The Warlock Rewritten

Early in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle series, a character reads a book with great delight, saying that he knows he should be reading more worthy literature, but enjoys picaro novels so much that he is constantly reading them.

That's all.  He doesn't mention picaresque novels again.  I think this may be a tip-off that we're reading one.

Why?  Easy answer—they're a lot of fun.  Just to name a few, let's say The Wizard of Oz, Glory Road, and Lord of the Rings.  They also include some of the classics, such as Huckeleberry Finn, The Odyssey, The Song of Roland, Tom Jones, Don Quixote, and Candide.  They give scope for a great deal of adventure and excitement, and also laid the ground work for many, many television series.

So what makes them so interesting, and so widespread?

It's not hard to figure out.  Their structure is journey-and-return—Frodo leaving the Shire, going through a series of hair-raising adventures, then coming home to cleanse the shire and settle down in peace and contentment.  Variations on the structure are many and various—for example, Hollywood calls them "Road Movies," "Westerns," and "Travelogues,"—but they all have those essential elements: Get 'em out on the road, have them visit one exotic location after another, end by having them confront a monster (sometimes human), and send them home.

So what makes a picaresque novel different?

One main ingredient—the Spanish picaro.  He or she is a rogue, an adventurer, a thief, a scalawag, a con man, a scoundrel, a knave, or any number of other people who live on the fringes of society and survive by using their wits-a trickster.  We like them, we identify with them, and we applaud them.  But why?

For one thing, they resemble us, though the likeness may be more in the author's and reader's minds than in any actuality.  If we feel shunted to the sidings of life, scorned or mocked, we can identify with them and take some hope from their trials and eventual victories.  After all, Ulysses always does arrive home.

Ulysses?

Didn't I say a rogue, a con man?  What's the King of Ithaca doing in there?

I did say a picaro lives by his wits, though, and Ulysses does—just barely, sometimes, and many of his crew are not so lucky.  Authors who came after Homer found Ulysses very useful as an example and mined it for ideas—and still do, actually.  If you'd like to read a space opera version, I recommend R.A. Lafferty's Space Chantey, whose hero is Captain Roadstorm.  Lafferty told me that "Ulysses," if translated very badly, means "the stormy road."  One of America's lesser-known legendary tall tale heroes is Mr. Stormalong, the sailor's Paul Bunyan.

But wait a minute—if the Picaresque form is so simple in its basics, how can it produce great literature?

Very easily, actually.  Like any other art form, it's easy to do but hard to do well.  After all, linking together a bunch of short stories to make a long story—say, a novel—is a lot easier than developing a chain of cause and effect to reach an inevitable conclusion.  That's a thumbnail description of plot structure.  To avoid confusion, I prefer the term "causal plot structure" because its events are linked by cause and effect.

Actually, you can start with a dozen or so little stories—episodes—and make an epic.  If you do, let's call it "episodic structure" or "epic structure."  But it won't be picaresque without a picaro, such as German folklore's Tyl Eulenspiegel, Norse mythology's Loki, or some like-minded prankster.

But how about the other classics of literature that sneaked in the list of Picaresque novels?  How can a rogue be a hero?

Let's take a closer look.  Don Quixote isn't a crook—just the opposite.  He's a hopeful hero who goes little crazy (dotty) by reading all those romances—the medieval term for an epic adventure.  He may lose, he may not be a trickster, but he lives by his addled wits, somehow surviving, and in the process, giving us a good look at La Mancha and the people who live in it.

Huck Finn does much the same.  He's really a good-natured, laid-back kid, not a scoundrel or rogue—but in the eyes of the other villagers, he's the town's "bad boy," enough so that Tom Sawyer is told not to talk with him.  The town sees him as a juvenile delinquent, partly because his father is so unsavory.  He would be quite content to leave the world alone if it left him alone.  It won't, of course—now and then he has to leave the raft for necessities such as food.  As he drifts through America's heartland, he gives us a look at ourselves and our culture, and doesn't always find it pleasant.  That's the strength of the Picaresque story: giving us a chance to look at ourselves without outright condemnation, and maybe even a sort of provisional acceptance—accepting ourselves on the condition that we try to correct the wrongs that Mark Twain has shown us.  In the process, the form gives us great opportunities for humor; it lends itself very easily to satire.

So what does all this have to do with science fiction and/or fantasy?

A great deal, actually.  In an earlier blog post, I presented a case for out genre having grown out of the travelogue.  Criticizing our culture and our government goes back as far as Cyrano de Bergerac and his journey to the moon and the sun, to Jonathan Swift and Gulliver's Travels.  In our own time, it has generated movies that have become part of the American vocabulary, and a surprising number of television series.  The capacity for humor, satire, and criticism of our current condition remains expansive.

It's even useful in The Warlock in Spite of Himself.

Surely Rod Gallowglass is not a picaro!

Guilty—he is.  Any secret agent is on the fringe of society, living a life of deceit, pretending to be something he is not, qualifies for the role.  Rod's sense of humor is appropriate in a picaro, too. The book is political satire as well as social satire. As a political satirist, I'm making fun of politicians, some of whom can be named but aren't.  The Cold War and especially the McCarthy era with its Big Red Scare underlies it; the shadow of the atom bomb's mushroom cloud darkens it.  Big Tom's Marxism collides with Tuan's aristocratic ideals and Catherine's insecurities that cause her to overreact to any challenge to her authority—and, of course, Rod's commitment to democracy.  As a social satirist, I take aim at the class system, the abuse of the power of an office, intolerance of any and all varieties, the Sixties' version of sexism and the antiquated notion that women couldn't be effective at politicizing (or anywhere in government).

There's more to it, most of which I resolutely refused to acknowledge until I had finished the rough draft, so that the spontaneity could persist and the humor remain unforced.

I like to think that you and I are part of a proud tradition.  Let's hear it for Star Trek, Star Wars, and Firefly!