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Is it not what you thought it would be?
I read the first two chapters of Charles Butler's Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (Scarecrow Press, 2006) this afternoon, before I got distracted first by Ostia Naye, then by Jones' The Merlin Conspiracy, which I am now about halfway through. So far it—in this case the critical work, although my opinion applies to the novel as well—is wonderful. Three of these authors I grew up on; the fourth I should clearly look into. What I have not yet seen, and what I am hoping there's room for, is a serious discussion of identity in the works of Diana Wynne Jones, because it's a topic I think about off and on. This particular think cut for spoilers for A Tale of Time City, Charmed Life, The Merlin Conspiracy, and any books that may come up in comments.
Circularly, the catalyst for this entry was a passage in The Merlin Conspiracy (2003):
In the manse, Grandfather Gwyn was waiting by the tea table to say grace. At first glance he seemed as somber and expressionless as ever, and maybe a little tired. One black eyebrow twitched impatiently as Grundo uttered cries of joy at the plate heaped with griddle cakes. But after he had thundered forth a longer grace than usual, my grandfather looked at me briefly. There was just a flick of a smile for me, private between the two of us. Now, the smile seemed to say, you know some of my secret.
Yes, I thought, and some of that secret is that Sybil owns you for the moment. I can't tell you anything now. But I couldn't resist smiling back.
The narrator's mysterious, forbidding grandfather, previously known only as the kind of relative her parents took care to keep her away from, has just been revealed as Gwyn ap Nudd, gatherer of souls and leader of the Wild Hunt.* I am pleased to say that I called it from his first offstage mention, on page 6—I can attribute this either to knowing too much mythology, or to reading too much Diana Wynne Jones. The joke on her books is that in the last chapter half the cast will turn out to be the other half and the rest will turn out to be someone else entirely. But it's true in the sense that identity and revelation are two of her essential themes, usually paired: the traditional Jones protagonist realizes not that s/he has become someone else, but that s/he has been someone else all along. A mundane example from A Tale of Time City (1987) is Sempitern Walker's discovery that he's a born deadpan comedian; an example more central to the plot is Dr. Wilander, who has nothing like an identity crisis or a secret side, yet doesn't remember that he's one-fourth of the legendary Faber John until he has the similarly unrecognized Lead Casket in his hands again. The archetypal example is Cat, from Charmed Life (1977): the story's climax is his understanding that rather than the useless tagalong brother of a brilliant young witch, he is instead a nine-lifed enchanter, a magical rarity against whose powers Gwendolen's look like a handful of dead leaves thrown against a storm—and he has always has been. I have no idea if Roddy's supernatural ancestry will have any effect on the events of The Merlin Conspiracy (as opposed to the immediately useful magical knowledge she has just downloaded from a centuries-gone witch in the form of a file directory of dry briars and brambles), but the point is that it's not a sudden manifestation, simply a reappraisal of information. All sorts of characters change shape in Jones' work, either literally or figuratively, but the important part is less transformation than recognition; fixing cognitive dissonance. Cf. Sophie, Howl's Moving Castle (1986). The world does not pull itself out from under the characters' feet; their own selves do. For all sorts of reasons, this interests me. If I did not have to get up in four hours, I would drag Patricia McKillip's Riddle-Master trilogy (1976—1979) into the discussion. As it is, I think I'm going to finish The Merlin Conspiracy and go to bed.
Points again to Charles Butler. There is not enough scholarship on the writers I love!
* Yes, I am sure there exist crossovers (or at least commiserations) with Terry Pratchett's Susan Sto Helit. Please do not point me toward them. I have already promised![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nineweaving that if I ever lose a bet, I will drop Roddy's grandfather into an Elizabeth Goudge novel and watch the plot machinery explode around him.
Circularly, the catalyst for this entry was a passage in The Merlin Conspiracy (2003):
In the manse, Grandfather Gwyn was waiting by the tea table to say grace. At first glance he seemed as somber and expressionless as ever, and maybe a little tired. One black eyebrow twitched impatiently as Grundo uttered cries of joy at the plate heaped with griddle cakes. But after he had thundered forth a longer grace than usual, my grandfather looked at me briefly. There was just a flick of a smile for me, private between the two of us. Now, the smile seemed to say, you know some of my secret.
Yes, I thought, and some of that secret is that Sybil owns you for the moment. I can't tell you anything now. But I couldn't resist smiling back.
The narrator's mysterious, forbidding grandfather, previously known only as the kind of relative her parents took care to keep her away from, has just been revealed as Gwyn ap Nudd, gatherer of souls and leader of the Wild Hunt.* I am pleased to say that I called it from his first offstage mention, on page 6—I can attribute this either to knowing too much mythology, or to reading too much Diana Wynne Jones. The joke on her books is that in the last chapter half the cast will turn out to be the other half and the rest will turn out to be someone else entirely. But it's true in the sense that identity and revelation are two of her essential themes, usually paired: the traditional Jones protagonist realizes not that s/he has become someone else, but that s/he has been someone else all along. A mundane example from A Tale of Time City (1987) is Sempitern Walker's discovery that he's a born deadpan comedian; an example more central to the plot is Dr. Wilander, who has nothing like an identity crisis or a secret side, yet doesn't remember that he's one-fourth of the legendary Faber John until he has the similarly unrecognized Lead Casket in his hands again. The archetypal example is Cat, from Charmed Life (1977): the story's climax is his understanding that rather than the useless tagalong brother of a brilliant young witch, he is instead a nine-lifed enchanter, a magical rarity against whose powers Gwendolen's look like a handful of dead leaves thrown against a storm—and he has always has been. I have no idea if Roddy's supernatural ancestry will have any effect on the events of The Merlin Conspiracy (as opposed to the immediately useful magical knowledge she has just downloaded from a centuries-gone witch in the form of a file directory of dry briars and brambles), but the point is that it's not a sudden manifestation, simply a reappraisal of information. All sorts of characters change shape in Jones' work, either literally or figuratively, but the important part is less transformation than recognition; fixing cognitive dissonance. Cf. Sophie, Howl's Moving Castle (1986). The world does not pull itself out from under the characters' feet; their own selves do. For all sorts of reasons, this interests me. If I did not have to get up in four hours, I would drag Patricia McKillip's Riddle-Master trilogy (1976—1979) into the discussion. As it is, I think I'm going to finish The Merlin Conspiracy and go to bed.
Points again to Charles Butler. There is not enough scholarship on the writers I love!
* Yes, I am sure there exist crossovers (or at least commiserations) with Terry Pratchett's Susan Sto Helit. Please do not point me toward them. I have already promised
nineweaving that if I ever lose a bet, I will drop Roddy's grandfather into an Elizabeth Goudge novel and watch the plot machinery explode around him.
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I have not.
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You are discussing some of my favorite books ... although for some reason, I could never get into A Tale of Time City. I'm guessing you've read Deep Secret, and Fire and Hemlock?
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It's one of my favorites. It always has been.
I'm guessing you've read Deep Secret, and Fire and Hemlock?
Yes. I think at this point the only books of hers I haven't read are The Changeover (1970), Wilkins' Tooth (1973), The Pinhoe Egg (2006), and House of Many Ways (2008). And those last two are more or less sitting on my windowsill, so not for much longer. Howl's Moving Castle (1986) and The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988) are two of the earliest books I can remember reading.
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This one is a good Wild Hunt, too.
You've read Peter S. Beagle's Tamsin, yes?
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Two more characters just manifested. And their cat.
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Or integration. When the real self is recognized, one's role (task---DWJ never lets characters get away with merely being) in society and-or the world becomes clear.
PS: nice abstract---now finish the article!
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I'll see what I can do!
(Thanks.)
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what I am hoping there's room for, is a serious discussion of identity in the works of Diana Wynne Jones, because it's a topic I think about off and on
Well, in one way the whole book's about identity, or at least some aspects of it; but while I do touch on the revelation/recognition idea a couple of times (pp.107-108 and especially p.237), I don't treat it at the kind of length it probably deserves. So yeah - why don't you write the article, as
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Very much so. What's next?
Incidentally, it took me until now to realize that you are the author of the article on Red Shift and "Tam Lin" that made me very happy a couple of years ago; that alone would qualify you as awesome.
So yeah - why don't you write the article, as movingfinger suggests, and I'll reference it in the second edition?
Heh. Be careful what you ask for. I have promised an article to
(And thank you.)
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You'd not read The Merlin Conspiracy before?
Glad you're reading it now--it's a grand book, and I hope you continue to enjoy.
Take care, and I hope you've slept well. Irish Arts Week is an exercise in insomnia. At least I've got an afternoon class and not a morning one, so's I can sleep a little longer.
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Buy. Read. Use as a guide to other books you should be reading! I now have a list of Penelope Lively to seek out . . .
You'd not read The Merlin Conspiracy before?
No. Along with Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) and Year of the Griffin (2000), which I caught up on last summer, it was one of hers I had unaccountably missed. I finished it last night shortly after putting up this post and I really like it.
Irish Arts Week is an exercise in insomnia.
Ergh. Does it at least produce good music?
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Interesting. I'll have to hold that in mind, then. Don't think I've read Lively, but if she's in the same category as the others I've got to change that.
No. Along with Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) and Year of the Griffin (2000), which I caught up on last summer, it was one of hers I had unaccountably missed. I finished it last night shortly after putting up this post and I really like it.
Excellent. I'm glad to hear that.
I loved the gentle parody of the Lord Darcyverse, and the way she laid out Blest. (Well, excepting the fact that I now would really like to go and live there.) On the one hand, I'd like to know what the additional pedals in the cars do, but on the other hand I thought it was interesting that it was dropped in passing and we never actually were told.
Ergh. Does it at least produce good music?
For the most part, yes. It's just that it's very easy to stay up too late all the time.
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There are several elements in The Merlin Conspiracy that are never really explained to the reader. For example, Romanov's backstory* is never given any more clarification than his dyslexia, at some point his marriage to Sybil, and, almost in passing, a mention that he was originally supposed to be the next Merlin of Blest, which may have really have been the responsibility he ran away from; and we are certainly not told how Gwyn ap Nud, Lord of the Dead, produced an apparently mortal daughter.** I'm all right with this. It correctly impersonates the loose-ended untidiness of real lives, in which not everything is significant to the plot.
* Which we hear mostly from the mages in the Plantagenate Empire: "I've heard . . . that he lives on an island made from at least ten different universes in at least seven different centuries. Went there to escape his missus . . . According to what I heard, he was born in a gutter on quite a remote world—Thule, I think, or maybe Blest—and he pulled himself out of poverty by teaching himself to do magic. Very unorthodox. But he had a gift for it and discovered things no one else knew how to do, so he charged high and got rich quick. He could probably buy our entire Empire now. And nobody'd dare say he couldn't." Maxwell Hyde—and the evidence of Nick's own eyes—confirms at least the bit about the island.
** We hear about Roddy's maternal grandmother only once:
At this my grandfather turned to me. I could tell he was not pleased. It breathed off him like cold from a frozen pond. "Did Annie tell you I was a widower?" he asked me.
"She said she had never known her mother," I said.
"I am glad to hear her so truthful," my grandfather replied. I thought that was all he was going to say, but he seemed to think again and make an extra effort. "There has been," he said, and paused, and made another effort, "a separation."
I could feel him hurting, making the effort to say this. I was suddenly furious. "Oh!" I cried out. "I hate all this divorcing and separating! My grandfather Hyde is separated from his wife, and I've never even seen her or the aunt who lives with her. And that aunt's divorced, and so's the aunt who lives with Grandad, which is awfully hard on my cousin Toby. Half the Court is divorced! The King is separated from the Queen most of the time! Why do people do it?"
Grandfather Gwyn was giving me an attentive look. It was the sort of look you can feel. I felt as if his deep dark eyes were opening me up, prizing apart pieces of my brain. He said thoughtfully, "Often the very nature of people, the matter that brought them together, causes the separation later."
From this it is my guess that they met in the course of his psychopomp duties, meaning she's probably dead; I wondered for a while if she was going to turn up, given how many other past characters were coming out of the woodwork, but so far as I can tell, she never did.
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Brilliant! I'd never thought of it that way before, but I strongly suspect you've the right of it.
And very much agreed about Romanov's backstory. I thought putting it in the mouths of the Plantagenate mages was particularly clever; it adds an extra little frisson of questionability to it.
PS
But that may not entirely help.