film, and The Outlaw Josey Wales, a Western that he also directed. Although both films pulled in big box-office receipts, neither got the critical establishment excited. The Enforcer was reamed—hard (“Maggoty with non–ideas,” sniped The New York Times). The Outlaw Josey Wales fared slightly better, but most reviewers dismissed it. Rex Reed remarked that it “seems to last two days. Never before has so much time been devoted to such trivia.” I have never taken Reed seriously as a critic because of this review. On the other hand, Time magazine listed it as one of 1976’s Top Ten films. Eastwood has often said that The Outlaw Josey Wales is the film of which he is most proud, and today critics and fans fawn over the movie as the masterpiece that it is. (I don’t care much for The Enforcer myself—it’s the least entertaining of the Dirty Harry movies—but The Outlaw Josey Wales sits at the top of my short list of favorite films.)

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I’ve just started the Jeff and Ann VanderMeer edited The New Weird, a kind of anthropological excavation of a genre movement earlier in the decade that many of its adherents started to disavow once they got labelled with it (bad enough to be in the sf/fantasy ghetto and then get relegated to an even more narrowed niche), about which I hope to have more to say in this space at some later time. For now, though, here’s what China Miéville said about this when I interviewed him at the height of all the debate about what constitutes “New Weird.” And, as long as I’m touting my own miniscule involvement in the discussion, here’s something else I had to say about the supposed follow-up to New Weird — The New Wave Fabulists.

For some more contemporary comment, here’s the ever-hip Paul De Filippo on the latest nominations to the sub-genre.

Excuse the short post, but I think I’ve got some reading to do…

I used to know a responsible person who had a brilliant method of evading responsibility. Whenever you asked him anything, he would say, “What you’re really asking is two things here.” And an exhaustive discussion of his quibble would ensue and, in the end, the matter would merit more thought (but, naturally, no action). He was a kind of genius, if being useless is a category of genius.

For all I know, he’s still alive, but his ghost is hovering over my keyboard tonight, because when I started thinking about realism I realized that, not only is it more than one thing, but you can’t talk about it without talking about reality, which is also more than one thing. My trains of thought tend to derail like this. I start by talking about the distinction between strong and weak verbs, and then I talk about something else first to give a context to that, and pretty soon I’m crawling through the back of my closet trying to sort all my shoelaces in matching piles and my kids are screaming at each other trying to figure out which tranquilizer to load in the dartgun.
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I haven’t checked the news yet to see if our internet links to the rest of the world have been fully restored, but over the last few days enough traffic has been re-routed that I’ve been able (among other things) to read the Black Gate blog. I had intended to post today about Garth Nix, as the first in what I hope will be an intermittent series on MR/YA adventure fantasy, but yesterday proved to be the Islamic New Year (it’s determined by astronomical sightings, not by absolute date), and my spouse had the day off, so we all drove up the coast to the northernmost emirate, Ras Al Khaimah. No time, therefore, to write anything that requires fact-checking.

More of RAK in a minute. Reading James Enge’s last post on fantasy and realism led me to further thoughts on the same… for example I don’t think they are the strict dichotomy suggested in that post. Like JE, however, I have always felt that there is nothing remotely realistic about my inner life.

But what about external, intersubjective life? The great Soviet fantasist Andrei Sinyavsky, originally published in this country under his pseudonym Abram Tertz, denounced Soviet Realism in his early screed The Trial Begins. Realism, he wrote, is a literary technique that is no longer adequate to describe reality, because reality is no longer realistic. While I agree with that with regard to the present, I’m not sure that reality has ever been realistic. I had a good friend tell me that she thought I probably wouldn’t be interested in writing science fiction and fantasy after my son was born. I guessed that she meant that I would be forced to grow up and would then take interest in adult things. I often thought about her comment during pregnancy, because it was the most science-fictional experience I had ever had. It’s alive! It’s inside me and growing! It’s going to be a whole separate human being! I mean, what’s more bizarre and fantastic and estranging from the ordinary self than that?

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What’s curious about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is that this meditative (literally, in terms of length — it’s nearly three hours long — and evocative imagery) movie is publicized as based on (though “inspired” might be the better term in that it uses the conceit of a man who ages backwards, from 80 years to newborn and not much else; this is a arguably a case where the movie improves upon the source material) an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story.  Now, pardon my elitist attitude, but I’d be willing to bet that most of the audience not only has not read the story, but may only have heard of Fitzgerald by way of Robert Redford, if that. But it lends the movie a certain legitimacy.  See, the marketing people are saying, this isn’t some light fantasy, it is a legitimate drama based on a legitimate American writer, even if not that many people read him anymore (which is maybe what makes him “legitimate” from some people’s perspective).

No need to apologize.

This is one of those relatively rare cases in which the acting and the special effects are equally engaging and complementary.  While it’s interesting to watch Brad Pitt age backwards (though I could have done without lingering shots of Pitt at his presumable actual age looking cool, perhaps that pandering to a targeted demographic in which my adolescent daughter belongs), Cate Blanchett as Daisy (bonus points if you’ve figured the significance of that name) is a marvel to behold as Benjamin’s bohemian love interest. With the aid of considerable make-up and perhaps some digital tinkering, Pitt plays his role with amused ironic attachment that may be appropriate for a man whose psychological and emotional state is in opposition to his physical being.  However, it is Blanchett’s character that anchors the tale, both through a neat metaphorical framing device involving Hurricane Katrina, and the power of Blanchett’s performance.   (By the way, if you haven’t seen Blanchett portray a young Bob Dylan, run, don’t walk, to your favored video outlet and rent I’m Not There.)

Yeah, it’s a bittersweet love story that will rake in the Brad Pitt fans. More significantly, it’s about the finite grandeur of the human condition.

Well worth seeing in the theater.  Don’t wait for the DVD. Just make sure you hit the rest rooms before the movie starts.

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