Bryan Thomas Schmidt is blogging about how George R.R. Martin leaves him cold.
Are people really this bad? Probably. But why are we celebrating it? Why are we putting that out there as a tale of fantasy when it’s really more a tale of sad reality?
It’s turning into an interesting conversation.
I’m reading through the series again and still assembling the reasons why I love it. I keep hearing from people who are on the first go round and who want to drop off after this or that turn of events. I understand them. I really do. There are many discouraging, frustrating things about the series.
I still love it, though. But more and more I find myself struggling to put the “why” into words. The places are sweepingly envisioned. The people are multidimensional. Even tertiary characters have high and low points. (Not all of them. I mean the Tickler is just wicked. Period.) But there’s so much going on. When we watched this Sunday’s Game Of Thrones: A Naked Interpretation Of Surface Events In The Book…Or Not Always In The Book I told my husband that one of my favourite things about it all is seeing how one small decision unfolds in myriad ways. It’s like watching sparks travel along a course.
When I watched Sesame Street as a kid one of my favourite bits was the thing where the ball slid through the gizmo and set off chain reactions. I think it was a counting video. (Thank you, Internet.) To me the books are like a grown up version of that.
But I can see how if what you want is Good Triumphing Over Evil and Happy Endings this series is not for you. Mike Duran has written several articles about how literature must have a transcendent meaning in order to be worthwhile, and must reflect the Divine conquering evil in order to qualify as great literature. We disagree on this point, and A Song Of Ice And Fire is my number one go-to example. This is a book that understands people, the grand tragedy of life and the sad comedy woven through that tragedy. There’s nothing of the Divine in it, unless you count the multiple gods in multiple countries, all of whom have their own followers with their own interpretations on events.
When I as a Christian read a book like this it stands to me as great literature because it uses the magic of words to take me to a place enough different from my own to explore the truths of this world. And the truths of this world are not always happy. But I have a happy ending within my own life, in my own heart. I have the hope of that, and having that hope inside me makes the unpacking of literary Pandora’s boxes an interesting enterprise in its own right.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Without getting into a protracted discussion of what makes a work capital “L” Literature, I think Song’s popularity can be linked directly with the rise of two phenomena in publishing and in what we, as Readers, have come to widely accept … 1) Harry Potter All Growed Up. 2) Novels Are For Pishers; Show Me A Franchise.
#1’s pretty self-explanatory. A generation of kids grew up on Harry Potter and was exposed to the faux-Medieval/magic/monsters thing at the same time people “our age” were exposed to fantasy and our forebears were exposed to sci-fi. Harry’s world has been neatly (more or less) wrapped up, leaving a generation in next-book flux. And along comes Song, which leads to #2.
#2 Novels Are for Pishers; Show Me a Franchise books succeed because they’re members of a reassuringly multi-volume world. Like Narnia. Or Potter. Or Wrinkle in Time/Wind/Planet/Waters. Multiple volumes/sequels sit on the book shelf looking reassuring in their more-than-oneness. Not only does that promise a longer, deeper commitment. But it also says “Well someone must be doing something right, look how many of them there are.”
I’m not denigrating the Reading public. The Reader wants what the Reader wants. But I think that beyond Song’s gloriously over-the-top sex, violence and seemingly haphazard fruit-salading of magic, mythology, monsters, politics and catchphrases “You know nothing, Jon Snow”, it’s just a fun read for generations of Readers all the way back to and including my Mom, who grew up on Bobbsey Twins and Cherry Ames.
Oh, Web, I am soooo restraining myself from going into my Populist Literature spiel. 🙂
And yes, I am a Harry Potter fan, but i’m also a lover of literature and to me ASOIAF has more in common with populist literature (think Dickens) than it does with Potter.
I do agree with you, though, that Potter has made Fantasy more accessible to general readers. Before Potter I was long averse to Fantasy (thank you, Shannara dude), after I was at least open to the numerous friends who kept taunting me with thick copies of _Game Of Thrones_.
As for the Series element, that is owing, I believe, as much to publishers as it is the buying public. In fact, you can thank Christian publishers. I talk about it a lot, mostly here:
https://mycropht.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/a-series-vs-an-unfinished-novel/
Part of the reason that Series have such staying power within the current culture, though, is that they are Fiction 2.0. I’ve spent nearly as much time on Harry Potter Literature boards and the Westeros.org fora as I did in the actual books themselves. With a series and its inevitable gaps between volumes one has time to noodle over the various possibilities, probabilities and plot points to your heart’s content. Relationships are actually built and cultivated by these discussions and the books become as much about living in conversation as they do about fantasy and lore.