Americans are obsessed with fantasy, and the evidence of this preoccupation is everywhere. Take, for example, television shows like Lost or True Blood, bestselling book series like Harry Potter or Twilight, or even comic book superheroes like Superman or Batman. The latest to capitalize on this obsession is Time senior book critic and bestselling author Lev Grossman, who engages with the fantasy tradition in his novel, The Magicians.
The protagonist of the book is Quentin Coldwater, the quintessential teenage misfit with a strange affinity for magic. The novel begins when he is unexpectedly whisked to a magical school called Brakebills, where he encounters a host of eccentric professors, difficult magical classes and a complicated magical sport called welters.
This should sound familiar: The Magicians draws heavily from both The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter, but infuses this tradition of "child-friendly" fantasy with an adult edge. For example, the students at Brakebills drink heavily and engage in casual orgies, and the language and violence are certainly not intended for children.
Quentin learns that the ability to cast magic does not solve life's problems. After graduating from Brakebills, he finds himself bored out of his mind: "The worldwide magical ecology was suffering from a serious imbalance: too many magicians, not enough monsters." Soon, he descends into a hedonistic lifestyle of drugs, booze and sex, and this is where the book's quality suffers as well. Grossman writes beautifully, but his strength comes from witty quips (on Quentin's Draco Malfoy-esque enemy: "He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth, I'm kind of glad he hit you."), not long, nihilistic passages about the futility of life. ("We human beings are unhappy all the time. We hate ourselves and we hate each other.")
The novel picks up when Quentin learns that Fillory, the magical Narnia-like land that gave impetus to his obsession with magic, is indeed real. Throughout the book, Quentin holds the fairyland Fillory as a kind of Eden away from a world that can offer no meaning. When he finally enters Fillory, however, he finds that there is no cure for his nihilism, even in the land of imagination. Quentin ponders: "Why now, when it was actually happening, did the seductions of Fillory feel so crude and unwanted?"
Grossman uses these fantasy stereotypes - entry into a magical land, a boarding school for young magicians - to criticize some of the derivative elements of the genre while questioning our paean adoration of fantasy tropes. The point is well-made: our culture's obsession with fantasy might be simply an avoidance of the emptiness of real life. But although The Magicians equates childhood nostalgia for works like Narnia with immaturity, it seems hypocritical for Grossman to belittle fantasy while simultaneously engaging in its tradition. For example, Grossman pokes fun at certain elements of fantasy such as the magical quest or talking animals. But the novel's climactic - and clich
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
