Now if you happened to have read Martin's book and thought, "Okay. This is good writing, but Martin has a very dark and biased view of reality which only works because he is imperiously forcing the story mechanics to demonstrate his one-sided view of reality which is in no way an accurate depiction of how things really work," then you passed that particular test and you can claim to perhaps exist within that 1%.
Well, how about my reading your own posts and thinking, as I did, " Okay. This is good writing (in parts anyway), and raises some interesting issues, but Fantastic Lad has a very skewed and one-sided view of reality which only works (that is, sounds remotely convincing while he's expounding it) because he is imperiously selecting and distorting facts, and making completely unsupported assertions in order to "demonstrate" his one-sided view of reality which is in no way an accurate depiction of how things really work." ?
Do I pass your test?
You seem to me to have as smug and blind a conviction that to you alone has been vouchsafed an insight into the way the world operates, while everyone else is wearing blinkers, as could be found within any cult or extreme political faction. I don't know or care whether you've been brainwashed by someone else into it, or have come up with your ideas yourself. They do not correspond with my own experiences and observations - or, I hazard a guess, with those of most other people.
I agree with you only insofar as you assert that people having a positive outlook on life, and attempting to make the world a happier place and to treat others justly and generously, is more likely to bring happiness to them and others than if they cynically look out only for their own selfish interests, and believe that this is the only way for them to prosper and that everyone else is really doing this anyway, that we are all either fools or knaves and most likely both.
But I emphatically disagree with you that GRRM is peddling the cynical line, or that readers of his books come away from them more inclined than they were before to selfish egotism or despair of there being any happiness or goodness to be found in the world. He warns us, truly, that having good intentions is not enough to ensure that things turn out as we hope, that it's often very difficult to discern the best course of action, and impossible to find one that has no bad repercussions, that there is a lot of suffering, undeserved as well as deserved, in the world, and that people often behave very nastily to each other, and violently but sincerely disagree about what virtuous behaviour should be, anyway. But the people that devote themselves to cruelty and selfishness have no higher success rate than those who do the opposite. They are just as likely to suffer and to die nastily. And more significantly, GRRM makes virtue appealing and vice unappealing. He applauds courage and honesty and loyalty and determination and most of all love and kindliness and self sacrifice. He abominates cruelty and selfishness and callousness to others' suffering and the bad effects on others of one's own actions. If we like or sympathise to some extent with a bad character, it is because he or she has some admirable good qualities among the bad, and our liking will grow or ebb according to which qualities are emphasised.
Fantastic Lad -
Do you know this poem?
"Two men look out through prison bars.
One sees mud, the other stars."
I guess you're claiming a)that Martin only sees mud, while *you* believe that it's much better to only look at the stars, and b)that if we could persuade everyone else to do this both the prison bars and the mud would melt away.
I'd claim OTOH that in fact Martin sees plenty of stars as well as the mud. There are moments of great beauty and exhilaration in all his books. Characters often behave with immense heroism and decency, in testing circumstances, quite often flawed and ordinary people, not overbright or overbrave, it seemed before. Sometimes they pay with their lives, as they knowingly ran the risk of doing, but not always, and those who do die often achieve in death the the goal that they sought. There are moments of intense joy,wrongs righted, villains routed, slaves set free, great feats of strength, courage and endurance, rescues in the nick of time, friendships forged. Characters are not punished for being good but they are not automatically rewarded either, just as in RL. Many people are punished for being bad too, but as in RL not always, or not always YET - remember the series is only half complete - and not before their badness has injured the innocent. Isn't THAT all true to life, or do you think that saying this makes my views stunted and cynical too?
Beauty is created as well as destroyed. Decay is a "natural course of nature" indeed, but so is growth, and there's a lot of that too. People with negative viewpoints recover ideals and hope or learn them for the first time. The timid and self-doubting learn courage and confidence, the defenceless and powerless learn to fend for themselves and prosper, the crippled learn new talents, magical or non-magical.
>
In Martin's world, girls are frequently married off by their families soon after reaching puberty - as has been the case for much of recorded history in most RL human cultures. It is not usually their choice in Martin's books, nor are they usually presented as eager for sexual experience beforehand. Nor are we encouraged to think such practices conducive to the happiness of the girl, though the more sensible and dutiful ones try to make the best of it.What exactly are you complaining about - that you think male readers will be encouraged into paedophilia, or young female readers into craving premature sexual experience? I really don't think this probable. Can *you* imagine a girl, or a woman of any age, being titillated by the account of S's wedding night in ASoS?
I think that though individuals may learn to gain happiness by focusing on stars rather than mud,when they can't change the quantities of either, the mud will still be there, and the prison bars, and the only way of removing them or lessening their scope permanently is to see them clearly and work on loosening the bars and sweeping away the mud. I think GRRM helps us see them, and encourages us to applaud the work of removing them, and reach for the stars. And we can trust him the more because he hasn't maintained, in the face of all the evidence, that there *are* no bars or mud.
Re:Not for the more experienced reader
on
A Game of Thrones
·
· Score: 1
Yes, GRRM's characters do behave stupidly at times, and even when not stupid they frequently miscalculate. This seems very realistic to me. We humans very often do do stupid things.
>
I think it's time you reread AGoT, and have you even read the other two? You are taking a few memorable characters and cultures as representative of the whole. There are hundreds of named individuals in ASOIAF, and the vast majority of them show by their behaviour (or their thoughts, if seen from the inside) that they are capable of selfless thoughts and deeds too. Dozens sacrifice their lives for causes or individuals that they care for. Others perform little, and large, acts of kindness. People who do appear to be vicious bastards at the outset show that they are not without other facets to their character. Others are morally mediocre. They put their own interests and desires first, but can still be motivated by a sense of duty, or compassion, or community spirit, or respect, or love of family,some of the time. And people who are basically well-meaning and honourable nonetheless reveal blind spots and fall short of moral perfection. Just like real life, in fact. And the the literal bastards show as much range on the moral scale as the legitimate people!
Well, that really raised the level of the discussion and showed him the error of his ways, didn't it?
I am quite happy myself with the use of the f word, and the c word and a lot of other "initial" words, in ASOIAF, by characters who habitually think in these terms. I am also very happy to see that other characters *don't* think in these terms, and use other ones, more euphemistic, more babyish, more exotically foreign, more fanciful or humorous. The vocabulary is part of the characterisation - and part of what makes Martin's world convincingly realistic. So is the explicit sex and violence. There is never any doubt in my mind that Martin abominates cruelty and the impulse to dominate and degrade others, the selfish pursuit of one's own physical urges regardless of the feelings or welfare of other people. And he encourages us to feel this too.
My nephew and my godson both read these books at the age of fifteen, my godson's younger sister, at the age of thirteen, then tried it for herself - with her parents' knowledge. It didn't harm them. If young people are not ready for its length and complexity and harshness, apart from its explicitness, they will soon get bored and put it down. To the pure, all things are pure. And if they're already impure, GRRM will not make them more so, but will make them aware of a moral dimension even if the characters involved have no such awareness.
Re:What happened to Robert Jordan?
on
A Game of Thrones
·
· Score: 1
I think Robert Jordan is awful too - but this *G.*R.R.Martin guy is really good.
There you are! Hop off and buy A Game of Thrones pronto, and the others as well - it will save you time later. Just don't peep at them, even the blurbs on the covers, till you reach them in due order, or you might get a bit spoiled, and it would be a pity to lose the pleasure of coming to them fresh.
In truth, I have to admit I have never even tried to read AWoT. And after the comments I have heard from large numbers of Martin fans who *did* read Jordan once, and lived to regret it, I think it unlikely I ever will.
I know one good thing of Jordan - that he has enthusiastically praised AGoT. But don't hold that against GRRM - just chalk it up to the credit of Jordan. Even if he doesn't know how to write a good book himself, he knows a man who does.
Re:The problem with most writers...
on
A Game of Thrones
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· Score: 1
I'd be willing to bet Martin has. And as a fan of both authors, I found Martin's ability to get under the skin of so many and such diverse characters, to empathise with them and bring them alive for us, positively Shakespearean. As was his ability to write entertaining and memorable dialogue, the complexity of the issues he explored, and his seamless melding of comedy, tragedy and history. I had enormous fun writing a Shakespearean soliloquy for one of the characters once, inspired by a certain likeness I detected in both situation and personality, and there are dozens of other times when some character's situation reminds me of a moment in Shakespeare.
Correction. There *was* supposed to be a gap of several years in the story universe between the two "trilogies", but after six months or more working on the first book of the second trilogy he realised it wasn't working - there were too many things that followed straight on from the last , things we needed to see directly, not in flashback years later. So he ditched what he'd written and started again, without the gap, but intending to cover five story years in the course of this novel. And then he hoped it could be a short book, but I gather it's grown to the length of A Storm of Swords, the last and longest. (The longer the better, say I. It's all gold. Whatever he writes is both good in itself and relevant. He never just treads water.) Hence the long wait and the ever receding publication dates.
He's still claiming he might be able to manage with six volumes in total, but no-one else believes him, even his wife:). It will be seven, and it's right that it should be. Seven is a number of great significance in Westeros.
But you *will* get attached to the characters, nonetheless. Dozens of them, and attached to the point of obsession, if you're not careful. And you'll learn to put up with the pain of having some of your favourites bite the dust, sometimes totally unexpectedly, sometimes after you've helplessly watched their doom approaching with horrified fascination. You may even find something stimulating in having your emotions put through the wringer.It's one of Martin's greatest strengths that he creates characters, "good" and "bad", whom we love - in some cases love to hate! Readers' views differ, and an amazing number of characters are loved by one and loathed by another. And depending on your own personality you may obstinately cling to the favourites who first attracted you, or allow your sympathies to evolve and change as the characters do themselves, and as you learn more about them, or as new figures come into prominence. But I don't see how any reader could remain completely indifferent to these people. And with Martin the old dictum is definitely confirmed : "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Dead or alive, they are enshrined in our hearts.
Slashdot Mirror
Now if you happened to have read Martin's book and thought, "Okay. This is good writing, but Martin has a very dark and biased view of reality which only works because he is imperiously forcing the story mechanics to demonstrate his one-sided view of reality which is in no way an accurate depiction of how things really work," then you passed that particular test and you can claim to perhaps exist within that 1%. Well, how about my reading your own posts and thinking, as I did, " Okay. This is good writing (in parts anyway), and raises some interesting issues, but Fantastic Lad has a very skewed and one-sided view of reality which only works (that is, sounds remotely convincing while he's expounding it) because he is imperiously selecting and distorting facts, and making completely unsupported assertions in order to "demonstrate" his one-sided view of reality which is in no way an accurate depiction of how things really work." ? Do I pass your test? You seem to me to have as smug and blind a conviction that to you alone has been vouchsafed an insight into the way the world operates, while everyone else is wearing blinkers, as could be found within any cult or extreme political faction. I don't know or care whether you've been brainwashed by someone else into it, or have come up with your ideas yourself. They do not correspond with my own experiences and observations - or, I hazard a guess, with those of most other people. I agree with you only insofar as you assert that people having a positive outlook on life, and attempting to make the world a happier place and to treat others justly and generously, is more likely to bring happiness to them and others than if they cynically look out only for their own selfish interests, and believe that this is the only way for them to prosper and that everyone else is really doing this anyway, that we are all either fools or knaves and most likely both. But I emphatically disagree with you that GRRM is peddling the cynical line, or that readers of his books come away from them more inclined than they were before to selfish egotism or despair of there being any happiness or goodness to be found in the world. He warns us, truly, that having good intentions is not enough to ensure that things turn out as we hope, that it's often very difficult to discern the best course of action, and impossible to find one that has no bad repercussions, that there is a lot of suffering, undeserved as well as deserved, in the world, and that people often behave very nastily to each other, and violently but sincerely disagree about what virtuous behaviour should be, anyway. But the people that devote themselves to cruelty and selfishness have no higher success rate than those who do the opposite. They are just as likely to suffer and to die nastily. And more significantly, GRRM makes virtue appealing and vice unappealing. He applauds courage and honesty and loyalty and determination and most of all love and kindliness and self sacrifice. He abominates cruelty and selfishness and callousness to others' suffering and the bad effects on others of one's own actions. If we like or sympathise to some extent with a bad character, it is because he or she has some admirable good qualities among the bad, and our liking will grow or ebb according to which qualities are emphasised.
Fantastic Lad - Do you know this poem? "Two men look out through prison bars. One sees mud, the other stars." I guess you're claiming a)that Martin only sees mud, while *you* believe that it's much better to only look at the stars, and b)that if we could persuade everyone else to do this both the prison bars and the mud would melt away. I'd claim OTOH that in fact Martin sees plenty of stars as well as the mud. There are moments of great beauty and exhilaration in all his books. Characters often behave with immense heroism and decency, in testing circumstances, quite often flawed and ordinary people, not overbright or overbrave, it seemed before. Sometimes they pay with their lives, as they knowingly ran the risk of doing, but not always, and those who do die often achieve in death the the goal that they sought. There are moments of intense joy,wrongs righted, villains routed, slaves set free, great feats of strength, courage and endurance, rescues in the nick of time, friendships forged. Characters are not punished for being good but they are not automatically rewarded either, just as in RL. Many people are punished for being bad too, but as in RL not always, or not always YET - remember the series is only half complete - and not before their badness has injured the innocent. Isn't THAT all true to life, or do you think that saying this makes my views stunted and cynical too? Beauty is created as well as destroyed. Decay is a "natural course of nature" indeed, but so is growth, and there's a lot of that too. People with negative viewpoints recover ideals and hope or learn them for the first time. The timid and self-doubting learn courage and confidence, the defenceless and powerless learn to fend for themselves and prosper, the crippled learn new talents, magical or non-magical. > In Martin's world, girls are frequently married off by their families soon after reaching puberty - as has been the case for much of recorded history in most RL human cultures. It is not usually their choice in Martin's books, nor are they usually presented as eager for sexual experience beforehand. Nor are we encouraged to think such practices conducive to the happiness of the girl, though the more sensible and dutiful ones try to make the best of it.What exactly are you complaining about - that you think male readers will be encouraged into paedophilia, or young female readers into craving premature sexual experience? I really don't think this probable. Can *you* imagine a girl, or a woman of any age, being titillated by the account of S's wedding night in ASoS? I think that though individuals may learn to gain happiness by focusing on stars rather than mud,when they can't change the quantities of either, the mud will still be there, and the prison bars, and the only way of removing them or lessening their scope permanently is to see them clearly and work on loosening the bars and sweeping away the mud. I think GRRM helps us see them, and encourages us to applaud the work of removing them, and reach for the stars. And we can trust him the more because he hasn't maintained, in the face of all the evidence, that there *are* no bars or mud.
Yes, GRRM's characters do behave stupidly at times, and even when not stupid they frequently miscalculate. This seems very realistic to me. We humans very often do do stupid things. > I think it's time you reread AGoT, and have you even read the other two? You are taking a few memorable characters and cultures as representative of the whole. There are hundreds of named individuals in ASOIAF, and the vast majority of them show by their behaviour (or their thoughts, if seen from the inside) that they are capable of selfless thoughts and deeds too. Dozens sacrifice their lives for causes or individuals that they care for. Others perform little, and large, acts of kindness. People who do appear to be vicious bastards at the outset show that they are not without other facets to their character. Others are morally mediocre. They put their own interests and desires first, but can still be motivated by a sense of duty, or compassion, or community spirit, or respect, or love of family,some of the time. And people who are basically well-meaning and honourable nonetheless reveal blind spots and fall short of moral perfection. Just like real life, in fact. And the the literal bastards show as much range on the moral scale as the legitimate people!
Well, that really raised the level of the discussion and showed him the error of his ways, didn't it? I am quite happy myself with the use of the f word, and the c word and a lot of other "initial" words, in ASOIAF, by characters who habitually think in these terms. I am also very happy to see that other characters *don't* think in these terms, and use other ones, more euphemistic, more babyish, more exotically foreign, more fanciful or humorous. The vocabulary is part of the characterisation - and part of what makes Martin's world convincingly realistic. So is the explicit sex and violence. There is never any doubt in my mind that Martin abominates cruelty and the impulse to dominate and degrade others, the selfish pursuit of one's own physical urges regardless of the feelings or welfare of other people. And he encourages us to feel this too. My nephew and my godson both read these books at the age of fifteen, my godson's younger sister, at the age of thirteen, then tried it for herself - with her parents' knowledge. It didn't harm them. If young people are not ready for its length and complexity and harshness, apart from its explicitness, they will soon get bored and put it down. To the pure, all things are pure. And if they're already impure, GRRM will not make them more so, but will make them aware of a moral dimension even if the characters involved have no such awareness.
I think Robert Jordan is awful too - but this *G.*R.R.Martin guy is really good. There you are! Hop off and buy A Game of Thrones pronto, and the others as well - it will save you time later. Just don't peep at them, even the blurbs on the covers, till you reach them in due order, or you might get a bit spoiled, and it would be a pity to lose the pleasure of coming to them fresh. In truth, I have to admit I have never even tried to read AWoT. And after the comments I have heard from large numbers of Martin fans who *did* read Jordan once, and lived to regret it, I think it unlikely I ever will. I know one good thing of Jordan - that he has enthusiastically praised AGoT. But don't hold that against GRRM - just chalk it up to the credit of Jordan. Even if he doesn't know how to write a good book himself, he knows a man who does.
I'd be willing to bet Martin has. And as a fan of both authors, I found Martin's ability to get under the skin of so many and such diverse characters, to empathise with them and bring them alive for us, positively Shakespearean. As was his ability to write entertaining and memorable dialogue, the complexity of the issues he explored, and his seamless melding of comedy, tragedy and history. I had enormous fun writing a Shakespearean soliloquy for one of the characters once, inspired by a certain likeness I detected in both situation and personality, and there are dozens of other times when some character's situation reminds me of a moment in Shakespeare.
Correction. There *was* supposed to be a gap of several years in the story universe between the two "trilogies", but after six months or more working on the first book of the second trilogy he realised it wasn't working - there were too many things that followed straight on from the last , things we needed to see directly, not in flashback years later. So he ditched what he'd written and started again, without the gap, but intending to cover five story years in the course of this novel. And then he hoped it could be a short book, but I gather it's grown to the length of A Storm of Swords, the last and longest. (The longer the better, say I. It's all gold. Whatever he writes is both good in itself and relevant. He never just treads water.) Hence the long wait and the ever receding publication dates. He's still claiming he might be able to manage with six volumes in total, but no-one else believes him, even his wife :). It will be seven, and it's right that it should be. Seven is a number of great significance in Westeros.
But you *will* get attached to the characters, nonetheless. Dozens of them, and attached to the point of obsession, if you're not careful. And you'll learn to put up with the pain of having some of your favourites bite the dust, sometimes totally unexpectedly, sometimes after you've helplessly watched their doom approaching with horrified fascination. You may even find something stimulating in having your emotions put through the wringer.It's one of Martin's greatest strengths that he creates characters, "good" and "bad", whom we love - in some cases love to hate! Readers' views differ, and an amazing number of characters are loved by one and loathed by another. And depending on your own personality you may obstinately cling to the favourites who first attracted you, or allow your sympathies to evolve and change as the characters do themselves, and as you learn more about them, or as new figures come into prominence. But I don't see how any reader could remain completely indifferent to these people. And with Martin the old dictum is definitely confirmed : "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Dead or alive, they are enshrined in our hearts.