strange and random happenstance

The Magician King by Lev Grossman
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: August 9th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 432 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Being a beloved ruler is all well and good, but sometimes it can get a little staid what with the daily balcony appearances for the common folk and the governing. Which is why the High Kings and Queens of Fillory, Eliot, Janet, Quentin, and Julia are hunting for one of Fillory's prophetic Unique Beasts, the Seeing Hare. Things don't exactly go to plan, the Master of the Hunt, Jollyby, catches the Hare and it predicts horrors and then Jollyby drops dead. Poor Jollyby. He had some memorable assets. But it's Fillory, it's a magical world, weird shit is bound to happen. Plus, how exactly do you follow through with investigating an omen? When trying to figure this out the rulers discover that the Outer Islands haven't paid their taxes in years and Quentin decides that sailing the Eastern Ocean and collecting some back taxes could be an interesting quest. Quentin resurrects and refurbishes the Muntjac and he and Julia and a few fellow compatriots head east. Which is how they meet Elaine and learn about the magic key that winds the world. Or, as Quentin realizes, the quest he should be on. They journey further east, to After Island, where he and Julia find a key and are sent straight home. Not to Castle Whitespire. To Earth. Which means they have to find a way back to Fillory. Logic dictates that they could return via the method that got them there in the first place, but Josh was the last one seen with the button and who knows what quest he's currently on. The first place to look therefore is Brakebills. But they are unable to get through the school's defenses and therefore Quentin is about to have a steep learning curve into what Julia has been up to the past few years. Because Brakebills rejected her and she had to learn her magic in other ways, through magic safe houses. Rough and crude magic that Quentin is baffled even works. Hedge Witches know the real cost of power and Julia gets a lead on someone who can help them. That someone turns out to be Josh. Who has sold the button. Because palazzos in Venice aren't cheap. But thankfully Venice has its own dragon who breaks it all down for Quentin. The magic that Julia summoned before ascending the throne in Fillory has gotten the attention of the Gods. All of them. And they don't like humans using their magic. So, not only do Quentin and Julia have to get back to Fillory, they have to save it and magic. Or else be beyond deity screwed.

Because of the tonal shift it's kind of hard to believe that The Magician King was written by the same author as The Magicians. Especially in regard to Quentin Coldwater. It's kind of like he's had a personality transplant. Whereas The Magicians was riddled with his angst and how he kept trying to find something to magically "fix" his life, which ironically couldn't be fixed with magic, here he's hopeful. He's full of the spirit of adventure and his love of Fillory. The angst is out the window and he's somehow grown into accepting what life throws at him and rolling with the punches instead of bemoaning his fate. And while this is fascinating, and something that should be dwelled on as part of the "hero's journey" he embarks on over the course of this book, it's Julia and the "heroine's journey" that is important here. Because this is Julia's book. The Magician King is like a mirror of The Magicians. Whereas Quentin viewed his life was ruined by Brakebills, Julia's actually was ruined by Brakebills, but because they didn't let her in. So she finds magic the only way she can, on the mean streets. OK, technically in magical safe houses, but still, it's not the hallowed halls of Brakebills. Which I find ironic because everyone who disliked the staid poncey pedagogy of The Magicians would embrace Julia's journey but they probably wouldn't give this series a second chance. Which is a shame. And also makes me glad that I was willing to stick with this series. Because I love this weird mirrorworld that Lev Grossman has created. And there are parts of me that are geeking out over things that are just little Easter Eggs for uber book dorks like me. For example, The Magicians pays homage to Brideshead Revisited. But it pays homage to the main characters of the novel, Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, Quentin Coldwater and Eliot Waugh by another name. In Brideshead Revisited Sebastian Flyte's father, Lord Marchmain, is the outcast of his family, abandoning his wife and his home for Venice where he is in residence with his mistress. He is the black sheep, the other side of the coin, he is the opposite of Quentin, he is Julia. So what do they do in The Magician King that makes me so giddy? Quentin and Julia go to Venice. The sanctuary of the outcasts. Heck, that's where Josh has been hanging out all this time. They could have literally gone anywhere and yet Lev Grossman writes that they went to Venice to find Josh and talk to a dragon. Perfection. Now if I could just get past my squick at Julia's "rebel nerve endings [that] attempted to send pleasure signals to her brain, whereupon her brain burned them out... never to feel again" when she's being raped this would be a perfect book.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder, Eliot Waugh, Fillory, Hedge Witch, Julia Wicker, Lev Grossman, Lord Marchmain, Quentin Coldwater, Sebastian Flyte, Summer School, The Magician King, The Magicians, Venice

The Magician King by Lev Grossman
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: August 9th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 432 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Being a beloved ruler is all well and good, but sometimes it can get a little staid what with the daily balcony appearances for the common folk and the governing. Which is why the High Kings and Queens of Fillory, Eliot, Janet, Quentin, and Julia are hunting for one of Fillory's prophetic Unique Beasts, the Seeing Hare. Things don't exactly go to plan, the Master of the Hunt, Jollyby, catches the Hare and it predicts horrors and then Jollyby drops dead. Poor Jollyby. He had some memorable assets. But it's Fillory, it's a magical world, weird shit is bound to happen. Plus, how exactly do you follow through with investigating an omen? When trying to figure this out the rulers discover that the Outer Islands haven't paid their taxes in years and Quentin decides that sailing the Eastern Ocean and collecting some back taxes could be an interesting quest. Quentin resurrects and refurbishes the Muntjac and he and Julia and a few fellow compatriots head east. Which is how they meet Elaine and learn about the magic key that winds the world. Or, as Quentin realizes, the quest he should be on. They journey further east, to After Island, where he and Julia find a key and are sent straight home. Not to Castle Whitespire. To Earth. Which means they have to find a way back to Fillory. Logic dictates that they could return via the method that got them there in the first place, but Josh was the last one seen with the button and who knows what quest he's currently on. The first place to look therefore is Brakebills. But they are unable to get through the school's defenses and therefore Quentin is about to have a steep learning curve into what Julia has been up to the past few years. Because Brakebills rejected her and she had to learn her magic in other ways, through magic safe houses. Rough and crude magic that Quentin is baffled even works. Hedge Witches know the real cost of power and Julia gets a lead on someone who can help them. That someone turns out to be Josh. Who has sold the button. Because palazzos in Venice aren't cheap. But thankfully Venice has its own dragon who breaks it all down for Quentin. The magic that Julia summoned before ascending the throne in Fillory has gotten the attention of the Gods. All of them. And they don't like humans using their magic. So, not only do Quentin and Julia have to get back to Fillory, they have to save it and magic. Or else be beyond deity screwed.

Because of the tonal shift it's kind of hard to believe that The Magician King was written by the same author as The Magicians. Especially in regard to Quentin Coldwater. It's kind of like he's had a personality transplant. Whereas The Magicians was riddled with his angst and how he kept trying to find something to magically "fix" his life, which ironically couldn't be fixed with magic, here he's hopeful. He's full of the spirit of adventure and his love of Fillory. The angst is out the window and he's somehow grown into accepting what life throws at him and rolling with the punches instead of bemoaning his fate. And while this is fascinating, and something that should be dwelled on as part of the "hero's journey" he embarks on over the course of this book, it's Julia and the "heroine's journey" that is important here. Because this is Julia's book. The Magician King is like a mirror of The Magicians. Whereas Quentin viewed his life was ruined by Brakebills, Julia's actually was ruined by Brakebills, but because they didn't let her in. So she finds magic the only way she can, on the mean streets. OK, technically in magical safe houses, but still, it's not the hallowed halls of Brakebills. Which I find ironic because everyone who disliked the staid poncey pedagogy of The Magicians would embrace Julia's journey but they probably wouldn't give this series a second chance. Which is a shame. And also makes me glad that I was willing to stick with this series. Because I love this weird mirrorworld that Lev Grossman has created. And there are parts of me that are geeking out over things that are just little Easter Eggs for uber book dorks like me. For example, The Magicians pays homage to Brideshead Revisited. But it pays homage to the main characters of the novel, Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, Quentin Coldwater and Eliot Waugh by another name. In Brideshead Revisited Sebastian Flyte's father, Lord Marchmain, is the outcast of his family, abandoning his wife and his home for Venice where he is in residence with his mistress. He is the black sheep, the other side of the coin, he is the opposite of Quentin, he is Julia. So what do they do in The Magician King that makes me so giddy? Quentin and Julia go to Venice. The sanctuary of the outcasts. Heck, that's where Josh has been hanging out all this time. They could have literally gone anywhere and yet Lev Grossman writes that they went to Venice to find Josh and talk to a dragon. Perfection. Now if I could just get past my squick at Julia's "rebel nerve endings [that] attempted to send pleasure signals to her brain, whereupon her brain burned them out... never to feel again" when she's being raped this would be a perfect book.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder, Eliot Waugh, Fillory, Hedge Witch, Heroine's Journey, Julia Wicker, Lev Grossman, Lord Marchmain, Quentin Coldwater, Sebastian Flyte, The Magician King, The Magicians, Venice

Maurice by E.M. Forster
Published by: Book-of-the-Month Club
Publication Date: 1971
Format: Hardcover, 319 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Maurice Hall leads an unexceptional life. He is neither brilliant nor dense. He is comfortably middle of the road. But ever since his teacher took him aside one day to tell him about the facts of life due to Maurice's father being dead, Maurice has known he was different. He spent years lost in the fog of puberty and adolescence to one day find a hand reaching out of the mist to him making everything clear. That hand belonged to Clive Durham, and Maurice thought that Clive would be the love of his life. Because that is how Maurice is different, he has always been attracted to men, but never known the truth of himself till Clive. Clive and Maurice spend several happy years together until one day Clive says that after his recent illness he is no longer attracted to men and now wants to marry and settle down with the woman of his dreams. Maurice doesn't know how to handle this new information. He is at sea and can only see two ways out, he shall either kill himself or cure himself. Yet little does he realize that perhaps Clive wasn't the love of his life. Biting the bullet and visiting Clive and his new wife at the ancestral pile, Penge, Maurice meets an insolent young under-gamekeeper, Alec Scudder, who answers Maurice's cry of need in the night. But does Alec spell ruin or redemption for Maurice? Either way, it spells the end of the comfortable suburban life he has been living till now.

Maurice was written right before the outbreak of WWI yet was never published during Forster's lifetime. A select group of friends read it and passed it around between them but Forster didn't seem to think that it was worth it to publish the book during his lifetime. This is of course due to the public perception of homosexuality combined with his book having a happy ending. It would have been obscene libel and might have gone the way of Lady Chatterley's Lover. But there's a part of me that really wishes he had published it. To have an established author release a book that was a homosexual love story might have shaken up the society of the time and deservedly so. Think of the ruckus that Alec Waugh created when he published The Loom of Youth in 1917? Though the homosexual relationships in that book were very understated, it still had a major impact, and not just on his little brother Evelyn. With Maurice nothing is very understated, but nothing is lewd either. It shows two different, yet loving, homosexual relationships between consenting adults. But sadly, in this day and age, to some people this is still unacceptable. Sure there has been progress, even in Forster's lifetime the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 decriminalised homosexual acts in private between consenting adults, yet still there is not universal acceptance. I can't help but wonder if Maurice was published earlier, if more authors were to show that this is just human nature, that maybe, just maybe, acceptance would be more prolific.

The publication of Maurice being delayed made it an odd duck. It felt like it's time had already been and gone, missing the boat completely. Their are strong similarities to Brideshead Revisited and one wonders if it was all just a matter of timing that Brideshead Revisited is such a classic while Maurice is left to languish in LGBT centers in College Unions across the world. Brideshead Revisited captured the nostalgic zeitgeist of the time when it came out at the end of WWII. It looked back to the same world that Maurice did. A time when university was a golden haven and the world was still unsullied by strife. If Maurice had been published on the eve of WWI, perhaps it would have been the boon that Bridehead Revisited was to the next generation during the next war? But of course we will never know. And there is one crucial difference. The relationship between Sebastian and Charles, while believed to be homosexual in nature, was never boldly stated as such. Once again, despite both books being touchstones in gay literature, it is the ambiguous, the less bold, that is the most lauded and famous. Much like Dumbledore being gay. It's there for you to see, but if you choose not to, you can close your eyes to the truth. Because if there's one thing that people don't like, which is proven time and time again, it's the inconvenience of truth.

While the book in theory has so much going for it with being progressive and inclusive, in actuality it needed to be better written. It lacks a vital spark that some of Forster's books are lucky enough to capture, and I have to wonder if it wasn't the topic but the execution that made Forster hesitant to publish during his lifetime. In the afterward, or as Forster pretentiously labels it, "The Terminal Note," he says that in creating Maurice Hall he purposefully set out to make a character the exact opposite of himself. And I might add that he failed miserably at it. Authors put themselves into their books, this brings the characters to life. But if they have no touchstone, no common ground with their character, well how can they relate? How can they breath life into someone whom they know nothing about? Whom they share no life experiences with? This results in Maurice being a caricature. He's all bluster and panic and rage, yet never sympathetically. If Forster had included some of his own weaknesses, then he could relate, create some starting off point for the reader to connect with Maurice, instead we are always outsiders, and we don't like what we see one bit. There's a reason his family hates him, pompous, pretending, controlling, ass. In fact, I totally side with his family, I hate him too! Rarely am I ever rooting for a character to commit suicide, but every time Maurice contemplated this, well, I was there encouraging him to pick up the gun and end it all.

What initially drew me into the book was that it was so refreshing to find characters who just accepted who they were. Clive Durham never denied that he preferred men. Never. From his youngest yearnings he was honest with himself and his honesty let Maurice realize his own truth, that he too had always been only attracted to men. Of course it isn't dramatic if people don't have internal struggle and strife. So the book slowly went downhill from the radical notion of acceptance to the time honored tradition of "it was just a phase." Yes, perhaps it's just a phase that Clive went through, but Forster doesn't successfully convey this. It comes across as a lie that Clive's homosexuality was just something that everyone does at university. This amazingly insightful and thoughtful youth ends up towing the party line so that he becomes the honorable he was always meant to be. Ugh. While Maurice himself decides to go in another ludicrous direction, by trying to cure himself. Why do people feel a need to lie to themselves and try to fix things that don't need fixing? Yes, society was problematic, they were breaking the law of that time, but by believing what they were told they don't realize that it's society that is wrong, not them. To seriously consider hypnotism over true love with a member of the same sex? Now that is crazy.

But was Forster really advocating true love over conformity? While Maurice never "cures" himself what he does doesn't seem to me logical. Maurice tells Alec that two against the world can do anything. Well, to me, that means to live in defiance of society, to take on the world. To Maurice it means to retire from society and hide in the greenwood like actual fairies. WHAT!?! I thought two against the world can do anything? Apparently that only means to successfully hide from the world so no one knows what they are. So true love is acceptable only by complete removal from the society that is trying to conform them? The choice offered here isn't really a choice. You can make yourself an outcast, and let society win, or conform with society and let society win. So in other words, society will always win and how you lose is your only real choice. What bullshit is this really? Plus why not just go to a country, like France, where they didn't have to hide like the hypnotherapist suggested? I just don't get it. This book is so revolutionary in so many ways but slowly starts to take back every victory one by one till all we are left with is exile. Grumble grumble. Plus, all that is only touched on and never fully addressed, this idea of what it means to be homosexual depending on your class, to look outside Maurice's insular world, all left behind to run off into the woods. I feel the need to yell out my window, but not Maurice's enigmatic beckoning, more bemoaning in this case.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alec Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder, Conformity, E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Exile, Forster Fall, Homosexuality, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Maurice, Sebastian Flyte, The Loom of Youth, WWI, WWII