The Legless Man Teaches Running

Whatever political differences of opinion I may have with Mr. George R.R. Martin, I must rally to his defense when he is criticized unfairly.

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2016/May/40/5/magazine/article/10832303/

Here is the opening paragraph of an opinion piece by one Douglas Wilson:

So what is objectionable about Game of Thrones?

In posing the question, please note that I am assuming that something is objectionable.  So let me count the ways.  If we are talking about the books, the prose is klonkingly pedestrian—although in fairness it must be said that George R.R. Martin, author of the internationally best-selling series A Song of Ice and Fire, is a competent pedestrian, staying largely on the sidewalk.  If we are talking about the HBO treatment of Martin’s world of Westeros (Game of Thrones, for which Martin serves as co-executive producer), you could sum it up, as one critic did, by noting the emphasis on a stylized violence there.  You might even call it a ritualized or liturgical violence, of the kind that tries to cast out demons cathartically, but which only succeeds in summoning a bunch of them instead.

Now please note, even in this one paragraph, that a man who pens the line “You might even call it liturgical violence, of the kind that tries to cast out demons cathartically, but which only succeeds in summoning a bunch of them instead” criticize a writer of superior talent for his craftsmanship with words.

Just the contrast between the faux-erudite word like ‘cathartically’ and the drab word ‘bunch’ sets one teeth on edge. That the statement is also false — the violence in the tale is grim and realistic and meant to be so, not cathartic — makes one wonder if Mr. Wilson has ever been cautioned not to use words whose meaning eludes his grasp.

The prose in GAME OF THRONES is hardly pedestrian. I remember being not just impressed, but awed, at how adroitly, and with what apt words, the opening scene in the prologue of the first book was penned.

In a lesser writers hands, it would have been a trite scene where a redshirt is killed just to show how the monsters work.

In Mr. Martin’s skilled hands, the scene introduces a three-dimensional character with loves and hates and hopes and fears, set against the snowy background of an eerie, unearthly world where the seasons come and go with no regular cycle, and in less than the space of a paragraph hooks the readers’ interest and sympathy (I, at least, felt sorry for the guy). Mr. Martin then introduces the frozen and horrifying terror of the wintery Others, against whom his blade is futile.

And that is just the opening: an entire world introduced, the mood established, and the main overarching conflict in the background, of which the succession wars in the foreground are a striking contrast.

Likewise, here, one paragraph into Mr. Wilson’s critique, we have already established that he is tone deaf to the prose of others, awkward and elliptical himself, with word choices that are cliched (“let me count the ways”) clumsy (“liturgical violence” is as disjointed a word-pair as “pumpkin electric”) and inaccurate (“cathartic” means a psychological purgative) but also leaden (“bunch of demons” — do fallen angels come in bunches, like bananas, or in hosts, choirs, or aerie legions?).

Is the rest of Mr. Wilson’s column worth reading? That each reader for himself must determine: time pressed, and I say no more about it for well or ill, save this: He makes some valid points, and I salute anyone who analyzes the flaws in a work from a Christian perspective. The nihilism in Song of Ice and Fire is the main barrier to my own enjoyment of the work.

But to call Mr. Martin’s masterful prose pedestrian? Not so. I respectfully but sharply disagree. Mr. Martin wields a pen like a scalpel and creates precisely the intended effect in the reader’s soul.