Over a month ago I was sitting in a theatre with Kayla, waiting for a play to start, and I overheard a guy and a girl, both around our age, a couple of rows behind me, talking about A Game of Thrones. Neither had read it, and yet the guy was explaining to the girl that A Game of Thrones is an enjoyable book, but not a good one. Amused and skeptical, the girl asked him what he meant by this. The guy explained how he would read the book and probably enjoy it, but it’s not, you know, a good book. This, I took to mean, a book of “literary” merit, a James Joyce, if you will, or an Alice Munro.
Their talk then wandered to other things so I stopped eavesdropping, but I kept turning this exchange over in my head. Apart from my fierce loyalty to the book and indignation on its behalf rearing up, especially because this guy didn’t even read the damn thing, I was troubled by the distinction he made. It was a pretty half-baked literary theory, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. Some books are like junk food, delicious and full of empty calories, while others you read for deeper nourishment, books about Serious Things, like Society and Injustice and Humanity and all that. But those apparently aren’t the books one enjoys reading. Mark Twain famously said that "a classic is something everybody wants to have read, but no one wants to read." But does it have to be this way in all cases? Can’t a book be both nutritious and delicious?
I don’t know if this individual is an example of a widespread assumption, or if he’s the exception, but I must respond. For one, the Fantasy genre is already much maligned, and ignorant opinions like his aren’t helping. Furthermore, I’m worried about the fact that A Game of Thrones is so wildly popular that people assume there’s no way it could have any lasting literary value, since popular obviously means low-brow and crass, right? I don’t think this snobbery toward the series is widespread--in fact I know people have more sense than that--but I’d like to nip it in the bud in case it becomes an epidemic. And this goes for plenty of other books, too: don’t let the New York Times Bestseller status fool you. Popular fiction can also be great literature. An “enjoyable” book can also be a “good” book.
Here are a few reasons why I think that guy was wrong, and A Game of Thrones is well written.
Depth of Character
One thing the descriptions on the backside of the jacket don’t touch on is any evidence of sympathetic characters. In fact, this book is full of them, and I may have picked it up sooner had I known that, yet all the cover talks about is how cold and harsh these people are. This may be true, but it is only half the truth. No writer could get far without characters the reader can care about. A story’s protagonists don’t have to be totally innocent or heroic; far from it, they can be quite flawed. The ones we’re rooting for in A Game of Thrones are a mixed bag, without a doubt, but since you’re seeing it from their perspective you still tend to root for them.
Martin is very good at depicting human beings in very morally ambiguous situations, where the right choice is not always clear. The tension between love and honour, duty and passion, political idealism and realpolitik; these are central themes in the book. Some might say this complexity is a step in the right direction for Fantasy, a genre plagued by a half-deserved reputation for two-dimensional heroes and demonic, hooded bad guys. Depth of character is not easy to execute, but Martin pulls it off with great skill.
At first I was irritated by Sansa. She seemed shallow and childish, even for someone so young. But then I realised she was written this way for a good reason, as it creates a stronger effect when her fortunes change and her world is effectively turned upside down, hung from a tree and smashed to bits like a piñata. Eventually I was won over by her chapters and her unique point of view.And then there’s Tyrion: the Playboy of Westeros. It’s not clear whose side he’s on; Tyrion is on Tyrion’s side. He’s self-centred, narcissistic, and pretty foul-mouthed, but you love to love him. But there are moments where his kindness, wisdom, and vulnerability shine through that give him depth as well as dastardly charm, making him one of the most intriguing characters in the book.
Voice
Martin shifts point of view in each chapter, but maintains a strong grasp on the narrative voice for each one. Although it is told from the third person, each chapter retains the flavour of its protagonist. Tyrion’s narratives sound a little bit like Tyrion, almost think like Tyrion. The same for Jon, Daenerys, and Catelyn. You would not mistake the narrative voice in Sansa’s chapters, which has the vocabulary and emotional depth of a naïve young girl who dreams of courtly life, for that of Eddard Stark’s, which sound more like a grim war veteran who longs for a simple life. The cast of characters is pretty massive, but you never forget who's talking, and whose shoulder you're peering over. These characters are strategically placed at different points in the time and space of this vast epic, but they are certainly more than a pair of eyes. They are al active participants; each one is fighting tooth and nail for their life, or for what they believe in.
History
One technique I find very effective in creating a sense of verisimilitude in fantasy is the way the characters speak of their shared history: the Rebellion, the Targaryen Dynasty, the Battle of the Trident. These are pivotal moments in the lives of every single character, they are brought up frequently, and yet we never actually witness them first hand. A different writer may have used the literary device of flashbacks, and yet Martin's deliberate withholding of them paradoxically makes the world more real. If it were done with flashbacks, I would feel as though the events existed only for the story, and not for their own sake. As I've said before, I want to feel like a fantasical world will keep existing, long after I've read the last page, and I think Martin achieves this. It is subtle, and it trusts the reader’s ability to piece it together on his own.
Dialogue
A great deal of dialogue in the HBO series was lifted straight from the book itself. This is a testament to Martin’s talent for writing sharp dialogue that reveals character and moves the story along. It helps that Martin used to write for TV, but his background lends itself to the novel form all the same.
Drama
Speaking of his screenwriting experience, it’s no better shown than in his ability to write highly dramatic chapters. The book is very, very long, but it is without longueur: in each chapter, something always happens. There is always significance, whether it’s subtle, or whether it knees you in the codpiece. He is especially good at chapter endings. They aren’t exactly cliff-hangers--nothing as gimmicky as that--they always have a dramatic punch to them. The book is so readable because it’s always moving forward. The pace may vary, and we may take the scenic route at times (we can’t always be galloping at breakneck speed atop our destriers, direwolves at our side), but we are always moving.
Details
Martin is known for immersing himself in the subject he is researching. The fruits of his study are abundant on every page. But never does this become pedantic. The book is not a place for him to flaunt his (though considerable) knowledge of medieval European culture, and though that culture is the inspiration, every detail is employed in service to the story. To this Martin is loyal to a fault, but you could have much, much worse faults in a writer than that, couldn’t you?
Conclusion
I’m not saying the book is flawless. You might even be able to argue the opposite of everything I just said. But at least let it be well-informed. And perhaps this is a useless exercise, trying to prop up an already very successful series (I've seen more people reading A Song of Ice and Fire on public transit these days than any other series of books, including Fifty Shades of Grey). I’m glad it’s getting all this hype, but I have yet to see anybody since perhaps its original reviewers take a close look at the writing and evaluate its merits, the book itself at the heart of this mania.
To be honest, I haven’t read the rest of the series. I’ve only just begun A Clash of Kings, so I can only speak for the very first installment. But it puzzles me that people don’t seem to consider if they enjoyed a work, there must be some merit to it. Even if you didn’t like parts of it, maybe it had enough imaginative power to carry you through. Say, for example, you thought a book’s dialogue was corny, or the metaphors were lazy. But if you liked it, perhaps its strength lies in its inventiveness or its humour.
You liked a book? You weren’t bored by it? You were even emotionally invested in it? Well, my friend, there is a reason. That is the direct result of the conscious efforts of an author searching for just the fitting detail, the perfect turn of phrase, the mot juste, all with the precision of a sculptor. And it may have flaws, but after thousands and thousands of pages of gripping drama of a high order, a damn good yarn enriched by painstaking research, all done over the span of twenty years and counting, you can’t accuse Mr. Martin of the laziness you might find in a lesser writer.
Dickens’s books are now a part of the Western literary canon, yet he was very much a writer of “popular” fiction, striving to entertain rather than baffle his readers with the kind of code-language you might find in Ulysses. This also says something about the marketing of books, the way they are divided into “Literature” and “Fiction” at bookstores and libraries. This is an organizational method, and it is helpful to an extent, but it’s not a hard science. We’re still talking about books, here. Round pegs and square holes. What I want to draw to people’s attention is the way that it affects our reading choices, and that we miss out on great adventures when we pre-judge a book like this particular fellow did. If only he knew he would incur the long-winded wrath of this blogger, perhaps he would have kept his trap shut. He’s just lucky it was me who heard him, and not someone like Khal Drogo, or the Mad King Aerys. Don’t know the reference? You should probably read the book.
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