For the record, I think "Appendix N" is unmitigated garbage. I always have. As literature, it barely passes the smell test; much of the writing in it is juvenile and overwritten. It's a collection of works that adult children nostalgically cling to, full of thin plotting and barely serviceable craft. I do not believe it has any valuable things to teach a dungeon master... and if someone were to tell me that the list DID inform them on being a dungeon master, my kneejerk opinion would be to believe they weren't very much of a dungeon master.
Of course, saying this begs the question, "If not Appendix N, what should I read to be a better dungeon master?"
And here is where I and apparently the entire world differ. Because as I see it, when people want a list of books, what they want is a "build," a short-cut that says, "If I do this, then I'll get that." And when they ask me personally what I'd suggest, I can hear the addition, "I want to have what you have, so tell me the books that will get me there."
I don't consider the reading of a special set of books is what makes a person "intellectual," or "well-read," or even wise. I used to believe that, but I've aged out of it. My depth of knowledge was not the result of some transformation I had after reading certain books that made me wiser or smarter. My knowledge has occurred from a long, non-linear process of synthesis, mistakes, corrections, bad experiences and a life-long concoction of pleasure and despair. Every book that I ever loved is now rich and full of flaws. I now see those books as an experienced writer does, not as a new reader does. Every new book I read is measured against the thousands of books I've read, so that I can no longer separate the intrinsic value of this or that book from any other. So if I am asked, "what should I read," my answer has to be, "It doesn't matter. Put down what's boring." That's the most useful, effective advice there is to offer, because I'm not here performing the "academic who gets off on having read great books that the hoi polloi haven't read." I have a secret for everyone here.
A great book is any book you don't want to put down. And if you read enough of them, later in life, you'll find that you can no longer read books at 60 that you couldn't put down at 22. Because that's how it works.
But one last point. You won't find me on this blog crying that I don't know where to go when I want to know something. You won't hear that I'm waiting anxiously for a book to come out that will give me information I want to have right now... because if I want it, I'll go do the research myself, I won't wait. The material is everywhere: in libraries, at bookstores, in search engines... literally absolutely everywhere. If the reader of this CAN read, then stop asking me where to find it and use a search engine. That's why they exist.
I do love a post that upsets me, then sets up an argument that makes me think about my suppositions. I do agree with your ultimate point (go find material that inspires you, it's everywhere) and your penultimate point (just read, and if you don't like what you're reading, then read something else). Solid advise.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it was your initial "for the record" statement that made me throw on the mental brakes and pay close attention. Unmitigated garbage? Moorcock, Leiber, Merritt, Tolkien, Vance, and Zelazny? I'm curious about that assessment. It would logically lead me to think that you don't consider Gygax to be a good DM.
If you are saying it is not only these things that make a DM good, but a witches brew of interests and not just a few specific styles of writing, then yes I get it and I agree. But I don't think I could bring myself to call the above unmitigated garbage.
Let me ask you a slightly different question. If somebody were genuinely interested in what you considered to be a good read, in the fantasy genre, where would you point them? Assume they're not asking because they want to be a DM, but are looking for a good book to read. Do you have a go-to? Do you ask them what kind of books they enjoy, and make suggestions based upon that? Do you point them out of the Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Horror section and lead them directly to Nabokov?
My comparisons for the pile of writers you just named are Eliot, Thackery, Dickens, Flaubert, Twain, Austen, Shakespeare and Tolstoy. You know, people who can really WRITE, regardless of the subject matter. Tolkien's fine and all, but lets not forget that he's cribbing from Spencer, Marlowe, Wagner and several older myths that had to survive for several centuries, not just since 1937. I'll maintain my higher standards, thank you. It's what I try to write by.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, quod erat demonstrandum, judging by the rules he stood for, the things he said on 60 minutes, the things he purchased, his lack of comprehension about business and his incompetence with his own people, yes, I think Gygax had to have been a TERRIBLE dungeon master. Again, it's all according to where your goalposts are.
I apologise. I tend to be blunt. Imagine what it's like in my head, holding myself to standards I can't meet. I'm clearly the idiot here.
Fantasy genre? Have you tried The Tempest. The Red Cross Knight? Parsifal? The Ring Cycle? Dante? Boccaccio? None of them could be considered a "good" read. They're all damn difficult, grinding, puzzling out reads. But are you into reading to be comfortable, or to be better?
I agree with you on Gygax. Just feeling out the waters. Sometimes there are sharks.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you for the reading suggestions. I also agree wholeheartedly. Spenser is an absolute favorite, especially how he incorporates some the weird Celtic pre-Christian mythology into his stories. Ditto for Njal's Saga and the Arthurian stories of Chretien de Troyes. Would also throw the Song of Roland in there for good measure, and a good translation of Don Quixote. Glad to have met a kindred spirit.
What are your thoughts on the rise of garbage as literature? Purely a result of reading being embraced by the masses, and therefore diluting quality? When I look at what passes for excellent fantasy or sci fi these days (Project Hail Mary, the Three Body Problem, and God help us, anything considered Romantasy) I can't help but see Idiocracy as the best future predicter ever made.
Hah, and I thought you'd get your back up. Stealth intellects.
DeleteBusiness is business. I invested in audible about two years ago and discovered to my surprise, going year by year through literature on wikipedia, that there is a strange dearth of my reading anything after 1983. I began university in '86, after three years working in the real world after high school, so that all my reading after that point was pursuing course work; and in the 1990s, filling in gaps of things I'd always thought I should read and hadn't. Meanwhile, people would throw contempory books at me, often sci fi or fantasy, which I always found dreadfully lacking. So I just ignored modern literature...
Then I began to think about what path I'd have to take to teach literature in my 60s -- as a late career path. I could manage a two-year certificate and convince some profs and get myself some post at a minor college, Red Deer maybe or Kelowna, somewhere in Western Canada... I may yet do that. So I began looking around online to see if there were lectures of creative writing there -- I listen to university lectures on youtube and elsewhere all the time.
Thus I ran into Brandon Sanderson, teaching at BYU in Salt Lake. Never heard of him, though he's touted as "the greatest living fantasy author" just now. Listened to 16 of his lectures, listened to the beginnings of some of his books, two hours, to get a sense of his language and opening construction. (cont...)
It is, to say the least, execrable. His plotlines surround characters who are victims through no fault of their own, who whine about their lot in life, justified in that they are victims, while at the same time showing a complete lack of empathy or regard for anyone who exists in the novel that does not perpetrate the protagonist's "agenda" to get out of the mess their in. The language is egregious, with multiple efforts to qualify things that don't matter, in ways that junior high school students do: "he picked up a stick was nearly rotten but not so much that he couldn't hurt with it..." I mean, what the hell? Does anyone really care of the "rottenness" of the stick that we need to say, first, that it is rotten, only to have to qualify it TWICE that it's strong enough to be used as a weapon? His work -- emblematic of the "modern fantasy writer" is just replete with this crosspurposed qualification nonsense. Makes me a little sick to hear it, to think it's "best-seller value" and to imagine that professors of actual universities are glad to have these people teaching for them. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteBut, presently, the entire publishing industry is on its heels. Late incidents like Diamond's collapse, where so many authors got caught with their self-published works being pulled from their possession "unfairly," when Diamond's been on the skids for a decade... it's evidence that far too many people just won't take advantage of existing technology. I self-published print-on-demand books in 2014... why is anyone, anywhere, still going to a printer to make a pile of physical books, to send them to a distributors warehouse, to put them on a shelf of a brick and mortar store? And how is it such people are so blind not to notice that warehouses are going under everywhere, that printers are going under everywhere, and bookstores are going under everywhere? Yet there they are, bemoaning the unfairness of their 1990s-era universe, arguing that the same thing that has happened to Sears, Bed Bath and Beyond, Toys R Us, Borders and what not couldn't happen to them?
Baffling.
I have zero respect for modern day pulp that is being sold as brainfiller for readers who can barely manage high school english, being held as the standard that every educated person in the world should live by. It's ridiculous. There are too many good books written before 1983 for me to read, I don't need anything past that date.
Lot of spelling mistakes in the above. Undermines my argument I suppose. But then, at least I know they're mistakes.
ReplyDeleteApologies if a great deal of what I bring up is answered in earlier posts. I just read your article "Book Learnin' and it answered quite a lot.
ReplyDeleteLike Merlin, I'm just trucking backwards through your blog.
If Sanderson is execrable (an argument I've had several time with friends), then for the sake of your health stay far away from the works of Rebecca Yarros. She might prove lethal.