Post by account_disabled on Dec 27, 2023 22:53:02 GMT -6
We live in the age of narrative sagas and endless television series. One novel after another, a series of addictive books, written to create anticipation among readers, who perpetually live in a state of blissful anticipation. Editorial marketing wins easily, it doesn't even have to make an effort anymore, it makes money by re-proposing, with appropriate modifications, the same message as the progenitor novel of the saga. Are sagas in fantasy fiction children of this century? Okay, we are in the 21st century, so let's say this and the 20th. But did the fantastic exist before? Not as we understand it today. I remember The Subterranean Journey of Niels Klim by Ludvig Holberg from 1741, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift from 1726, Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais from 1532, Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra from 1605.
I read them some time ago, intense novels, of a different depth from current fantasy novels. They were stories that criticized the society of the time, in which the fantastic setting and imaginary characters and creatures were just an excuse. Do you still write a fantasy of this type? Nope. Now there is the so-called young adult , that is, the old fiction for teenagers, made up of banal, fried and refried stories, published only for commercial purposes. Yet in a period of cultural void like this, which would need a neo-risorgimento , there Special Data would be a lot to criticize with full-bodied (not necessarily voluminous) fantastic novels. Why doesn't an author stop writing the same story? I've asked myself this several times, always arriving at the same answer: for money. Or perhaps, it causes professional immaturity, because he becomes too attached to his story, to the world he created.
He doesn't know how to get out of it, he doesn't know how to say goodbye to that story, to those characters. The saga becomes his narrative prison, but the author does not complain about his imprisonment, he is actually satisfied by it (economically, too). He knows that this saga of his makes his readers happy – other prisoners of the same story, who wallow for years in the same world, surrounded by the same faces, the same names. I also wondered why a reader doesn't stop reading the same old story. I was once that reader too. I remember the joy I felt – it was 1986, I think – when in the window of a bookshop on Via Nazionale I saw The Song of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I grabbed it quickly, discovering that I had also missed the previous one, The Elfstones of Shannara . Then I came out of the tunnel. And I got out of it because deep down the story is always the same, because out there it's so full of stories that a hundred, a thousand lifetimes won't be enough to read them all.
I read them some time ago, intense novels, of a different depth from current fantasy novels. They were stories that criticized the society of the time, in which the fantastic setting and imaginary characters and creatures were just an excuse. Do you still write a fantasy of this type? Nope. Now there is the so-called young adult , that is, the old fiction for teenagers, made up of banal, fried and refried stories, published only for commercial purposes. Yet in a period of cultural void like this, which would need a neo-risorgimento , there Special Data would be a lot to criticize with full-bodied (not necessarily voluminous) fantastic novels. Why doesn't an author stop writing the same story? I've asked myself this several times, always arriving at the same answer: for money. Or perhaps, it causes professional immaturity, because he becomes too attached to his story, to the world he created.
He doesn't know how to get out of it, he doesn't know how to say goodbye to that story, to those characters. The saga becomes his narrative prison, but the author does not complain about his imprisonment, he is actually satisfied by it (economically, too). He knows that this saga of his makes his readers happy – other prisoners of the same story, who wallow for years in the same world, surrounded by the same faces, the same names. I also wondered why a reader doesn't stop reading the same old story. I was once that reader too. I remember the joy I felt – it was 1986, I think – when in the window of a bookshop on Via Nazionale I saw The Song of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I grabbed it quickly, discovering that I had also missed the previous one, The Elfstones of Shannara . Then I came out of the tunnel. And I got out of it because deep down the story is always the same, because out there it's so full of stories that a hundred, a thousand lifetimes won't be enough to read them all.