Originally the word whimsy meant ‘dizziness, giddiness, vertigo’ (‘obsolete’ says the OED, quoting Charles Blount in 1656 complaining of being ‘troubled with such a whimsey in the head’, and also Thomas Middleton's play Old Law: ‘in my head already,/The whimzy, you all turne round’).
The question of the irksomeness of fantastical whimsy (and some of those books do sound extremely irksome, like Pratchett without a sense of purpose or a sense of humour) connects handily with a question I've been meaning to ask someone who's read a lot of fantasy: why is The King of Elfland's Daughter so good? I'm reading it at the moment. My heart sank when I read the first line -
"In their ruddy jackets of leather that reached to their knees the men of Erl appeared before their lord, the stately white-haired man in his long red room. He leaned in his carven chair and heard their spokesman."
Is it all going to be like that? I thought. And the answer was, yes, it is all going to be like that, or more so. Dunsany's style is heightened and then heightened some more, and when he really wants to make a point he somehow finds a higher gear and cranks it up even further:
"Go forth," he said, "before these days of mine are over, and therefore go in haste, and go from here eastwards and pass the fields we know, till you see the lands that clearly pertain to faery; and cross their boundary, which is made of twilight, and come to that palace that is only told of in song."
Here's the thing: a whole book written like this could be *awful*. You'd think it would be awful. And it's not - he makes it work. Admittedly, it's taking me longer to read than the average 200-page novel - after a couple of chapters I do feel the need for a break - but the actual experience of reading it is, well, magical.
The rhythms of Dunsany's prose are terrific, it has to be said, particularly in his slightly disconcerting run-on sentences -
"Not like the runes that enraged the flames was the song she sang to the sword: she whose curses had blasted the fire till it shrivelled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years a glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which when dimly perceived by us are called regrets."
(A decidedly Pynchonian sentence, that one.)
So perhaps what Dunsany did so well and [insert name of fantasy author here] does so badly is just a matter of "being a good writer". It's odd, though, that what seems like the same kind of style can be used so very badly and so very well.
That's exactly it. The whimsy of Dunsany's novel, in a way not true of the more recent vogue for cosy-whimsical Fantasy, is that it resonates, it is more than mere artifice: it enchants. I don't know if this is so much a matter of him being 'a good writer', though manifestly he was, as him being in touch with something deeper: whimsy not as flim-flam and contrivance, but as something closer to the roots of the term, something mentally and spiritually disorienting and plunging.
'Disorienting' is exactly right. I frequently feel as if I'm reading something that makes perfect sense *but not to me*, as in that weird[sic] passage about the little shining feet of regret. Which can happen when you're learning something new, or when you're reading poetry, or when you're talking to someone who's delusional, or when you're having a psychotic break yourself - it's a dangerously unmoored sensation. And that too is whimsy, I guess - although at this stage it's tempting to abandon the word to the witchy coffee-shop squad.
I liked Desdemona more than you did, but it’s part of a broader world (all short stories) and within that tapestry it works quite well. I do avoid whimsical fantasy, of the stuff you mention here. I don’t snub it, I just know it isn’t for me.
Well, yes: and actually I enjoyed Desdemona, as I say here. There's clearly an appetite for this kind of thing, which is fine. But I do wonder about the deeper possibilities of the mode.
The question of the irksomeness of fantastical whimsy (and some of those books do sound extremely irksome, like Pratchett without a sense of purpose or a sense of humour) connects handily with a question I've been meaning to ask someone who's read a lot of fantasy: why is The King of Elfland's Daughter so good? I'm reading it at the moment. My heart sank when I read the first line -
"In their ruddy jackets of leather that reached to their knees the men of Erl appeared before their lord, the stately white-haired man in his long red room. He leaned in his carven chair and heard their spokesman."
Is it all going to be like that? I thought. And the answer was, yes, it is all going to be like that, or more so. Dunsany's style is heightened and then heightened some more, and when he really wants to make a point he somehow finds a higher gear and cranks it up even further:
"Go forth," he said, "before these days of mine are over, and therefore go in haste, and go from here eastwards and pass the fields we know, till you see the lands that clearly pertain to faery; and cross their boundary, which is made of twilight, and come to that palace that is only told of in song."
Here's the thing: a whole book written like this could be *awful*. You'd think it would be awful. And it's not - he makes it work. Admittedly, it's taking me longer to read than the average 200-page novel - after a couple of chapters I do feel the need for a break - but the actual experience of reading it is, well, magical.
The rhythms of Dunsany's prose are terrific, it has to be said, particularly in his slightly disconcerting run-on sentences -
"Not like the runes that enraged the flames was the song she sang to the sword: she whose curses had blasted the fire till it shrivelled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years a glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which when dimly perceived by us are called regrets."
(A decidedly Pynchonian sentence, that one.)
So perhaps what Dunsany did so well and [insert name of fantasy author here] does so badly is just a matter of "being a good writer". It's odd, though, that what seems like the same kind of style can be used so very badly and so very well.
That's exactly it. The whimsy of Dunsany's novel, in a way not true of the more recent vogue for cosy-whimsical Fantasy, is that it resonates, it is more than mere artifice: it enchants. I don't know if this is so much a matter of him being 'a good writer', though manifestly he was, as him being in touch with something deeper: whimsy not as flim-flam and contrivance, but as something closer to the roots of the term, something mentally and spiritually disorienting and plunging.
'Disorienting' is exactly right. I frequently feel as if I'm reading something that makes perfect sense *but not to me*, as in that weird[sic] passage about the little shining feet of regret. Which can happen when you're learning something new, or when you're reading poetry, or when you're talking to someone who's delusional, or when you're having a psychotic break yourself - it's a dangerously unmoored sensation. And that too is whimsy, I guess - although at this stage it's tempting to abandon the word to the witchy coffee-shop squad.
I liked Desdemona more than you did, but it’s part of a broader world (all short stories) and within that tapestry it works quite well. I do avoid whimsical fantasy, of the stuff you mention here. I don’t snub it, I just know it isn’t for me.
Well, yes: and actually I enjoyed Desdemona, as I say here. There's clearly an appetite for this kind of thing, which is fine. But I do wonder about the deeper possibilities of the mode.