Stephen R. Donaldson
Hey, look! It's an author of what ordinary people would call fantasy! Stephen R. Donaldson is most famous for his series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, The Gap Cycle, and Mordant's Need. Of these, I've read only Thomas Covenant, but those books are inextricably at the top of my list of favorites.
Thomas Covenant is a leper who has lost everything and lives as an outcast in a midwestern American town. One day, he blacks out and wakes up in the Land, a world where beauty and health are tangible forces, like color or gravity. Covenant believes he is losing his mind, and although his experience is detailed and convincing, he tries to remain certain that he is trapped in an elaborate dream. But to the inhabitants of the Land, Covenant is the only living person who can defeat their immortal enemy, the Despiser. Covenant therefore must find a way to save these people without admitting they are real.
The first and best part of Donaldon's writing is his ability to think of scenarios like that. Instead of putting his characters in trouble by having them captured by brigands or chased by wolves (although his stories contain elements of these), he writes them into psychological obstacle courses. His short stories, as I've discussed, take these issues in hand, but Covenant is what really makes a masterpiece of it. Donaldson's short story "Gilden-Fire," originally part of book 2 of Covenant, was actually removed from that book because it accidentally implied a resolution to the question of the land's reality. His "real world" characters: Covenant, Troy, Linden, Joan, and Roger, are never let off the tightrope between accepting or rejecting the dream.
The criticism I read most often about Donaldson is about his verbosity. There are websites devoted to the archaic words that only he still uses. This kind of problem goes two ways. If you're not in love with the books, then the vocabulary is probably going to push you further away, because you won't be motivated to look up the word if it's not clear from the context. I strongly prefer it, and find it highly poetic. The problem is that I can't (and shouldn't) replicate it perfectly in my own writing, nor are my books the appropriate setting for that kind of language, so it's a challenge to emulate without copying.
Donaldson is able to get away with this style in Covenant and not quite in his short stories because of the concrete elements that make up the Land. What some science fiction writers and even a few of fantasy get wrong is the complexity of symbolism. Symbols tend to become less real as they become complicated, unless they're a direct analogy, like parodies or political satire. Dragons, for instance, can mean nearly anything unless they're hammered down in a certain style; Tolkien, for instance, gives Smaug the dragon the direct speech patterns of an upper-class Englishman of old money, so that his message is clear enough. But real symbols are much more than a one-to-one substitution that fits the text, and high school English classes aren't likely to admit this.
Take stone, for example. Stone in Covenant has substantial qualities than actual stone does. Giants can sing to stone and make it move or float, and some stones can harness the energy of the sun in order to perform ritual magic. This doesn't mean that Donaldson means stone to be a metaphor for jet fuel or something more powerful found here on Earth. Stone, in essence, is just a metaphor for itself. To respect the power of stone as part of the story is to notice a basic underlying pattern in the elements of our own world. This, too, is fantasy.
Thomas Covenant fans are sometimes described, even self-described, as hopeless masochists, because of the incredibly depressing course each of the characters follows. It's no mere thrill ride, however. Characters do not turn up dead for no reason, nor is Covenant battered with misery just to evoke an emotional response from the reader. If you are looking for a sob story, Covenant is not your man, largely because he's not very likable. Instead, the books are a great example of the wise advice of the late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: "No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them–in order that the reader may see what they are made of." Thomas Covenant is neither sweet nor innocent, but through reading them and then looking around, I've seen what I'm made of, what people are made of, and what the world is made of. I can give a book no higher praise.
Does this sound familiar? Probably.
The criticism I read most often about Donaldson is about his verbosity. There are websites devoted to the archaic words that only he still uses. This kind of problem goes two ways. If you're not in love with the books, then the vocabulary is probably going to push you further away, because you won't be motivated to look up the word if it's not clear from the context. I strongly prefer it, and find it highly poetic. The problem is that I can't (and shouldn't) replicate it perfectly in my own writing, nor are my books the appropriate setting for that kind of language, so it's a challenge to emulate without copying.
Donaldson is able to get away with this style in Covenant and not quite in his short stories because of the concrete elements that make up the Land. What some science fiction writers and even a few of fantasy get wrong is the complexity of symbolism. Symbols tend to become less real as they become complicated, unless they're a direct analogy, like parodies or political satire. Dragons, for instance, can mean nearly anything unless they're hammered down in a certain style; Tolkien, for instance, gives Smaug the dragon the direct speech patterns of an upper-class Englishman of old money, so that his message is clear enough. But real symbols are much more than a one-to-one substitution that fits the text, and high school English classes aren't likely to admit this.Take stone, for example. Stone in Covenant has substantial qualities than actual stone does. Giants can sing to stone and make it move or float, and some stones can harness the energy of the sun in order to perform ritual magic. This doesn't mean that Donaldson means stone to be a metaphor for jet fuel or something more powerful found here on Earth. Stone, in essence, is just a metaphor for itself. To respect the power of stone as part of the story is to notice a basic underlying pattern in the elements of our own world. This, too, is fantasy.
Thomas Covenant fans are sometimes described, even self-described, as hopeless masochists, because of the incredibly depressing course each of the characters follows. It's no mere thrill ride, however. Characters do not turn up dead for no reason, nor is Covenant battered with misery just to evoke an emotional response from the reader. If you are looking for a sob story, Covenant is not your man, largely because he's not very likable. Instead, the books are a great example of the wise advice of the late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: "No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them–in order that the reader may see what they are made of." Thomas Covenant is neither sweet nor innocent, but through reading them and then looking around, I've seen what I'm made of, what people are made of, and what the world is made of. I can give a book no higher praise.
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