Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, From A Game of Thrones to A Dance with Drago (30 page)

In the course of five books, Martin has lost none of his edge when it comes to killing family men, women, children, babies, and dogs, but he seems to hold a special contempt for the noble heroes who populate traditional fantasy. “The
hero never dies, though. I must be the hero
,” wills Quentyn Martell in
A Dance with Dragons
, shortly before he gets roasted. Quentyn’s eagerness for glory and deluded self-regard call to mind Don Quixote—and so fantasy comes full circle, poking fun at its past 150 years instead of the centuries of myths that informed Cervantes.

Words are wind, of course, but it’s prudent to assume that A Song of Ice and Fire will also violate the most sacred fantasy trope of all: happily ever after. It doesn’t look like things will end well for anyone, even Tyrion. “[F]antasy does hold forth as one of its central points the belief that the end of a successful story is joy,” claims
Other Worlds
, but the joy in the Seven Kingdoms is more likely to come from a goblet or a girl than any triumph over evil.

Given its impressive subversion of fantasy’s most sacred cows, one might expect A Song of Ice and Fire to be the saga that finally pulls fantasy out of the genre ghetto and enables it to be compared side-by-side to, say, Jonathan Franzen’s
Freedom
(2010), a similarly hefty meditation on human failure and betrayal. To an extent this has happened; Martin pointed out on his blog that
Time
called
A Dance with Dragons
“the best book of the year (not the best fantasy of the year, or the best SF book of the year, but the Best Book, period).”

But some critics, perhaps frightened by the flatlining sales of literary fiction, have come out even more strongly against genre. As novelist Edward Docx argues in the
Observer
: “[G]enre writers cannot claim to have everything. They can take the money and the sales [. . .]. But they should not be allowed to get away with suggesting that these things tell us anything about the intrinsic value or scope of their work.” According to Martin Amis, in a book of essays appropriately titled
The War Against Cliché
(2001), “When we read, we are doing more than delectating words on a page [. . .]. We are communing with the mind of the author.” Implicit in his statement is the assumption that genre fiction does not come from unique minds; it comes from common minds that have no aspirations beyond selling to an audience attracted to safe, predictable confines.

It could be argued that George R.R. Martin has quite a unique mind—born in Bayonne, New Jersey, raised in comic book fandom, expert in Lovecraft and Tolkien (as
Dreamsongs
details), tempered by the brutality of Hollywood, and crazy enough about roleplaying games to have a “lost year” devoted to them. But hardcore critics of “science fiction & fantasy” can rightly claim these characteristics as proof that Martin does not escape his roots, that his books are really just souped-up fantasy serials. And worse than the criticism is the condescending praise of literary readers who enjoy slumming in Westeros, such as memoirist Dominique Browning, who praises Martin as an alternative to Tolstoy in a 2012
New York Times
think piece titled, “Learning to Love Airport Lit.”

Some critics have found Martin’s writing praiseworthy enough for elevation above the genre fray. The
New York Times
unequivocally anoints him better than Tolkien in its 2011 review of
A Dance with Dragons
, calling his saga “a sprawling and panoramic 19th-century novel turned out in fantasy motley.” And Nick Gevers of
Infinity Plus
applauds Martin for his facility with genre itself in a review of Martin’s 1982 vampire novel
Fevre Dream
: “[H]is
fin de siècle
canvas may variously take in dying planets, the death of the modern age, or the long decline of chivalry, but loss is always the keynote.” These are welcome words, but they do seem to be coming from outside the fantasy genre, from rarefied thinkers impressed with games of a mad world-builder like Lovecraft. Few critics have dared to approach A Song of Ice and Fire from
within
the genre and point out what really makes it so impressive.

Put simply, A Song of Ice and Fire is now vying for a title in fantasy literature that everyone since the scientific romance must have at least conceived of: “Most Complex World.” It has hundreds of characters, a daunting and detailed chronology, and, as of this writing, over 4,500 articles on its very own wiki. Those who read it without jumping out of the text to explore the additional material—without immersing themselves in the paratext—miss out on what makes it unique. It’s possible to read a sentence like this one, from
A Dance with Dragons
, and dismiss it as a mishmash: “The cobbler told them how the body of the Butcher King had been disinterred and clad in copper armor, after the Green Grace of Astapor had a vision that he would deliver them from the Yunkai’i.” But the four proper names in there, requiring four trips to the map or appendix if you haven’t been paying attention, make A Song of Ice and Fire require close reading just as much as any modernist literary masterwork, albeit of a different, nerdier stripe.

Martin thus fights the genre wars by sidestepping them. Working from within the system, refusing to apologize for what came before, he writes books that are too bloody, unexpected, and relentlessly story-driven to be ignored. In doing so, he elevates other fantasy along with his own. Praise from respected outlets like The
New York Times
doesn’t just help A Song of Ice and Fire, it legitimizes the fantasy that came before—works, for example, by Peter S. Beagle, Roger Zelazny, and Michael Moorcock—while making the world safe for literary novelists like Lev Grossman to try their hand at fantasy, in Grossman’s case with the successful Magicians series.

It’s unlikely that the “fantasy & science fiction” section of your local bookstore will disappear anytime soon (well, until the bookstore does), or that fantasy books will begin appearing on the front page of the
New York Times Book Review
along with tales of twenty-first-century anomie. Some hardcore academic critics will always stick to their guns and discount any novel that isn’t strictly realist as “a boy’s game,” perhaps more viciously than ever as the real boy’s games threaten to prevent the next generation from reading at all.

But in the genre wars, Martin is sitting pretty. His twisting of expectations has silenced some genre-haters and won over the culture mavens—and his industrious pacifism honors his genre roots. He’s like Bill Hicks’s pot smokers sitting in trees during the War on Drugs: “Are they fighting us? We’re not even in that fucking field!” It’s a brilliant strategy worthy of his characters.

Since Stevenson, responding to Henry James, genre writers have been on the defensive, trying to stick up for their work as if there were something wrong with it to begin with. In a 2007 interview on Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, Martin declared: “None of us wants to be consigned to the playpen, or have our work dismissed as unworthy of serious consideration as literature because of the label on the spine. Myself, I think a story is a story is a story, and the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.”

That would seem like a statement all critics can get behind, genre and literary alike. For my own foray into fantasy, I don’t need a blurb from George R.R. Martin to approve of what I’m doing. He’s lifted all the boats with A Song of Ice and Fire, making it okay for people like me—and those with much more literary credibility—to get in touch with our inner fantasy lover, while at the same time challenging us to do better with the quality of his work.

       
NED VIZZINI
is the author of
It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Be More Chill
, and
Teen Angst? Naaah
. . . . He has written for The
New York Times
, The Daily Beast, and MTV’s
Teen Wolf
. His work has been translated into seven languages. He is the co-author, with Chris Columbus, of the forthcoming fantasy-adventure series House of Secrets. He has contributed to Smart Pop anthologies about The Hunger Games, The Chronicles of Narnia, and
The Walking Dead
. He has spoken at over two hundred universities, libraries, and schools around the world about writing and mental health. He received an award from UCLA in 2011 for Excellence in Public Advocacy Through the Arts. Ned lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Sabra Embury, and their son. His next novel,
The Other Normals
, will be published by HarperCollins on September 25, 2012.

THANKS TO
Glenn Yeffeth, publisher and CEO of BenBella Books, for once again allowing me the chance to add to the Smart Pop imprint; Heather Butterfield for enthusiastic and inventive marketing support; Leigh Camp for production magic; the crack team of copyeditors and designers who made all of us look better; and most especially Leah Wilson, Smart Pop editor-in-chief, who, through her own high standards and tireless efforts on behalf of the line, inspires me to always push myself harder, yet manages somehow to keep the often-daunting anthology editing process a lot more fun than it has any right to be. Beyond the BenBella offices in Texas and Massachusetts, support and suggestions for the book were also provided by James John Bell, Scott Cuthberston, Stephen Dedman, Marc Fishman, Jeremy Jones, Helen Merrick, Chris Pramas, Jeff VanderMeer, and Stewart Woods.

The best part of any anthology for me is getting to collaborate with so many writers whose work I enjoy and admire.
Beyond the Wall
boasts contributions from a lineup of essayists possessing good humor, professionalism, and talent—everything an editor could ask for. Thanks to their agents, for helping to make their participation possible. And special thanks to R.A. Salvatore. From conversations about fantasy fiction Bob and I have had—and there have been many since he contributed a short story to the first anthology I edited, way back in 1993—I knew that he was a great choice to open the collection. I’m glad he agreed.

Finally, my participation in
Beyond the Wall
—in fact the book itself—would not have been possible without George R.R. Martin. In addition to giving us all something spectacular to talk about with A Song of Ice and Fire, George, along with his tireless assistant Ty Franck, helped me to get the project rolling at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con and pointed me toward several of the key essayists. His graciousness and generosity is matched only by his vision and skill as an author.