For now, this is a bit of a random rant; because I’m such a game of thrones nerd, I’ve been led to read a ton of stuff about Martin’s a Song of Ice and Fire, and how the author meant to achieve this goal or that one. I have noticed that most of the time, people are just completely wrong about those, and it bugs me because I think Martin’s message is presented in a clear and methodical fashion, and it shouldn’t take too much thought to understand what he’s trying to convey. Also because, when I grew up, I wanted to convey a similar message in my own fantasy writings, before I learned that he had already done it, much better than I would have.

On the back of my edition of ‘a Game of Thrones’, you can read this bit, which may or may not be the worst description I’ve ever read: “in a Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin has created a genuine masterpiece, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill the pages of the first volume in an epic series sure to delight fantasy fans everywhere.”
This ‘genre’ that is being referred to is obviously fantasy, more precisely high or epic fantasy, the genre that Tolkien popularized and that is now hailed as the flagship genre of fantasy as a whole. What I find most interesting about these lines, is how hard they fail at describing high fantasy. Let’s do this the easy way, through a little LotR comparison:
- Mystery! [ ] Nope. Tolkien has no great liking to mystery. His world is very defined, with polar opposites and people leaning toward one or the other, with overarching goals and people trying to achieve them. You might sometimes wonder about a few things (‘who is this Striker fellow?’), but soon all will be explained, and the mysteries won’t be central to the plot.
- Intrigue! [ ] Absolutely not. Middle Earth isn’t devoid of intrigue, but intrigue is something dark and despicable. You lower yourself when you use intrigue; people like Grima could do it, but would a hero? No way. Even Sauron seems above intrigue: he’s very open about his strengths and his weaknesses, he’s ready for an honorable fight (as in army vs army, no low blow). Frodo’s plan to destroy the ring is a huge FUCK YOU to intrigue in general: basically ‘Imma just walk in the middle of enemy territory and then destroy the ring, deal with it.’ Intrigue goes against one of Tolkien’s messages: ‘Even the smallest person can change the course of the future’. But he does that by acting grand, not by schieving.
- Romance! [ ] Lol no. Love is a marginalized idea in LotR, it happens on the side, it happens in the end. When the threat is over, when the good guys won, fine, it’s time to marry. It’s almost like a reward, that you earn through having been badass in your adventures; it’s part of your own happy ending. Tolkien’s characters are focused on their quest, which is larger than them – because of that, they have no time for such personal (petty?) concerns.
- Adventures! [x] Finally a check. There are tons of adventure in Tolkien! We visit lots of strange places, we meet new people, we get to accomplish stuff. The problem comes when you reverse it: there is a distinct lack of adventure in Game of Thrones. More than a lack, there is a denial of it. ASOIAF is overall pretty static, depicting a lot of people who stay where they are, or want to stay where they are and are forced to move by circumstances. There is worldbuilding, but it’s done through dialogue and history, much more than it is done through actual world travel.
So yeah, we get a big fat no on our comparison between Martin and Epic Fantasy, because Martin isn’t writing high fantasy at all. Editors just saw ‘Tolkien influence’ and lazily wrote it off as epic, because they could only think of positive influence.

On the other end of the spectrum, you then see people who tell you that Martin is writing realistic fantasy, or alternative history or something like that. Much like editors saw ‘Tolkien’, they see ‘War of the Roses’, and they are just as litteral about it. Let’s take a few steps back.
Is Martin’s world actually realistic? Well, it certainly is more than Tolkien’s. However, it isn’t ruled by its realism, realism doesn’t drive the story. Notice how ta’veren the Stark children are, that they get to be involved with so many important people and so many important events. Is that realistic? It’s certainly convenient. Focus on Arya: can you imagine everything that happens to her? Wouldn’t it be more realistic to have had her killed on her way out of King’s Landing, or have her captured in King’s Landing, or have her join her family at some point in the Riverlands? Is Ned Stark a realistic character? I may have to expand on that, but for now I’ll just say no.
Martin’s realism is a symptom of his use of deconstruction. But people tend to understand realism before they understand deconstruction, and because of that it becomes easy to mistake the consequence for the cause.

I was recently listening to a podcast (http://castroller.com/podcasts/UnspoiledGameOf/3626654), in which one of the speakers had trouble understanding Martin’s use of rape. Why is it that when the Dothrakis march against Westeros, they start raping the villagers who were minding their own business on the way? And why do we have to see it? The other speaker tried to explain to him that it was because that’s just how war works, and he’s displaying how ugly this is, but the first countered that it wasn’t a revolutionary idea, and that we really didn’t need Martin to understand that about war in the first place.
The answer that was missing here is the answer that we actually do need him. Not because we are so naïve about war; that would be if we were into realistic fantasy or whatever; but because HIGH FANTASY is naïve about war; you go to war with these collections of heroes who are all worth singing for. No Walton Steelshanks, certainly not. Maybe with the exception of Sword of Truth, which is a little less angelic about this (but Sword of Truth has other problems, not the least of which is having been written by a massive asshole). That’s what a deconstruction is: singling out something the genre takes for granted, one of its tropes or clichés, and questioning whether the use of this trope actually makes sense.

The reason I’m being so uptight about what Martin is doing is because of a deconstruction’s usual goal, which is reinforcement. The idea is that playing with something tropy makes you realize why that thing became a trope in the first place, and why it’s essential to the specific genre. That doesn’t work with Martin, because that’s not how he reads fantasy. Martin’s deconstructions don’t tell us: ‘Hey, look at how I’m changing stuff, this is why Tolkien’s model works so fine’. Under his pen, the tropes appear incoherent, either childish or anachronistic. ‘Hey, look at how much Tolkien’s model doesn’t make any sense, and despite that it’s having success. Just imagine how much success we could be having!’
High fantasy has always been written under the shadow of two towers, Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul. Every fantasy author will tell in interviews how they respect Tolkien’s world, how he’s the master of fantasy, and how they have been heavily influenced by him. Martin’s project isn’t simply to create a distance between his work and Tolkien’s work. He isn’t simply telling you that he’s writing in the shadow of no towers, no; he wants to bring these towers the fuck down.
Seeing how Martin is being so methodical about it, a worthy analysis of the process should follow the same path, and at the same rhythm. If I’m ever attempting this analysis, or if anyone else does, I think they should go at least book by book, maybe even chapter by chapter, with the perspective of a fantasy reader, who is carefully gathering what he’s being taught about the genre and its shortcomings.

Amethyst21

Canada3303 Posts

November 16 2013 07:07 GMT

I think one thing you have to realize is that Martin draws comparisons to Tolkien in the way that pretty much every science fiction writer gets compared at some point to Asimov. It's almost a mark of respect, though you are absolutely correct in that there isn't much similar between Tolkien's works and Martin's, but because we have to categorize things somehow, that is what happens.

Fantasy as a genre struggled a lot before about 10-15 years ago to produce anything noteworthy in terms of literary achievement (with obvious exceptions) because many books were slavish knockoffs of Tolkien because thats what 'high fantasy' was perceived as. You needed a hero, a quest, some ancient enemy and off you go! There is a reason why fantasy was derided by many for a long time (and as a Librarian that has read a bunch of old fantasy books, its a literary wasteland in my opinion). It's become much better in recent years and there are several talented writers that are expanding the genre and creating solid works all the time and part of that is the influence of authors like Martin who really turn fantasy on its head.

Though, the one thing I admire about ASOIAF is though as for every deconstruction of fantasy tropes that exist (Ned's the hero because he's the main character!, Good characters don't die!, etc etc..) there is a completely bog standard fantasy trope - Jon, the Bastard with a hidden heritage is a pretty standard fantasy character, for example, and there are others, though Martin does a great job of actually inverting those tropes as well (considering Jon may or may not have been brutally murdered). Martin's worldview is certainly much more gritty and 'realistic' than high fantasy traditionally is - but the strength of ASOIAF isn't that its a brilliant deconstruction of a genre (which it is, really) but its actually just a really, really good story that appeals to people that traditionally wouldn't read fantasy. I mean my mom's read the series, some of my friends, who barely read novels at all read ASOIAF, they wouldn't do that if it was only a deconstruction (since they haven't read actual fantasy works to deconstruct) but because the story is great.

The thing that interests me is if we will get a bunch of thinly veiled clones of Martin's works over the next few years the way that Tolkien's followers did. Somehow I doubt it, because its a very difficult thing to replicate, but I wouldn't be suprised to see a wave of 'gritty' fantasy, even if it misses the mark of what Martin is actually trying to accomplish.

Shikada

Serbia664 Posts

November 16 2013 11:11 GMT

With Martin being my favorite writer for over a decade now, I just have to chime in

If you forgive this oversimplification of things, but in the end, Martin is a master storyteller, of the rarest kind, while Tolkien is a master worldbuilder. Their works have totally different focus. You will never see Martin come up with languages to the same detail and depth (and I would add beauty) that Tolkien did, no more than seeing historically accurate and realistic gritty battles in LotR.

For Tolkien, the characters are vessels to go around and explore his world, for Martin the character reigns supreme. Nothing else matters nearly as much to his works. I mean, that's how he writes. He thinks of a story, vaguely of the start and finish, and then populates it with characters, which in turn naturally fill in the transitions of the story. You can just tell that LotR wasn't written this way. Tolkien had the history, the geography, the places the languages, the overall story for his grand epic down, and then was like: I need a cast of characters for this now. And Martin is by far the best character builder that I know of. You really need to read his short stories to appreciate it more. How in just a few sentences he paints a picture about his characters that makes them so vivid, so real and gripping, that other authors could spend books developing theirs but could still fail at making them believable.

Just so it isn't all praise, I will add that he really fumbled with the last two books. It seems the complexity of his work got to him. Hopefully the sixth book will recapture the masterful flow of the first three books and drive the story in a bit less detail and faster onwards. I really hope he makes it

tshi

United States2494 Posts

November 16 2013 14:24 GMT

@Amethyst21:

I've been thinking about what you said with regards to deconstructing the tropes that people are used to as well. Jaime and Brienne's case for one, they're "The Hero" and "The Maid" kinda, same with Hound and Sansa. I think those are some of my favorite relationships because the reader knows what to expect, and because its sooooo different from what they expect; it's eye-catching. Also, dragons and magic are more interesting to me now, for reasons which are unknown to me; I never had interest in that kind of stuff, but I think it's interesting now because it has to do with characters I like and I'm vested in seeing what happens with them so all their magic is something that becomes interesting all of a sudden.

I agree with you about why the stories are good - because they're just good stories. I hadn't ever read any novel before (w/o it being mandatory for school) and I'm surprised at myself for liking it, but not surprised since it's just a good story that could have been set in another time period and be just as interesting to me.

Everything is there in the series - when you get your fill of reading about a certain person's story, a very different one is readily available. It's just really nice how different some of the characters are. Like you said, I'm not sure if it's because he's deconstructing the character archetypes, or if it's just because they are interesting people.