This is not the right crowd and you know it

[sovay]

Okay, so my physical health has imploded along with my plans for the day and I am in a terrible mood, but I think I would still be disagreeing with David Eddings.

skygiants recently re-read The Belgariad. The comments section is appropriate-ironically epic. In the course of pursuing a theory proposed by pedanther—who seems to have been totally right—I found an interview with Eddings. I am not sure when exactly it was conducted; his remarks about prequels suggest sometime between 1991 and 1995, but honestly I don't feel that knowing the year would make much difference to how impressively I disagree with almost everything he says that is not a fact of his personal history and maybe even a couple of those (you cannot cite your intellectual differences with a female parakeet as reasonable scaffolding for your difficulties in writing human women, my dude, or at least you cannot do it without sounding like a dick). For whatever reason, though, this particular glaring ignorance is sticking with me:

"You can have a character say, 'Gee, they bounced one of my cheques' in a contemporary story and everybody will know what they're talking about. But in fantasy you have to invent the entire banking system. You have to invent the theology, sociology and everything else. And when you begin as I did, by dropping three or four aeons of western European culture into a blender—when you throw in peoples who are essentially ancient Romans, French and Spanish noblemen, Vikings and Muslims—when you put all that together and press the 'on' button you get a very strange mix of anachronisms. It gets you thinking about what sort of world it would be with Romans and Arabs living next to each other, for instance."

DUDE IT WOULD LOOK LIKE OUR ACTUAL HISTORY. SO WOULD THE INTERACTION OF VIKINGS AND MUSLIMS. ALSO PLEASE TELL ME THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAS NOT YOUR MODEL FOR THE ANGARAKS BECAUSE IF SO THE ORIENTALISM IN THESE BOOKS JUST WENT SO FAR PAST ELEVEN IT EXCEEDED ESCAPE VELOCITY AND BLASTED OFF INTO THE STARS AND THE STARS REALLY DID NOT DESERVE THAT.

I am sure someone yelled at Eddings in his lifetime about his conceptions of history and anachronism. I don't see how you could not. But I just found them and I am beginning to feel that Santayana should be revised: those who cannot remember the past are not only condemned to repeat it, they are condemned to reinvent it and believe they have created something totally unprecedented—strange enough for high fantasy—when in fact it was just people's lives. Even in high-gloss extruded fantasy product, that annoys me. The end, no moral. Just, seriously, don't do that.

Comments

[starlady]

I feel like if he'd majored in history some of this might have been avoided, but I'm probably being overly optimistic.

[larryhammer]

In hopes that it helps, I'll just leave this here.

[thornsilver]

I liked his books more when the racism (and the rest of the "ism"s) in his writing went over my head.

[sovay]

In hopes that it helps, I'll just leave this here.

That's wonderful. Thank you.

[sovay]

I liked his books more when the racism (and the rest of the "ism"s) in his writing went over my head.

It gets hard to take.

[sovay]

I feel like if he'd majored in history some of this might have been avoided, but I'm probably being overly optimistic.

At least he might not have thought he was mixing up cultures that actually coexisted!

[redbird]

Someone who uses "Muslims" that casually in parallel to "Vikings" and "ancient Romans" is probably beyond hope. "Ancient Rome" covers a lot of time and space, but is downright coherent compared to "Muslims," which covers Bali to the Mughal Empire to Morocco to Minnesota.

Though, you know, we'd have been entitled to throw up our hands and walk away at the parakeet.

[pameladean]

I haven't even got to the parakeet. I am still hung up on, "Reed, a rather prestigious college in Oregon." I mean, it is, rather prestigious, I mean, and also in Oregon to the best of my knowledge, but you just don't put it like that. I just.

Also also his weird remarks about bachelor's degrees. I mean, it's true that many colleges do not require a thesis for graduation, but what is this about handing out blank diplomas and letting people just put in their names? What? What what what? ALSO ALSO ALSO holy crap, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, well THAT explains a lot.

These things in isolation don't sound so awful, but there's something about the ineffable smugness and naivete combined that makes me want to punch him, not an impulse I have often, and I still haven't reached the parakeet.

P.

[pameladean]

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT THE SOCIAL WORKER IN THE NOVEL THE LOSERS, SOME GIRL WHO MAJORED IN BOYFRIENDS AND HAD THE OBLIGATORY ABORTION WHAT WHAT WHAT

Okay, I will stop now. Never mind the parakeet. The social worker is enough for me.


P.

[sovay]

"Ancient Rome" covers a lot of time and space, but is downright coherent compared to "Muslims," which covers Bali to the Mughal Empire to Morocco to Minnesota.

That is an extremely good point.

Though, you know, we'd have been entitled to throw up our hands and walk away at the parakeet.

The parakeet came right at the end! Just when you thought it was over. And then he said something about science fiction and fantasy as respective literatures of optimism and pessimism for reasons I think are also wrong, too, but at least not comprehensively insulting.

[sovay]

Okay, I will stop now. Never mind the parakeet. The social worker is enough for me.

That's fair. I do not blame you for getting out while the going is awful. I just had to keep reading because I was looking for particular information and therefore the whole thing is now in my head.

(The Steinbeck thing came up at skygiants' and I concluded that the only thing he took from Steinbeck was the extremely demotic American register of speech and thought, because Steinbeck unlike Eddings could (a) write (b) women. I'm not even sure what Faulkner is doing in there. I think Eddings may have mistaken being bad at numinous for realism.)

[moon_custafer]

Also this: https://linguisticsyall.tumblr.com/post/148834386779/misbehavingmaiar-sebastian-bond/amp

[phi]

Oh my god I have not thought about the Belgariad in at least a decade, but I remembered every bit of it when you mentioned it. They were SO BAD but I read every single one of them when I was in high school. I even reocgnized the horrible sexism and orientalism for what it was (and was it just me or were the Snake People supposed to vaguely represent South Asia what with all the snakes and shit?) and still gobbled it up. And, despite recognizing the extreme racism in the depiction of the horse people and the snake people and the evil god's fake muslims, I still for the longest time believed the stereotypes about the fake saxons and fake norse were based in 100% true facts. *facepalm*

[julian]

Hum. He's trying for avuncular and occasionally succeeding. But he lets the malice out a little too obviously sometimes. (What got me, of course, as it would, was his extended digression about social workers. Thanks, dingus!)

[sovay]

Also this

"Linguistics Georg, who invented over 10,000 conlangs each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted."

Thank you.

[redbird]

(you cannot cite your intellectual differences with a female parakeet as reasonable scaffolding for your difficulties in writing human women, my dude, or at least you cannot do it without sounding like a dick)

Permission to metaquotes?

[sovay]

Permission to metaquotes?

Sure! Thank you for asking.

[sovay]

Oh my god I have not thought about the Belgariad in at least a decade, but I remembered every bit of it when you mentioned it.

I cannot explain the eidetic properties of David Eddings, but everyone—including me!—appears to recall his work in detail despite not reading it in decades and/or trying to repress the memories. It amazes me. I wish he'd been able to use it for good.

(and was it just me or were the Snake People supposed to vaguely represent South Asia what with all the snakes and shit?)

With all the steamy jungle swamps and drugs and sexual ambiguity? I don't think it's just you. They don't resemble any other set of national stereotypes enough to be anything else, which is an appalling thing to have to type.

And, despite recognizing the extreme racism in the depiction of the horse people and the snake people and the evil god's fake muslims, I still for the longest time believed the stereotypes about the fake saxons and fake norse were based in 100% true facts.

In your defense, Norse sagas really did have the concept of berserkers, while various Muslim empires did not have . . . any of that . . .

[sovay]

He's trying for avuncular and occasionally succeeding. But he lets the malice out a little too obviously sometimes.

That's a useful way of putting it. It just scratches at you. And I am pretty sure he thinks he's just being funny, but. Those 6000 words of interview may have done more than ten 600-page doorstop fantasies to keep me from wanting to get back inside David Eddings' mind for a long time to come.

(What got me, of course, as it would, was his extended digression about social workers. Thanks, dingus!)

It's some pretty serious did-a-social-worker-eat-your-ice-cream-cone?, I will say that for it.

[pameladean]

I keep thinking about whether I want to read the rest of it.

And yes, I suspect that in all cases of the authors cited he has mistaken something for something else -- I don't think actual Steinbeck was an influence and Faulkner boggles me. He's got the equivalent of "everybody else just gives you a blank diploma form and lets you fill it in in crayon" going on about each author, I tell you what.

I will not fulminate at you should I read the rest; if I do that at this point it is ENTIRELY on me.

P.

[moon_custafer]

you cannot do it without sounding like a dick

Or like Max Ernst, which in this case may amount to the same thing.

[julian]

He totally thinks he's just being funny. His incredibly improbable discussion of publishing reinforces that.

(The thing with his LOTR paragraph is, there *aren't* a lot of women in LOTR, but a) there's a number of different Hobbit women, b) you can tell them all apart instantly, c) you can tell the non-Hobbit women apart, too, and d) unless the Tamuli series is *very* different from his other books, Eddings may have *thought* he was writing some form of steamy sex (what?), but he wasn't. It wasn't even very lush and baroque, which is what he seems to be talking about in terms of romances.)

[kaffy_r]

I never read any of David Edding's stuff past the first couple of chapters of one of the Belgariad books; for some reason, it all seemed so derivative that even in my hunger for fantasy, I left his stuff alone.

(I say this not to seem intelligently perceptive, but just to note how weirdly my mind works; at the same time I avoided his stuff, I read at least four of the Jordan "Wheel of Time" books, being fooled into thinking they were good because he'd latched on to some interesting concepts. Then I think I got tired of the uniformly unlikable characters all defined by one or maybe two external tics - I'll never use the phrase "tugged her braid" ever. Even if it were to save my very soul.)

After that digression, I have to report that sometime into the third or fourth paragraph of the interview, I decided that his self satisfaction was too fatuous to be even cruelly entertaining. I wasn't surprised by the parakeet comment.

Gah.

(And really - he thought the idea of Romans living next to Arabs was his own very original way of mixing up people who obviously would never be found together in the real world? Gah. Again.)

[rosefox]

Thanks for the pointer. That was fun.

[rosefox]

I thought Nyissa was just a set of 1970s-ish gay stereotypes, with snakes.