Celebrim
Legend
S'mon said:
No, I'm not. Don't over simplify what I'm saying. Have you ever studied ethics? Do you understand the different ways in which ethical systems can be defined? One of the most common ethical exortations simply boils down to, 'Live a heroic life.', and then accompany that with a narrative that gives an example of what you mean by 'heroic'. Not every story with a heroic protagonist is explicitly a heroic narrative, but once the artist starts choosing to draw his characters larger than life and setting them in setting were good and bad are tangible things, then yes, I do think we've strayed into a story that is a heroic narrative and has metaphysical ambitions (or at the least is immitating stories that have metaphysical ambitions).
Yes, exactly. I would argue that say 'super hero comic' books and Conan fantasy novels are merely the modern versions of an age old story telling system, and that the modern versions - even if they are expressedly fictional to the reader in a way that the older stories weren't to the listerners then - are no more or no less instructional morality plays than the Illiad and the Oddyssey.
Why? Leiber is very much a 'boy's' writer in his style. Have you read his works other than his 'Swords' stuff, for example 'The Wanderer'? Writing in pseudonym about his own works, Leiber wrote:
"What seems to make the Fafhrd Mouser stories stand out is that the two heroes are cut down to a plausible size without loss of romance and a believed in eerie, sorcerous atmosphere and with a welcome departure from forumla. They are neither physical supermen the caliber of Conan and John Carter, nor moral or metaphysical giants like Tolkien's Strider, etc., and Morcock's Elrich. They win out by one quarter brains, another quarter braun, and at least fifty percent sheer luck. They have an engaging self interest, blind spots and vices, a gallantry of sorts, and an ability to laugh at themselves - even if the Mouser occasionally quite galling. One's first impression may be that the Mouser is the darkly clever comedian and Fafhrd the somewhat stupid straight man, or Fafhrd the hero and Mouser the comic relief, but a little reading reveals the self infatuation underlying and sometimes tripping the Mouser's cunning, and also the amiable wisdom that now and then shows through Fafhrd's lazy complacency."
To me that smacks of a conscious or at least emotional desire to say something about the nature of heroism and life in general. If physical supermen like Conan and John Carter, and obviously metaphysical constructs like Aragorn and Elrich don't appeal to Leiber as heroes, we have to ask why they don't appeal to Leiber as heroes. Why create such earthy heroes and then place them into such highly metaphysical sitautions as a confrontation against an incarnated Death?
[emphasis mine]
Would you look at what you just wrote again?
I'm not sure if you have actually come up with an example of amoral heroes battling other amoral characters and amoral wizards in a setting berift of any metaphysical things made tangible, and free of any implicit or explicit message about how to (or not to) live ones life. At most you've shown that Fafrd and the Grey Mouser (and Conan for that matter) might serve as some sort of satirical jab at the heroic characters of other fantasies, because they are very much espousing a raw philosophy which is superficially the anti-thesis of the Victorian heroes, but I don't even buy that you can look at the stories that simply. Fafrd and the Grey Mouser (while they are very different sort of characters) often serve the same sort of narrative role that Forest Gump serves in that though they may pass through these tales without ever having the insight to see what this all means, we the reader can see from thier perspecitive things that they the character can't. And even if you could argue that Leiber wasn't conscious of the fact that fantasy was a metaphysical framework in which moral things could be incarnated in forms more tangible and easy to relate to - and I don't think you can - it would nonetheless remain that the whole genera of swords and sorcery, clerics, wizards and whatnot that he dipped his pen in was, so that even if he wrote had no intellectual or moral guidance in mind, he couldn't help but tripping over metaphors every where he went.
It's been more than 15 years since I've read the Swords series, but if I must I'll go back into them. But as long as we are going to argue this, let's drag up a few more stories which are difficult to characterize and see what we can make of them. Neil Stephenson's 'Snow Crash'; fantasy or science fiction? Anne Mcaffrey's 'Dragon Rider of Pern'; fantasy or science fiction? Neil Stephenson's 'Baroque Cycle'; fantasy, science fiction, or merely historical romance?
