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Exploring Literature
Randy Money
Diversity: J. K. Rowling and Poppy Z. Brite
There are two kinds of books.
All right, there are more than two kinds and the two kinds discussed below are only extremes along one possible
continuum, but to make a deadline sometimes you need a place to start, so ...
There are two kinds of books, those that challenge us and those that comfort us.
What works of fiction do you reread? What novels and story collections leave you satisfied no matter how often
you return to them? Frequently those are our comfort books, the books we lean on when we are depressed, or tired,
or nostalgic. Most comfort books are works we first read when young and impressionable. They also tend to be works
that firmly distinguish good from evil, right from wrong; there may be uncertainty for awhile, but by the end of
the tale the distinction is firmly made, the world we live in is a fine place, our way of life is preserved, its
fairness and rightness reasserted, and no matter how rent the social fabric, the protagonist and her/his cohorts
have sown shut the hole. I've heard readers cite works from Jane Eyre to The Lord of the Rings, from
David Copperfield to the Sherlock Holmes stories as comfort books, the social criticism in Jane Eyre
and David Copperfield (among others) no longer disturbing as their stories transport us to safer havens.
Every so often new work arrives that immediately joins the list of comfort books. More rare, that work proves so
appealing even many cynics enjoy it.
Taking Comfort in Potter-land
Why is everyone wild about Harry Potter?
Does it stem from the innovation of new fantasy tropes? Well, no. Veteran readers of fantasy find little new in
the books. Children have been the protagonists of many fantasies (C. S. Lewis' Narnia series, Alice in Wonderland,
The Wizard of Oz) and schools for magic have appeared elsewhere (Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy),
as have dragons (Le Guin, again, and J. R. R. Tolkein) and the occasional giant spider (Tolkein, again).
Maybe everybody loves Harry because everybody loves Harry? Certainly, the books as commodities and fad have gained
notice everywhere. But how did they become popular enough to gain that momentum?
I don't really know, but I will hazard a guess: the Harry Potter books are popular because they are fun.
In her first two novels, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's
Stone in England; presumably the American publishers did not expect their audience to have heard of alchemy),
and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J. K. Rowling has found the key to writing charmingly: keep
it direct and straight-forward, have fun and share the fun with your reader. Rowling has invented a world of magic
that overlaps our own and thus opened the possibility of the wondrous coexisting with the mundane.
Until his eleventh birthday, when his invitation to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry arrived, Harry did
not know he was a wizard. We enter Rowling's magical world through Harry's experiences, and mainly through his
experiences at Hogwarts. While the practice of sending children to boarding schools is unusual in the U. S., what
makes this situation work is the depiction and development of youngsters we recognize: Most of us have met someone
as good-hearted and steadfast as Harry, as trustworthy and loyal as Ron Weasley, as brilliant and nearly inflexible
as Hermione Granger. The predicaments Harry and his friends get into reflect our own experiences and those we have
found in our own literature. The difference between Harry and, say, Tom Sawyer, is Harry's desperate desire to
be part of this new world. Where Tom Sawyer thought little of authority figures, Ron, Hermione and especially Harry
are anxious to please because they feel privileged to be at Hogwarts and want to remain there.
In the world of wizards and witches everything Harry sees, from flying brooms to wands to potion shops, is new
to him. When Harry explores Hogwarts and other magical venues while preparing for school -- like Diagon Alley,
a lane in London only the magical can enter and their main center of commerce -- the effect of Harry's story broadens,
partly becoming a travel story with Harry as the stranger in a strange land, his astonishment at what he sees contagious:
His initiation into this new world is also ours, his sense of privilege becoming our own.
To solidify our identification with Harry, Rowling gives us doses of the routines at Hogwarts. Rowling's plots
tie together the beginning and ending, but in the middle, while still mindful of her storyline, she spends time
with the events and feel of school days. We follow Harry, Ron and Hermione to their classes, we meet their fellow
students, we share the mysteries they encounter and try to solve. Further, the incidents one expects in fantasy
novels, from flying a car to encountering an ogre, are integrated with other events that reflect life as know it
in our world. For instance, in Chamber of Secrets, Harry learns that there is a contingent of students who
despise Muggles -- the word among the magical for those without magic -- and that prejudice is directed at someone
like Hermione who is Muggle-born yet somehow has magic. Rowling thus subverts the classism inherent in the school
story through tying it to magic. By focusing on the confrontation of the magical haves and the have-nots, she minimizes
classism based on money and social status. [This last observation I owe to someone out on one of the rec.arts.sf
newsgroups. I am sorry, now, that I didn't think to get the person's name so I could thank him/her directly, but
at the time I was not sure I would write about Harry.]
In short, as with many of the best childrens' books, Harry has the adventures most of us once dreamed of having.
In spite of Muggle guardians who wish to ignore and suppress his magic, Harry is level-headed, resourceful, grounded
and cool under pressure; he is the person we would wish to be if we had such adventures, and appeals to that side
of us that laid in bed some nights, sniffling over the perceived injustice of our parents, certain we were adopted
and that our real parents -- royalty, or astronauts, or adventurers -- would one day take us away from the drudgery
of our lives.
Once Rowling hooks us, she holds us with a direct, conversational tone that doesn't just tell us Harry's story,
but seems to confide it in us. Her style possesses a sprightliness that keeps the pages flying by and showcases
a sense of humor that never condemns or belittles her characters except those whose noses she tweaks for being
pompous, officious or self-important. Essentially, she takes her main characters seriously even when she does not
take their situations seriously. By not condescending to her target audience of pre-adolescents, she has also attracted
their parents, reminding us of the secret lives our children lead, investing them with glamour, and seducing us
into sharing our childrens' adventures.
Last, though not least important, Rowling holds us with one of writing's oldest tricks: she creates a vocabulary
only Harry Potter initiates will understand. I expect some of these terms to join our daily language; for instance,
"Muggles" could transmute into a descriptive for the unimaginative among us. Certainly I wish, as a kid,
I had gone to Hogwarts and avoided many of the Muggles in my life. I wish Quidditch was the national obsession
here on January 28th. I detest those who condemn mudbloods, and some of my relatives are squibs but I like them
all the same. [Quidditch -- a sport played on broomsticks by witches and wizards; mudblood -- derogatory term for
Muggles, but specifically Muggles with magic; squibs -- derogatory term for those who were born to witches and
wizards but have little or no magic of their own.]
And so Harry is infiltrating popular culture, a process I knew was truly begun when I recently heard a reference
to Hogwarts on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. It seems like a natural cross-reference since both Rowling's books
and Joss Whedon's TV show emphasize the caring, friendship, loyalty and teamwork of a group of young people. When
Buffy's sister, Dawn, makes a joke about Hogwarts and Buffy looks annoyed and bewildered, Dawn says, "Crack
a book sometime." Another blow for literacy, or at least for initiation into Harry Potter's world. So, crack
a book sometime, preferably the first Harry Potter if you have yet to read it, and expect it to stay cracked until
you finish.
Darker Lands
Not all people are comfortable to be around, and neither are all books. In previous columns I've discussed grimmer
works from Frederick Busch's Girls to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House to Octavia Butler's
Bloodchild and Other Stories. Add to the list, Wormwood by Poppy Z. Brite, a collection of her early
short stories.
For readers unacquainted with the "horror" genre of the late '80s and early '90s, Brite seemed to appear
from nowhere in 1992 with her novel, Lost Souls, yet she had been selling short stories for several years.
Lost Souls was one of the first books published by the Dell Abyss line, which attempted to produce literate,
dark, Gothic fiction; it became one of the line's bigger successes. Brite has since published Drawing Blood,
Exquisite Corpse and another collection, Are You Loathsome Tonight? The Romanticism of her work has
made her a cult figure, perhaps even required reading for the Goth movement.
Of the stories in Wormwood, those published before 1990 already show her vigor, but seem unfinished; while
her prose is forceful, her story-telling is unpolished. The stories dating from 1990 and later (date of publication,
though not necessarily when they were written) show more confidence and maturity. Part of the enjoyment of reading
this collection is the pleasure of watching a young writer gaining strength.
Brite's characters sit on the fringe of society. They are dispossessed and, by society's standards, warped; but
Brite presents them as formed by circumstances beyond their control, the circumstances of where and when they were
born, and the biological needs they recognize and struggle with but would not change if they could. They are outsiders
in a society suspicious of social non-conformity and even less tolerant of sexual non-conformity.
In "Angels," the opening story, car trouble strands two young musicians on tour, Steve and Ghost, recurring
characters in Brite's fiction. As Steve tries to fix the car, Ghost sees a house in the nearby woods. When Steve
admits defeat, the two walk to the house.
Shortly after entering the house's front yard, Ghost meets the Twins, two teenage boys entwined psychically as
well as complementing each other's deformities: Siamese twins, each with only one arm, they literally cling to
one another, fitting together like pieces of a fleshy jigsaw puzzle. They work together on all things, have little
to do with anyone else, including their siblings, and seem never to have forgiven the world for separating them.
The Twins take to Ghost, who has a psychic sensitivity that manifests in empathy for the pain of others. He comes
to understand that they yearn to lose themselves in a big city. Ghost and Steve help them get away, even knowing
that the Twins' desire is a death wish.
The story has three main strengths: first, the depiction of the easy friendship between Steve and Ghost, which
parallels the Twin's relationship by being another pair of men whose abilities complement each other. Second, Brite
refuses to make the Twins appealing. They are not cute; they are filthy, selfish, occasionally mean and defensive,
though their defensiveness is understandable in context. Last, Steve wariness of the Twins -- he fears for Ghost's
safety -- complicates our reaction: do we agree with Ghost or with Steve, even though Steve ultimately trusts Ghost's
empathy and understanding?
Still, that complication and its resolution prove to be a weakness, too. The story's success hinges on whether
or not the reader trusts Ghost's judgement, either directly or through accepting Steve's trust in him. We may accept
the Twins and recognize them as human in spite of their indecipherability because of Ghost's empathy, and we certainly
notice the indications that Brite believes Steve and Ghost did the right thing - her stories offer a Romantic view
of death - but the story is too brief to bear all this weight. This is one of Brite's early stories, first published
in 1987, and leaves the sense that Brite is grappling with a theme larger than she can hold. The issues are not
explored as fully as they could be - and will be in later stories - and Steve and Ghost are not sufficiently developed
within the context of the story for many readers, myself included, to surrender to their decision.
By the time of the stories published in 1990, however, Brite has no trouble gaining readers' understanding, if
not always their agreement. The reader senses a change in her work, a new mastery of the short story form. The
most powerful story from 1990 is, "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood," and it is one of the strongest
in the collection.
Again Brite employs the motif of two young men as partners and lovers, living a 1990s approximation of the life
of the Decadents of the 1890s. Brite's prose, often lush in imagery, is unleashed here to evoke the Goth life-style
taken to extremes. Her protagonists frequent Goth bars, take on lovers of both sexes independently and in tandem,
drink and take drugs with abandon, ever questing for new and sharper sensations. They embrace death, or believe
they do, and that leads them to become ghouls: they pillage the mausoleums and vaults of New Orleans cemeteries
taking whatever strikes their fancies. When they invade the casket of a voodoo master and take a prize, they invite
revenge.
The story is a re-imagining of a minor H. P. Lovecraft tale titled, "The Hound." Either his constrained
life made it hard for Lovecraft to imagine real decadence or publishing constraints held him in check, because
"The Hound" only vaguely hints at the details of his characters' lives. Brite was not constrained and
because of that, "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" may be a hard story for some readers to bear. Still,
the richness of Brite's description lends less of the ghoulish to the story than the melancholic: her characters
search for death until they find him; and then their embrace of death becomes bittersweet as one dies and the survivor
becomes a shell of his former self, still searching for death though his reasons have changed.
Besides "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood," I would especially recommend the stories "Optional Music
for Voice and Piano," "The Sixth Sentinel," "How to Get Ahead in New York," "Calcutta,
Lord of Nerves" and "The Ash of Memory, the Dust of Desire."
Poppy Z. Brite's work is not for everyone. The events in her stories may be too raw, too visceral for many readers.
However, her vision is uncompromising in exploring the various twists and turns love takes, for in the final assessment
the best of these stories is about love and need, and especially about the vulnerability that comes with love.
****
Notes:
J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
(1998) is published by Scholastic Inc.
Poppy Z. Brite's Wormwood (1996) was published by Dell Books.
Copyright © 2001 Randy Money All Rights Reserved |
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