Fantasy as Antifantasy: 2 Metafiction and Fairy Dust

2　Metafiction and Fairy Dust

In The Tradition of Fantasy in American Literature, Attebery attempts to place Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn in contrast to Tolkien’s idea of literary creation, which aimed for the construction of entirely independent otherworld. Attebery begins by pointing out that Beagle is strongly influenced by Tolkien in this respect.

Peter Beagle is one of the great appreciators of Tolkien. His essay on “Tolkien’s Magic Ring” expresses the delight that many of us felt on discovering The Lord of the Rings. It points to Tolkien’s own faith in his materials as a source of strength, and it describes the sense Tolkien conveys that his story and the world within it were found rather than invented. (note) But it has little to say about how Tolkien makes his commitment infectious, and that should be the main concern of anyone who intends to follow in his footsteps.


note:
Taking great care not to make the reader feel that the world of the story being told is an artificial structure fabricated by the author’s hand, Tolkien introduced a fictional tome, “The Red Book of Westmarch” in his work, and he posed as if he were merely a commentator to the literature and presented the world of The Lord of the Rings to the reader. This is what Attebery means when he says that it was “found rather than invented,” and that is why he appreciates Tolkien’s unique invention of literary expression, which is thoroughly committed to otherworldly realism. Attebery disagrees with Beagle’s approach to his work, arguing that the way in which Beagle’s world is constructed presents too blatantly processed fictionality to the reader. However, if Beagle’s method is one of the metafictional attempts of postmodernism to overcome the traditional practice of presenting the narrative world, Tolkien’s method of conceiving false realism is itself another attempt to overcome the convention of fictional world-building, representing a particular metafictional mechanism. It is interesting to note that Attebery himself later pointed out in Strategies of Fantasy that this mechanism, in which fiction itself is conscious of the framework of fiction and destroys that framework, can also be applied to The Lord of the Rings. (pp. 40-41) As Attebery notes, this approach came to dominate fantasy literature at the end of the 20th century. (p. 46 ) The pioneer of this technique was Barrie, and Peter Beagle was the pioneer in introducing into fantasy another typical post-modernist metafictional strategy pointed out by Attebery, in which the characters themselves speak of themselves as characters in the work world. (p. 47).


It is an undeniable fact that Beagle, who wrote The Last Unicorn in 1968, and other American fantasy writers of the 1970s who followed him, were strongly influenced by Tolkien. The creative method of fantasy, which frees thoughts from the shackles of the triviality of the real world and makes it possible to open up a new world of ideas in a free fictional world, has a great appeal as having the power to break through the psychological blockage of the present day. This is even more evident in Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), which is given the greatest importance in The Tradition of Fantasy in American Literature. Here, however, Attebery seems to be somewhat skeptical of Beagle’s approach to the commentary on Tolkien’s masterpiece. This is not so much a problem with the quality of Beagle’s essay on Tolkien, but rather a certain prejudice against Beagle on the part of Attebery. Let’s examine that a little more.
Attebery goes on to introduce Beagle’s career as a writer:

Before Beagle attempted a fantasy he wrote a funny, offbeat ghost story called A Fine and Private Place. The type of low-key satire found in it is completely foreign to Tolkien’s fantasy: it is more likely to be found in the better grades of television situation comedy. When, in The Last Unicorn, Beagle attempted to express his appreciation for Tolkien in the form of a literary homage, he had to find some middle ground between the style he was accustomed to and the matter he was trying to incorp[or]ate. If there is any middle ground between wry comedy and high fantasy, it might just be the Thurber fairy tale, which is dazzling and funny and solemn, all at the same time. And the tone of The Last Unicorn, in its opening pages, is remarkably like that of The White Deer. Even little tricks like the anticlima[c]tic catalogs that both mock the subject and endear it to us, are the same. Here is a sample, a description of the Unicorn;

She had pointed ears and thin legs, with feathers of white hair at the ankles; and the long horn above her eyes shone and shivered with its own seashell light even in the deepest midnight. She had killed dragons with it, and healed a king whose poisoned wound would not close, and knocked down ripe chestnut for bear cubs.



Attebery points out that Beagle’s creative strategy is both a homage to Tolkien and a different kind of work from what Tolkien has achieved. This would be true. While Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is the epitome of high fantasy, Beagle’s The Last Unicorn is a new crop of novelty, unlike the commonly referred to “low fantasy,” in which supernatural phenomena are introduced into a seemingly realistic narrative world. It is, in Attebery’s words, a work that floats between the pole of high fantasy and the pole of “low-key satire” or “ironic ridicule.” It was to be expected to have a peculiar entertainment that was both humorous and solemn at the same time, as pioneered by James Thurber. However, the final assessment of Attebery over Beagle’s plan is rather harsh.

But as soon as Beagle tries to inflate his fairy tale to encompass a world and a vision, after the manner of Tolkien, the Thurberish deftness departs and he grows self-conscious. The graft fails to take, and the two components draw apart, the magic into sentimentality and the modern voice into embarrassed joking. He gives his wizard the deflating name of Schmendrick and lets him indulge in anachronisms at the expense of the story, unlike Thurber, whose anachronisms always reinforce the charm of the fairy tale world through contrast. The center of The Last Unicorn does not hold: its characters and imagery go flying off in all directions, without reference to the patterns of significance that should command.


Attebery concludes that Beagle is conscious of getting closer to Tolkien and is trying to do it by adopting Thurberian method but ends up breaking down.(note)

note:
One thing I would like to point out here is that though Attebery understood that Beagle first adopted Tolkien’s style when writing The Last Unicorn, but in fact Beagle had already written one short story with a characteristic that belong to high fantasy before he knew Tolkien. At the age of 19, he wrote his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, and after the book was published in 1960, Beagle discovered Tolkien around 1965, and Beagle wrote an essay “Tolkien’s Magic Ring” for Holiday Magazine based on his impressions. But Beagle had written a short story “Come, Lady Death” in 1961, and it was published in 1963. This short story had been submitted to a writing class presided by Frank O’Connor, who hated fantasy while Beagle was a student at Stanford University, and O’Connor “read it aloud in a brilliant Abbey Theater voice” before saying, “This is a very beautifully written story, I hate it.”, according to Beagle’s commentary. (“introduction” to The Fantasy Works of Peter Beagle, 1978)
This short story is a masterpiece of extreme perfection, a graceful fantasy of stylistic workmanship where humor and irony blend together. At least, it’s not the type of thing that gives the kind of “low-key satire” or “ironic sarcasm” that Attebery felt in A Fine and Private Place. As far as this work is concerned, it is impossible to say that Beagle’s innate temperament prevents him from writing in a Thurber-like style, as Attebery concluded. Beagle doesn’t need to imitate Tolkien because he has his own style. Rather, here’s why I suspect Attebery may have failed to fathom the depth of Beagle’s irony.
Attebery seems to regard The Lord of the Rings as the epitome of high fantasy, but even if we admit to it, this dichotomy can fluctuate depending on which elements of The Lord of the Rings are considered to be conditions for high fantasy. By the way, according to Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski, who compiled the collection Dark Imaginings: A Collection of Gothic Fantasy, (1978), high fantasy is a depiction of an imaginary secondary world, while low fantasy is a depiction of events in a realistic primary world setting. (“introduction” to Dark Imaginings) According to this, The Last Unicorn, in which the basic setting of the work is set in an alternate universe different from reality, can be classified as high fantasy. Attebery’s notion of high fantasy at this point seems to be too biased towards the style of The Lord of the Rings.
For example, James Branch Cabell’s Biography of Manuel’s Life, which consists of more than 19 volumes, has built up a vast geography and history that is not inferior to Tolkien’s profound story, is unmistakably high fantasy in that it depicts a medieval fictional world in an epic style, but it is also characterized by an ironic and satirical perspective and a self-consciousness of the fictional nature of the narrative world being told. Ironic high fantasy must also exist.
Although Beagle is not a very prolific writer, the style he chooses includes both poles of fantasy, so-called high fantasy low fantasy. If the high fantasy short story is “Come, Lady Death” and the high fantasy novel is The Last Unicorn, then the low fantasy short story is “Lila the Werewolf” (1974), and the low fantasy novel is A Fine and Private Place. By the time The Folk of the Air (1977) was published, Beagle had written only four novels, meaning that he had written novels for each High Fantasy and Low Fantasy, and short stories for each High Fantasy and Low Fantasy. These four works are included in The Fantasy Works of Peter Beagle.


It’s true that Beagle’s “self-conscious” attitude, permeates throughout the work, as pointed out by Attebery. However, is this a characteristic that deserves to be pointed out as an example of the flaw in which the author Beagle lost control of literary expression and technique in the course of his construction of a fictional world? Is it fair to say that this peculiar narrative is the result of the inherent ironic nature of Beagle, who wrote A Fine and Private Place, which Attebery called “low-key satire,” revealing discrepancy in his attempts to depict high fantasy after the manner of Tolkien? What is the basis for convincing him that the expression of this “wry comedy” style ingrained in the Beagle is an indicator of failure in the field of literary production? In fact, this element of irony must be regarded as a crucial factor in understanding this kind of work, but Attebery does not necessarily apply the term in such a context. This point will have to be analyzed in more detail later in consideration of the relationship between irony and fantasy. In the end, Attebery concludes that Beagle’s strategy he chose for creating the fictional world, has been derailed.