Understanding Goat's Law [BLOATED]

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Aberforths Goat / Mike Gray" 
<aberforthsgoat at h...> wrote:

Considerations on fantasy authors that may or may not make sense.
Personally I'm not a great fan of fantasy, in a personal library  of some
2,000+ books the genre is represented by less than a dozen volumes,
and I mean volumes, not works. The proclivity of fantasy authors to
inflict multi-vol, hernia-inducing confections on an innocent public
should be brought to the attention of the tree-hugging brigade IMO.
Or maybe the authors own life-enhancing/life-confirming constructs
will gang up and strangle the buggers with their own endless strings
of adjectives.

Heavy snipping
> 
> Namely, Differece 1: By "primary world" Tolkien means the world *we*
> live in, or perhaps more acurately our world, as the author perceives
> it. (An author who actually believed in faeries and wanted to write
> fantasy would have had to write about something *more* than faeries, for
> the work to "count" as fantasy. The Left Behind books make this
> distinction very papable.) By "secondary world" Tolkien means the world
> created by the mythopoeic author.  
> 
> Difference 2: The secondary/primary differentiation should be contrasted
> with that between the "natural world" and the "supernatural world" -
> which is a different kind of distinction. This distinction begins in out
> world, based on the things which we perceive as naturally possible
> (falling out of a window and luckily landing on a trampoline) and the
> things we perceive as non-natural (falling out of a window and
> bouncing). 
> 

Kneasy:
Struggling manfully and possibly reaching the same conclusions.
A possibly naive question:
These two different worlds of yours - doesn't the same distinction apply
not only to fantasy, but to just about every religious cosmology I can
think of? The world of men, the transcendental 'other' world, inhabited
by god(s), angels and demons, and the 'secondary' world becomes
evident when the supernatural intrudes on the real ("It's a miracle!" they
cried.)
Or have I totally misunderstood?
If I haven't got your argument wrong, then the only difference between
a religion and fantasy is the level of belief it generates.

Thus a fantasy construct is a (perhaps) unconscious reiteration of the
author's belief system. It follows from that that fantasy authors can
be considered to be  basing their work on a paradigm imported from
the culture that formed their beliefs. Taking it further - an author 
subscribing to belief system 'A' is highly unlikely to pen a tome with 
outcomes that run counter to those beliefs or appear to validate belief
system 'B'. If they do, it's probably a sign that they're having real doubts
about 'A'. 
As a corollory, only authors with no strong religious conviction will write 
a story were the bad guys win - unless the author is a practicing satanist. 
Even then - wouldn't that author consider the 'baddies' to be 'good'?
(Can anyone find counter-examples?)

A further step along the gang-plank - there may be no real personal 
choice in how a writer with strong beliefs structures a fantasy tale. It is 
pretty well inevitable given their ethical/moral system that this system
be reflected in their writings. It might even be regarded as a way of 
validating personal beliefs. How the stage is dressed may vary, but the
memes will not run counter to their personal convictions. 

> 
> Moreover, it's the presence of all this complex thinking in categories
> like natural/supernatural, real/unrreal, possible/impossible, and
> bad/neutral/good that leads me to think that most successful authors of
> fantasy are people who care deeply about religious questions - since
> religious faith is *also* intrinsically connected to these kinds of
> questions. On these grounds I think that people who write fantasy tend
> to be interested in religious questions in about the same way that
> people who write historical fiction tend to be interested in history.
> 

Kneasy:
Maybe it's not that the authors care deeply that is the  determinant of
success, but that the themes and the way they are expressed resonate
with a significant fraction of the book-buying public. Moreover, many
of the buyers will only fork out hard cash if the book is felt to mirror
the buyer's own beliefs or at a minimum not challenge them.
It's unlikely that strongly held spiritual convictions that are not echoed 
in the population at large will sell large numbers of books no matter 
how brilliant the writing. (That's all things being equal - large sales
may be generated by notoriety - Salman Rushdie would have had 
modest royalties if the public hadn't wondered what all the fuss was
about.)

Now, in regard to HP in particular - does anyone harbour expectations
that the series will end in a fashion not congruent with Jo's beliefs?
Thought not.
Even though the series is about 70% complete the final dispositions
are more or less ineluctable; all that remain are the details of how.
But interestingly, the themes that Jo has produced seem fairly
universal, the fanbase comes from all backgrounds and cultures. The
chances that the final resolution will not also encompass the same
universal approval are, IMO, remote.

Therefore - Jo will remain true to her beliefs, but they will not be
presented in a manner that conflicts with the belief systems of others.
Thus LoTR is read world-wide. Not so Narnia, many non-Christians
regard it as proselytising and won't touch it with a barge-pole. 
The odds are that HP is unlikely to be *explicitly* Christian, though 
Christians will have no difficulty in finding comforting metaphors and 
allusions. 
But so will many others, I  think.
If they don't the sales figures will reflect it.