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swan_towerThis book is single-handedly responsible for a 900% reduction in the frequency of stew in fantasy novels.
(True fact: there used to be stew in the doppelganger books. I took it out because of Diana Wynne Jones.)
It is not, in the normal way of things, a book really meant to be read cover-to-cover. It isn't a novel; it's an encyclopedia, mocking the tropes and formulas of quest fantasy, from Adept ("one who has taken what amouts to the Postgraduate Course in MAGIC") to Zombies ("these are just the UNDEAD, except nastier, more pitiable, and generally easier to kill"). Oh, sorry -- you don't start with Adept, you always, always start with THE MAP. ("It will be there. No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one.")
I decided to read it cover-to-cover anyway, because if I'm going to do a completist read-through of her work, then dammit, I'm going to be thorough about it. And it's still entertaining; it just takes a while, compared to a novel of similar length. It also forms useful, though not completely necessary, background for Dark Lord of Derkholm, which takes the idea of the quest-fantasy protagonist being a Tourist and runs for the end zone. But for that, you'll have to wait for another post.
(True fact: there used to be stew in the doppelganger books. I took it out because of Diana Wynne Jones.)
It is not, in the normal way of things, a book really meant to be read cover-to-cover. It isn't a novel; it's an encyclopedia, mocking the tropes and formulas of quest fantasy, from Adept ("one who has taken what amouts to the Postgraduate Course in MAGIC") to Zombies ("these are just the UNDEAD, except nastier, more pitiable, and generally easier to kill"). Oh, sorry -- you don't start with Adept, you always, always start with THE MAP. ("It will be there. No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one.")
I decided to read it cover-to-cover anyway, because if I'm going to do a completist read-through of her work, then dammit, I'm going to be thorough about it. And it's still entertaining; it just takes a while, compared to a novel of similar length. It also forms useful, though not completely necessary, background for Dark Lord of Derkholm, which takes the idea of the quest-fantasy protagonist being a Tourist and runs for the end zone. But for that, you'll have to wait for another post.
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Date: 2011-11-20 02:35 am (UTC)I... like stew. And in large part, I like it because the stew that Fezzik feeds Inigo looks so good and hearty. All stew should aspire to be as good as that stew looks.
So... what's wrong with stew?
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Date: 2011-11-20 02:43 am (UTC)It goes in a bit from there, but you get the idea.
Like many readers, I had never noticed how often you get quest-fantasy people making stew on the road, nevermind that it has to cook for hours. Now, I will point out that it makes sense for inns and the like; stew, unlike steak, can be stretched out to feed more people, and is a good repository for various odds and ends that won't make a meal on their own, or are not quite so far gone as to be inedible, but far enough that you're happier not looking at them directly. But she has a point that stew ends up being the meal in old-school quest fantasy about 97% of the time, the other 3% being when the characters are in a dungeon (then they get stale crusts and water) or at a royal feast. It's good to get more variety.
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Date: 2011-11-20 03:23 am (UTC)I need to get another copy. I gave mine to a teen's birthday a few years ago. Have you seen the SF version?
http://rocketpunk-observatory.com/spaceguide.htm
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Date: 2011-11-20 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-20 08:31 am (UTC)Messy tho if broken in a fight.
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Date: 2011-11-20 08:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-20 03:27 am (UTC)I hate that quote with a burning passion. It's stew in stories because it's stew in real life, too. Stew is quick, easy, and doesn't require tending. It's not omlettes because ever try to keep eggs on the road? Upset hens on the back of the wagon don't like to lay eggs. Scavaging for eggs in the wild often turn up fertilized eggs--and they're literally a bloody mess if cracked. If good eggs are found, it's a lot of work to make the actual omlettes, and even scrambling eggs takes a lot of tending. Those fires get hot, even small ones. Plus, eggs need to be eaten soon after they're cooked to get the full flavor of them, so they have to be made at the last minute--AFTER camp has been set up. By that time, everyone's even more tired. It's much faster and more effective to put a stewpot on, fill it with whatever is at hand, and then leave it to cook while doing other chores. That way, food is ready when everyone is done with chores, and they can enjoy a hot meal that's not last-minute.
Oh, and steak? Again, sensitive, needs a lot of handling, and there's the hunting thing that may or may not be happening on the road. Also, steaks are not an effective way to control portion size, especially for large crowds like armies and such. Steaks are delicious, but it's also a waste of the animal to only have steaks, and if they are available, will be very expensive at those inns and taverns referenced. And then we get into poaching issues, and a whole bunch of other things....
Another problem is that people don't understand that curry, chili, gumbo, ratatouille, tagini, and soooo many other dishes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stew) are actually stew. Stew is the generic word for throw stuff in a pot, stir every once in a while until everything is done, and then eat. The problem is not stew, it's the lack of naming the TYPE of stew. It's lazy worldbuilding. She should have said, "Just calling it stew is lazy worldbuilding. Using the generic name is a waste of culture building. Figure out what kind of stew, match it with your culture, and use that name instead."
*rant rant rant rant rant rant rant*
Many things DWJ talks about, she gets right, but on this point, I think she's way, way off on multiple levels. So I've decided there will be stew in every single one of my books, only I'm going to do it RIGHT instead of lazy.
(Why yes, I have ranted about this in multiple places. *grin*)
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Date: 2011-11-20 06:14 am (UTC)Even L. M. Montgomery's Avonlea books, wonderful and sensory as they are, lack the sort of definite period-pinning detail we expect of world-building. It's way along before someone mentions that they still sand their floors instead of using this new-fangled hardwood that doesn't need sanding.
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Date: 2011-11-20 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-20 05:45 pm (UTC)Random examples of books in which the lack of an economy and ecology jumped out at me:
Blood Red Road. Slogging through a blasted post-apocalyptic wasteland, the characters suddenly come across a rollicking inn, complete with bartenders, jolly patrons, beer, etc. But no apparent town. How in the world is this inn surviving and attracting customers, when it appears to be on no known path and have nothing around it?
Divergent. Entire classes of people play out job-like roles with no actual purpose. For instance, the Dauntless (brave) people ONLY play paintball, do jackass stunts, and beat each other up, but do not act as cops or soldiers. The unsorted underclass don't have jobs. How do they survive? Who's keeping them down? Why do trains ceaselessly circle the city with apparently no one tending to them, and no one riding them but the Dauntless, who only use them to prove their bravery by leaping off.
Anne Bishop's books with the magic cock rings. The total lack of description really does make it seem as if nothing but the protagonists, their magic jewels, and their cock rings exist in the world.
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Date: 2011-11-21 06:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 05:14 pm (UTC)(I figured we only meet the aristocrat elves, not the cooking and farm-gardening elves.)
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Date: 2011-11-20 04:49 am (UTC)As for types of stew, you're absolutely right. But what she's parodying is generic Euro-quest fantasy, where there is nary a whiff of curry, chili, gumbo, ratatouille, tagini, or anything else of the sort. And she's not going to say "this is lazy worldbuilding" because that isn't the framework of the book. I don't disagree with you; I think she does misstep with some of what she says in that entry. But it was responsible for making me, and a lot of other writers, think through the food culture in our books, and that isn't a bad thing.
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Date: 2011-11-20 08:07 am (UTC)Other variants: sheperd's pie, pot pie, which AFAICT is stew in a pastry crust.
So's Chicago stuffed pizza, in a way. Heh. I remember first having that (in Seattle! my parents didn't go for Chicago pizza, I grew up in Chicago not knowing about it) and going "this isn't pizza! It is, however, good." Sorry, tangent.
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Date: 2011-11-20 08:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 06:53 am (UTC)I don't remember the tomatoes (book? movie?). But that was their first day out of Bree, wasn't it? One might bright some attractive perishables for the first part of a journey.
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Date: 2011-11-20 04:19 am (UTC)Get up to 100000 forum backlinks with our xrumer blast & massive traffic
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