![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardSo, I was making dinner today, as I do from time to time (fettucine alfredo with chicken, if you're wondering, though I'm sure you're not) and my mother had NPR on in the background, and up came this review/interview of Lev Grossman's novel The Magicans, which is being touted as "Harry Potter for grownups."
You can find the interview here. Go and listen to it; I'll wait and it's only five minutes. Also, the write-up covers everything except the part I want to talk about.
I have to admit to not really liking Grossman based on the interview alone, but I haven't read the book yet, and I'll reserve judgment on the author. But one of the things he says is that The Magicians is inspired by Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and some fantasy series called the Chronicles of Narnia. Have we heard of that one? Oh, yes, we have.
Specifically, he talks about the role of Aslan in Narnia, and how he wanted to confront that in The Magicians, which features a fantasy kingdom called Fillory and a ram god named Ember. He says that he wanted to confront the concept of Aslan the god allowing battles to happen and people to die by having his characters do the same, because he didn't feel that Aslan made, at the same time, both a good god and a bad one. Good because you could interact with him; bad because, though he could affect the world, he very seldom did so.
Also, he talked about story-telling versus literature; this is the point where I decided I didn't like him, although it may just be because he didn't phrase that bit very well. (This part is in the write-up.) This is also probably my worst pet peeve ever, that false distinction between story-telling and literature, or literature and genre fiction, but I'm not going to get into that right now.
There's an excerpt from the book, which shockingly (and I'm not actually kidding; I am the pickiest reader in history) looks like something I'd be able to read, and I'm curious to see how Grossman handles what appear to be very meta concepts, considering that the rest of us deal with them in fanfic.
There's a soundbite from one of the Narnia movies in there, but I don't remember that line, and it must be from LWW. Is it from the bit where Peter is asking Aslan to help get Edmund back, when they first arrive at Aslan's camp? But even the background music doesn't strike me as right, and I'm reasonably certain that given three seconds of sound, I can recognize anything from either LWW or PC. Someone come tell me I'm arrogant and wrong and of course that part is in the movie. (I thought it might be from the BBC series, but that doesn't make any sense, why would NPR use a soundbite from the BBC series when we have a perfectly good movie series as is?)
I'm suddenly feeling extremely defensive of the books. *pets* (By the way, they make really good audiobooks, too; they transfer well to the spoken word. Some books don't, but Lewis's style is really conversation, very much in the story-telling tradition.)
You can find the interview here. Go and listen to it; I'll wait and it's only five minutes. Also, the write-up covers everything except the part I want to talk about.
I have to admit to not really liking Grossman based on the interview alone, but I haven't read the book yet, and I'll reserve judgment on the author. But one of the things he says is that The Magicians is inspired by Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and some fantasy series called the Chronicles of Narnia. Have we heard of that one? Oh, yes, we have.
Specifically, he talks about the role of Aslan in Narnia, and how he wanted to confront that in The Magicians, which features a fantasy kingdom called Fillory and a ram god named Ember. He says that he wanted to confront the concept of Aslan the god allowing battles to happen and people to die by having his characters do the same, because he didn't feel that Aslan made, at the same time, both a good god and a bad one. Good because you could interact with him; bad because, though he could affect the world, he very seldom did so.
Also, he talked about story-telling versus literature; this is the point where I decided I didn't like him, although it may just be because he didn't phrase that bit very well. (This part is in the write-up.) This is also probably my worst pet peeve ever, that false distinction between story-telling and literature, or literature and genre fiction, but I'm not going to get into that right now.
There's an excerpt from the book, which shockingly (and I'm not actually kidding; I am the pickiest reader in history) looks like something I'd be able to read, and I'm curious to see how Grossman handles what appear to be very meta concepts, considering that the rest of us deal with them in fanfic.
There's a soundbite from one of the Narnia movies in there, but I don't remember that line, and it must be from LWW. Is it from the bit where Peter is asking Aslan to help get Edmund back, when they first arrive at Aslan's camp? But even the background music doesn't strike me as right, and I'm reasonably certain that given three seconds of sound, I can recognize anything from either LWW or PC. Someone come tell me I'm arrogant and wrong and of course that part is in the movie. (I thought it might be from the BBC series, but that doesn't make any sense, why would NPR use a soundbite from the BBC series when we have a perfectly good movie series as is?)
I'm suddenly feeling extremely defensive of the books. *pets* (By the way, they make really good audiobooks, too; they transfer well to the spoken word. Some books don't, but Lewis's style is really conversation, very much in the story-telling tradition.)