Steven Erikson: "Memories of Ice"<A critique, and a thread on style and criticism>

[takyris]

Ditto liking the longer versions better. Jes, your language was clunky in the condensed versions. It was compact, yes, but it was compact in that everything was jammed together clunkily. As an argument, that doesn't convince me that it objectively needed to be shorter.

Takyris, what I am talking about is NOT summary, you left out thepart about the island of calypso, his journey into hell, the part about the suitors and the bow and a bunch of other subtleties and subplots that are essential to the story.

You are making arbitrary judgments about what is important and what is not. For what it's worth, I agree with you on most of what you said, and that's why I don't tell the Odyssey as a 16-word story.

thats sixteen words. If you could get all the detail and subtlety of the odessey into 16 words, you WOULD be a better writer than homer.

I deny your objective standard for detail and subtlety. There might be one, but the tone of your review does not convince me that you're the one to deliver it. Where you see overwritten prose, other people are seeing beauty. And your shorter sections were clunky and, well, bad.

You're fine to say, "The level of detail didn't add anything for me," but your flat assertion that, from an objective viewpoint, the prose is overwritten does not stand up to logical scrutiny. You're using very logical arguments to build up an inherently subjective premise, but your premise is always going to be subjective: The prose was unnecessarily verbose in your opinion. That's what you can say without fear of attack. People might disagree, but they won't attack your opinion.

By the same argument you're using, one could say that you could improve a symphony by making it shorter but keeping the same detail and subtlety -- and that an ideal way to do that is to remove all the rests and double the tempo.

 

[barsoomcore]

takyris is ably defending exactly the same position I hold, so all I'll say is this:

Stonny stood to Gruntle's right, rapier and sticker readied. He feared for her the most.

Stonny, rapier and sticker ready, flanked him. Gruntle feared that the woman to his right was underprepared for this fight.

Do I really need to point out the details that have been altered here? Compare the stark emotionality of "He feared for her" to the feeble "Gruntle feared that the woman to his right was underprepared for this fight." Whew! You call that sentence a model of "compression"? Please. At least it rhymes, I guess, even if it doesn't scan. Honestly, jes, you're only demonstrating how wrong you are with this.

Oh wait, one other point:

I take from your use of the Tolkien quote that what you are arguing is that for any particular story, there is some appropriate length at which it is best told. Your problem with Erikson being that he exceeds the appropriate length for his story.

I'm not sure this idea carries very much meaning. All it does is change the terms of the argument over wordiness -- instead of saying, "Erikson's too wordy," you say, "Erikson uses more words than his story requires." Which seems like exactly the same thing, so what have we gained by adopting this notion? Of course for any story there is an optimum length -- or rather, all stories are written at some length, and we can disagree over whether that length is appropriate or not.

But neither the Tolkien nor the Goldman references seem provide any ammunition at all for your suggestion that brevity is in and of itself a virtue. And if it's not in and of itself a virtue, then your concerns with Erikson's style are purely a matter of your tastes versus his. Not some fundamental truth of the story-telling art that Erikson is violating. You just don't like the way he writes.

You haven't proven that he can't write well. Just that he happens to write in a manner you don't care for. You haven't suggested, for example, that his sentence structure is poor, or that his descriptive powers are feeble. You haven't offered examples of his inability to convey scenes, or characters, or of how his language is insufficient to the task of telling his story.

All you are saying is that you don't like the way he writes. Which is a perfectly valid thing to say and possibly the basis of an interesting review.

 

[jester47]

Sorry if I led you guys to think that I thought I was being objective. While I have been saying that what I am talking about is a good way to measure quality I think it can only work relative to the reader and the readers own tastes. Comparing Tolkein and Leiber for instance really does not work. And I think that is why one mans sword and sorcery is anothers high fantasy. Criticism (I think it might be more of a critique rather than a review) is inherently subjective and always relative. Some of my statements may sound like I think they are truths that but I do not. I think this thread is turning into more of an exercise in criticism and style than anyting else.

I really appreciate your comments. They have helped alot in looking at the way I approached this book, and no dout will help when I approach it again.

As for my compression of Erikson's stuff, it is clunky because it is forced. I find the original stuff (story 1 and story 2) better illustrates what I was trying to say. I am not saying I am a better writer or anything, I was just using erikson himself to clarify my point further... and you are right, my "compression" does come out different because I am not as good at it as I would like to be.

But all in all I need to take some time to finish MoI (and possibly start it over with the right expectations) and rewrite my review/critique. But there are a lot of others in line. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are impatiently awaiting my return. And then there is a morass of others in line. And I think this thread needs to be retitled yet again...

Aaron.

 

[barsoomcore]

Hey, jes, you're being really great about this. You went out on a limb and posted your thoughts on a book and a bunch of us jumped up and down on your head. I'll speak for myself and say of course I don't mean anything but to help you get to the core of your ideas and express yourself as clearly as possible, but I know I'm prone to abrasiveness and didactness, so I'm glad this hasn't gotten ugly. I've been in enough similar threads that have!

I LOVE talking about criticism, style, reviews and writing ("No, really? Next you'll be saying you liked the D&D movie!") and so I get all excited when a thread like this pops up.

I look forward to further reviews from your hand. Thanks!

 

[takyris]

Ditto that. I disagreed with what you said, but it's a nice conversation. And it's gotten Erickson onto my radar, which is a good thing. I don't know whether or not I'll give him a read -- my taste isn't exactly like yours, Jes, but I'm not personally a huge fan of high fantasy that uses high fantasy language (as in, formal archaic styling, like someone copying an old Arthurian Romance written in medieval French). I tend to like my fantasy almost anachronistically colloquial. That's why I liked Eddings as a kid, and why I like Martin now. So Erickson might not be my speed.

On the other hand, I do like word invention for cultural reasons, so hey, he might be worth a shot on that.

Thanks,

 

[jester47]

Thanks BC, I really appreciate the challenges.

Takyris, I think you would like the language in Steven Erikson's books then. It is very coloquial. And I am not sure if it is High Fantasy- It seems sort of Dark Fantasy but not quite S&S. Its slow, but if you like that then hey check it out because once you get the story, its a cool story. (Great Burger sir, but why the styrofoam box and not a silver platter...) Somtimes the styrofoam is part of what makes the burger great... I don't like high fantasy language either (did I say I was really picky about what I liked? I am really picky!). I think I just like complex sentences. Aside from my previously stated background, lots of study in latin leads to such an appreciation also.

As writers go my tastes run to Leiber, Howard, Moorcock, Beagle, Vance, Lovecraft, Tolkien (Hobbit), Salvatore (when he wants to write) and LeGuin more than Eddings, Brooks, Erikson, McKiernan, Tolkien (Rings), and Slavatore (when hes forced to write). I have not made my mind up about Dunsany.

I like people that are willing to change point of view- I am most fond of first person (in all the ways it can be done), and third person objective and third person limited. Third person omniscient is ok if done well, (ussually in cause and effect stories) but most of the time it makes for a boring story because there is no surprise. Third person Rotating Limited is cool if it hands off when characters meet (the way Saramago does in Blindness but otherwise I find it annoying if it just jumps around (the way Erikson uses it for example).

Outside of Fantasy I really like to read Louis L'Amour (I wish I could write fantasy like he writes westerns), Umberto Eco (and his translator), Saramago (and his translator), Perez-Referte (and his translator), Cohelo (and his translator), Tim O'Brian, I rmember liking Hemmingway but I havent read him in a while, Gibson in Neuromancer, and Renault (the king must die), just to name a few.

As a side note, it seems writers are much better when they are doing what they want rather than trying to satisfy a demand. (go figure). Salvatores early Drizzt stuff is good. But his Jarlaxle and Entreri stuff is far better IMO. I found Servant of the Shard an excellent read, and his short stories with Entreri and Jarlaxle are great also. I look forward to more from those two.

I read some pages of Martin while I was on break at work. I liked his flow and command of the language, but from what I have heard I don't know if I will be to oterribly excited about his story. We will have to see. Jordan (from the occasional chapter I have read isnot that bad but I know he describes too much for my tastes (it would be cool to get a red letter edition of his books out where you could read them get the basic description and if you want more read some of the black letters).

Well, thats enough for me toady!

Aaron.

 

[takyris]

On a quasirelated note:

Just got a response from a SF webzine called Strange Horizons -- they're a good magazine, one of a handful of pro-level ones out there, and they just requested a rewrite on a story I subbed. It's not an acceptance, but it's far better than a rejection.

Here's what happened:

1) Showed story to friends.
2) Friends said, "Opening is too slow. Really doesn't start until they get to the windmill."
3) Said, "Aha, I will cut the first scene and start the story with them arriving at the windmill, and then I will use asides to give any necessary backstory I might have snipped from the first scene."
4) I do so, and submit to the 'zine.
5) They mail me back and say, "The first third of it doesn't work -- it's clunky and long. The second half, and particularly, the last third, are really enjoyable, though. Can you rewrite to fix that clunkiness, maybe add a bit of background so we know where we are, and can you make it a bit shorter?"
6) I realize that in my haste to get this thing out the door, I cut too much, and slamming in the backstory through asides isn't working. Also, the second scene (now the first scene) is too long, and reads like the second scene of a 4900-word story, not the first scene of a 3800-word story.
7) I add a 375-word first scene back into the story, and then I start cutting from the first half.

Final Tally:
Started: 3800 words (up to 4175 with shortened first scene)
Ended: 3600

So, jes, while I don't always agree with you, apparently there's room for cutting in a lot of places. At least, provided that this story is as good as it was when it was 1400 words bigger.

 

[drothgery]

Erikson's what you get if you cross Glen Cook and Robert Jordan, when both are writing well.

 

[Liminal Syzygy]

Along the lines of this discussion, here is a review of Gardens of the Moon that I found insightful. It summarized what my problems with the book were on my first read:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...0402190859.58aa9db6@posting.google.com&rnum=1

 

[Liminal Syzygy]

Not to make it seem that I don't like Erikson. Deadhouse Gates is amazing IMHO.