Picaresque Plot Structure in SFF
October 1st, 2012
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!
"Oathbound Wizard" ebook Introduction
July 30th, 2012
There's a problem with sequels, as anybody who has seen The Empire Strikes Back knows. The first book sets up the world, the third one shows us the final battle and the wrap-up afterwards... but the second book is left hanging. I had the same problem with The Oathbound Wizard, but luckily my editor, Lester Del Rey, worked me through it. Among many other things, he suggested the title, and the plot twist that generated it.
My first published novel (and first published story) was The Warlock in Spite of Himself, in 1969. Lester Del Rey was a reviewer at the time, and was kind enough to devote some space to my book. His review began with the words, "This novel definitely has the worst title of the year." My heart sank down to my boots—but the second sentence was worse, proclaiming that I had committed the grave mistake of trying to use fantasy in the same book with science fiction (an amazing comment coming from the author of Day of the Giants, in which a Minnesota farmer is drafted into the army of the Norse gods just in time for Ragnorak).
However, he went on to say, "Somehow, though, Stasheff makes it all work."
I picked up my heart and put it back in place. Then Mr. Del Rey went on to list my story's good points, ending with the immortal sentence, "There is room for a sequel. I hope Stasheff is working on one," a phrase which, if I had St. Peter's job, would certainly have qualified him for a halo. I wasn't working on a sequel at the time, but I began working on King Kobold that day. When it appeared in print, I watched the pro-zines eagerly, holding my breath and hoping for a favorable word from the man who, I now realized, must indeed by the most insightful and knowledgeable alive.
I found his column—and put on the brakes. He first reviewed a novel by another author, beginning with words that have engraved themselves in my memory: "This novel has all the mistakes of a second book by a talented writer." As I read it, my heart sank, realizing that I had committed every single one of those errors in my sequel... although when Del Rey went on to review King Kobold, he was kind enough not to point them out. He did, however, catch me on several other errors, and ended with a sentence that showed he was trying to be kind: "It's not a bad book of you don't expect too much of the evening spent with it."
That, I think, was when I learned what the phrase "damning with faint praise" meant.
A few years later, though, the Garland Publishing Company hired Del Rey to put out a twelve-volume treasury containing the top classics of science fiction—and The Warlock in Spite of Himself was one of them!
I had to thank the man. A few years later, at a convention, I had the opportunity—I actually shook his hand! When he saw my name tag, he smiled and said he hoped the Garland edition had done me some good. I assured him it had. He then asked me why he hadn't seen any more of my work, and I explained that the editors weren't interested. He said, "Well, then, send it to me!" Considering that Ballantine had just appointed him to run his own publishing imprint, that was quite a compliment.
I hammered out a fifty-page proposal for what would become Her Majesty's Wizard. He sent back a three-page reply, complimenting me even more, but pointing out a few things that didn't jibe, such as Stegoman's inability to fly. He also made suggestions that made it a much better book. I revised the original outline wholesale and sent it back to him. The Stegoman of the original outline was supposed to speak baseball English, but in the draft I sent him, I had decided to make him speak Shakespearean instead. A lesser editor might have turned it down. Del Rey kept it.
Thanks to his patient guidance, the book sold well—very well for a very young author like myself. I found this out at the next convention, when one of his assistants told me just how well, and suggested I write a sequel. Keeping in mind the lessons in sequel-writing I'd learned from Del Rey's book review years earlier, I carefully wrote the outline for the first Wizard in Rhyme sequel and sent it to Del Rey (I think the working title was The Witch Doctor, but that's another story).
Del Rey, and his wife Judy-Lynn, were every writer's dream—editors who encouraged you, supported you, praised you as often as they corrected you, found your every mistake and persuaded you to change it. He replied with just as many helpful ideas, such as Matt having to find his way back from a foreign kingdom because, in a rash moment, he had sworn an oath to do so—thus, the wizard being oathbound was Del Rey's doing. It fitted perfectly with one of my main ideas—that words have power, so you have to be careful how you use them. He also suggested an imaginary creature he'd invented—a hybrid of a dragon and a gryphon, who spoke baseball English. Narlh joined Stegoman as a misfit monster who prefers human company—and speaks baseball English, so I finally delivered my promise from the original outline. There were other ideas he gave me for free, so many I had trouble keeping up. Finally it was finished.
This is the result. The Oathbound Wizard is one of those novels given the gilded touch of Lester Del Rey. If you haven't read it, I hope you enjoy it—and if you don't, you can always leave me a note on the forum in my website, christopher.stasheff.com. I won't change this book—it's already published—but your comments might influence the next one.
I'll look forward to hearing from you.
Christopher Stasheff, July 2012
P.S. — My friend Peter D'Alessio has made up for my change in Stegoman's speaking style. If you haven't met the baseball-English dragons in his novel Uncle Merl's Bar and Grill, I highly recommend you do.
Why I Wrote "Warlock in Spite of Himself"
April 17th, 2012
Now and then, people ask me how and why I wrote The Warlock in Spite of Himself. The easy answer, of course, is that I was the new boy in town in Lincoln, Nebraska with no friends yet, so to fill time, I sat in the Student Union and drafted a book that I was sure wouldn't sell (neither had the first two, for very good reasons). But what the hey, I didn't have anything to do anyway.
The more complicated and more accurate answer was that, without being aware of it, I was trying to work out some philosophical issues that seemed important, even though I didn't know I was thinking about them. The main issue, of course, was what was important in life—family or career. Being basically a hippie (well, okay, a beatnik—I was too old to really be a hippie, by about four years), and the hippies in town constituted the art community.
The main issues for hippies was involvement in society, and illusion vs. reality—beatniks were non-involved, only wanting the world to leave them alone in their own groups (at least, that's my take on the two). In the case of Rod Gallowglass, the question was devotion to a cause (democracy) vs. devotion to a woman and, by extension, a family—the traditional order of things.
I usually work out the themes of books and poems by looking for repeated words and phrases. After a few years, I tried that with The Warlock in Spite of Himself and was struck by the frequency of the word "dream," usually in the sense of a Cause, or of Rod's trying to find a woman with whom he could fall in love. To Rod, the two are almost synonymous. He has trouble choosing which woman to devote himself to—Catharine or Gwendolyn. To some degree, Catharine represents the dream—the beautiful but unattainable princess—while Gwen is very much anchored in reality, signified by also looking for someone to love, who will love her.
Mind you, I didn't work this out ahead of time, before I started writing—that would have destroyed the spontaneity. I didn't think it out in words, but I paid attention to the feeling of a word or phrase that was trying to push itself into my pen (I didn't really want to haul my portable typewriter over to the Student Union). Brom O'Berin was a case in point—I hadn't planned on him being the King of the Elves, and I certainly hadn't planned on Gwen being his daughter. But his trying to pin Rod down as to whether or not he loved Gwen felt right, for some reason. I now know that it was a matter of the tension between illusion and reality and Rod trying to resolve it.
The clincher, though, was Big Tom's dying line which was, for some reason, exactly right—"Don't die for a dream." That resolved the issue for Rod. Here was a man who had devoted his life to a Cause, and had sacrificed a normal and fulfilling life to achieve it—and in the end, it came to nothing. Reality triumphed.
There are other examples—Horatio Loguire's comments (in fact, the existence of ghosts, period; definitely on the side of dreams), Gwen's urging Rod to stay on Gramarye, not knowing it means sacrificing his Dream, but gaining a much more satisfactory reality—her (and in the end, I let him have both).
So for Rod, at least, the issue was resolved. For myself, I'm not so sure—I'm still trying to figure out what reality is.
Why I Wrote "The Asteriod War"
February 13th, 2012
Eons ago, back in college, I had a part-time summer job at our local educational TV production center, screening TV shows that had been sent to other stations to be broadcast, then returned, so we could clean them and see if they had too many scratches or other defects to allow them to go out to yet another station. I absorbed a lot of information that way, including a series entitled THE WESTERN WAY?a documentary program about the realities of the Wild West. One program was about the Lincoln County War in New Mexico; the next was about one of the young men who got caught up in the fighting, a teenager named Henry Antrim, also known as William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid. He made for good copy in the newspapers back East, so he became more famous than he may have deserved.
Six months later, I found a playwriting contest about law and society?why are laws necessary? It fired my imagination and made me want to write an entry?the war in Lincoln County was very much an example of what happens when the courts become so corrupted that for all intents and pruposes, law ceases to exist. I was fired up and ready to write, but my final undergraduate year interfered, and of course, by graduation time, the contest was over?the first time I missed a contest deadline, but not the last. I became even more determined to write the play, even though the project very quickly became a novel, albeit an unwritten one. I had to keep putting it off and putting it off, but I kept gathering the odd piece of information about the Lincoln County War, a snippet here and a scrap there?for example, an old folk song that ended with Billy being, "Shot down by Pat Garrett, who once was his friend..."?an item I had noted in the TV program. I imagined a plot in which Billy and Pat became friends fighting for the small farmers against one of the cattle barons but, after their side went out in a blaze of glory (literally), Pat opted to stay within the law and do what he could to reverse its corruption, while Billy, bitter and angry, decided to from his own gang and fight the corrupt politicians from the outside, bringing justice where the law would not.
It sounded good, until I found out that Pat didn't even come to town until after the war was over. He and Billy weren't comrades in arms?they were drinking buddies who both enjyed gambling. Pat became sherrif because it was a good way to get into politics, not out of any ideals about law being the only way to keep people from killing each other.
Somewhat disillusioned, I shelved the project indefinitely?but kept gathering tidbits when they showed up. I found there had been many movies and books about Billy, but none of them made the point I wanted to make. After all, why should Hollywood let a little thing like historical fact get in the way of a good story? Then my wife gave me a really great Christmas present?an extrenmely well-researched history of the War, written by Frederick Nolan. I found out that the background of the War was much more complicated than I had realized, but really turned out to be a matter of three men trying to become rich. Billy got caught in the crossfire.
Then I took a teaching job in New Mexico, and found that Billy the Kid was still part of the culture there, and that the Wild West was still an ever-present background. An old man told me that there are four thing you don't talk about at in polite company: sex, religion, politics? and the Civil War. New Mexico was one of the places where ed-Confederates fought it out with carpetbagging Yankees. John Chisum, the man who bankrolled the losing side of the Lincoln County War, has a statue in the town square at Roswell. A friend of mine took me to visit Santa Fe, and on the way, took me to see the graves of Bill the Kid and, on either side of him, two of his closest pals.
Then, to top it off, the Governor of New Mexico indicted Billy the Kid for the murders of the jailers who had guarded him while he was awaiting hanging. Since Pat Garret had killed Billy before he could be brought to trial, he was fair game for the prosecutor. Governor Richardson even appointed an attorney for the defense. The story was still alive and well, even though Billy wasn't.
I was struggling to fit these last few final facts into the story when I realized that I didn't have to?if Hollywood didn't need to be limited by the actual events, I didn't have to either?if I told the same story as science fiction, I could change the facts any way I wanted. With renewed vigor, I took another look at the facts?and came to a screeching halt. There's an old rumor that Garrett did let Billy go, on condition that he leave the territory and never come back. In fact, several men have claimed to be Billy grown old. Very unlikely, of course?Billy's corpse would have given Garrett's career an amazing boost. Why would he have let the Kid go?
Almost impossible to explain, in a historical novel?but very easy, if I was fictionalizing the events anyway. Instead of Billy the boy desperado, make the central character a young woman. The sheriff could care too much about the teenager to kill her in cold blood. But how could he explain why she was still alive?
Why bother? Just let her disappear. She can go to the far side of the Asteroid Belt, or the moons of Saturn, or maybe even Alpha Centauri?as long as she doesn't come back.
So I've done one more version of the story of the Lincoln County War and maybe someday it will be published. If it is, I hope you'll enjoy it.
Russian Volgacon '91, part 4
August 10th, 2011
On the journey home, I landed in Moscow according to (revised) plan and found my way to my hotel—appropriately, it had a model rocket out in front. Check-in was a matter of a long waiting line ending in a clerk who didn't speak English, and who couldn't understand my halting attempts in Russian. She did understand "Angliski," though, and sent me to the line for the English-speaking clerk—the end of the line. Of course.
Serves me right for changing my reservation.
I went to dinner, served by a rather rude waiter (an editor of my acquaintance refers to this as "capital city syndrome"). I had to ask for help on the menu, after being told that the first two items I could translate weren't available. He explained to me that if there was a check mark next to it, they had it in stock that day. So that's why the menu was on paper—and mimeographed.
Next on the frustration list was trying to call home to tell them I was okay and to ask how they were. For some reason, maybe a lack of rubles, I could hear them, but they couldn't hear me. After three tries, I wound up yelling into the phone, figuring that if I were just loud enough, they might be able to hear me in the Midwest. On the third try, my son answered and said, "Dad, if this is you, everything's okay here." Relieved, I didn't call back, saving the eardrums of a large number of French citizens (I don't speak German).
However, I did have high school French, and it turned out to be useful the next morning. As I passed the check-in line, I heard a voice raised in familiar frustration. I saw a well-groomed gentleman speaking very loudly to the English-speaking clerk—volume due to his language, which, from phrases I picked up from my New Jersey students, I tentatively identified as Italian. When he paused for breath, I asked if he spoke French. He gave me a smile of surprise and said in the language of Jules Verne, "A little, yes."
"Well, this lady speaks only Russian and English," I said. "Shall I ask her where I can find someone who speaks Italian?"
He said yes, with relief, and I asked the Russian lady, in English, where I could find someone who spoke Italian. She pointed to a desk across the lobby. The Italian gentleman and I thanked her and headed toward the desk in question; he asked me if I was French—and seemed surprised when I said I was American!
"But you speak French with a very good accent!"
Gotta hand it to those Italians—they know how to make a guy feel good.
After all, I had a right to. I had just translated for an Italian, in French, then English, to a Russian clerk. My high school French teacher would be proud of me.
I decided to tour Moscow by the tried and true method of getting lost and finding my way back to the hotel. Got that? I meant to get lost. Did a very good job of it, too. I even found my way back to the hotel. Took a while, but I did get a nice look at the subways—really good-looking; Kruschev did a good job of designing them. I heard some young Russians in a café celebrating the weekend, found a church that had been turned into a museum, saw Red Square (bigger than it seemed in the photographs) and the Kremlin on the other side of it, with St. Basil's thrown in for good measure—it always seems to me, in the pictures, like a confection. Close up, it's much more realistic. Then I went to the GUM, the Grand Universal Megazan—"The big store with everything in it." My high school Russian teacher told us it was the first-ever department store. Seeing it up close and personal, I thought it was much more likely to be the world's first shopping mall.
I managed to check out in time to catch my flight and, on the way back, tried to take stock of the wealth of experiences that had crowded themselves into one single week. I think I had them sorted out by Christmas.
The one big overall impression I gained was that the ordinary Russian people are very much like us. They're friendly, polite, and willing to help you out.
And, of course, a surprising number of them like science fiction.