Fantasy as Antifantasy: 2 Metafiction and Fairy Dust -- concluded

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 counted 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.

Attebery only admits the author’s poetic sensibility, which is glimpsed in some parts of this work.

Parts of the story are memorable: the fraudulent magical circus that reminds one of Ray Bradbury’s sinister carnival, the outwardly prosperous but inwardly barren town, the vision of unicorns floating like froth on the surf, the ponderous and fearsome Red Bull.



The richness of the creative senses introduced here is a very effective example of Beagle’s genius as a writer. Attebery certainly acknowledges that. However, there is a part of Beagle that is definitively unacceptable to Attebery.

But Beagle does not gather these things into a satisfying whole because he lacks faith in them. He must lack faith, since he is always throwing pixy dust in our eyes to keep us from finding him out. This is pixy dust: “The witch’s stagnant eyes blazed up so savagely bright that a ragged company of luna moths, off to a night’s revel, fluttered straight into them and sizzled into snowy ashes”. So is this: “Schmendrick lighted down to support her, and she clutched him with both hands as though he were a grapefruit hull”. The first is uncalled-for, the second (grapefruit hull?) just silly. In neither case does the imagery advance the story, or even relate to what is going on. One feels like telling the author to play fair and let us see what he is about. Fantasy is not like parlor conjuring; its effects do not arise from misdirection and patter.


This is the final conclusion sentenced by Attebery, a fantasy critic who admits Tolkien and cannot tolerate Beagle. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between fantasy and irony, starting from the limit point of Attebery’s reception of fantasy. As a clue, I would like to first note that a somewhat interesting expression is used here. It is the description “he is always throwing pixy dust” when Attebery asserts that “Beagle provides the reader with a false fantasy.” Do we have any associations with the words “fairy dust”? Needless to say, it was the "fairy dust” that appeared in the play Peter Pan, (1904), written by James M. Barrie. When the play was first staged, the Darling children were able to fly freely following Peter Pan in the air. However, after a series of accidents in which children who watched the play tried to imitate the Darling children and take off, falling out of bed, Barrie added a setting in a later version that Peter had to sprinkle “fairy dust” on them in order for the children to fly.
One may read here the sly side of Barrie, a popular playwright who is a shrewd entertainment provider who listens to the audience’s reaction at each performance and shrewdly takes advantage of their mood. That’s one thing to be considered. Certainly, Barrie used to carefully observe the audience’s reaction and make changes to the script every time he performed his play. (note)

note:
It was in the year 1928, that the completed screen play of Peter Pan was published as a final manuscript. There are several versions of the scenario of Peter Pan, that remain in several different forms, testifying the phases of deviation in derivative creation.


However, through many stagings of Peter Pan, Barrie wrote a new version of artistic presentation, in the form of a novel, Peter and Wendy, (1911) after considerable lapse of time since the first performance of the play. The novel version of Peter and Wendy, which differs from the screenplay version, has a variety of narrative twists. It can be said to be the culmination of Barrie’s creative technique, who began his writing career by writing modernistic novels, with a strong awareness of the unique effects produced by manipulating fictionality in literary works. (note)

note:
A striking example of a modernist style is The Little White Bird, (1902), in which Barrie first introduced the character of Peter Pan. As the protagonist of this work, the narrator appears as a single middle-aged veteran, but for some reason he not only extends a nosy hand to young lovers, secretly reconciles them with each other, but also shows an unusual attachment to the boy born between them, and enjoys a kind of unique idyllic world of infancy with him. However, what makes the thing depicted in this method differ from the so-called human comedy is that the subject outlined above is presented as a world of abstract ideational game that unfolds around a first-person narrative, unlike the stories that are told in chronological events like novels using traditional narrative methods. Barrie has perfected the unique technique in this work, and added another twist in Peter and Wendy, and has gone beyond the existing limits of modernism. The White Bird was published as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, (1906) with only the middle part of the book extracted on its own, which is very interesting in relation to the establishment of Peter and Wendy.


This narrative work was very cleverly set by the author to trap the readers who try to read “Fantasy” with an easy eye. That is the identity of the fairy dust that Attebery unintentionally called “pixie dust.” It is a metafictional strategy similar to “parlor conjuring,” to borrow Attebery’s phrase, which presents an extremely “self-conscious” mode in which the work provides the reader with a fictional world and at the same time presents the fictionality itself to the reader in its entirety, revealing also the non-existence of the world of imagination. (note)

note:
As for the awareness of “nonexistence” in the discourse, it will be later discussed as one of the most important subjects of Peter and Wendy, in comparison with the metaphysical topology of Neverland, together with the existential principle of Peter Pan himself.

Moreover, this kind of mental attitude itself was the characteristic part of the philosophy of German Romantics which led to the birth of fantasy literature, and this kind of subtle way of perceiving reality is in fact a perspective that underlies the worldview contained in fantasy literature pioneered by George MacDonald. (note)

note:
This particular propensity will be further discussed later, applying the notion of "manga", that testifies the drastic change of reality recognition and keen consciousness of fictionality.