The fantastic, for me, is this beautiful straight road to wonder.
Steven Price (J. M. Miro)
It's not our usual date night routine, but tonight Karli and I attended an event at this year's Vancouver Writer's Fest, a conversation regarding historical fantasy featuring Canadian authors Guy Gavriel Kay and Steven Price (writing as J. M. Miro) and moderated by critic and and fellow author Rob Wiersema.
If you're a reader, I strongly recommend
that you try an event like this, regardless of your genre of interest. It's a
unique opportunity to hear authors talk about their work in their own
voices, to speak to their inspirations and how their lives have informed
their writing.
Guy Gavriel Kay has impeccable credentials in the world of fantasy writing. At the age of 20, a family connection gained him an invitation from the J. R. R. Tolkien estate to travel to England and assist Christopher Tolkien in editing his father's unpublished writings in the world of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with the results published as The Silmarillion. His high fantasy trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, was published ten years later to universal acclaim.
Kay has a thoughtful, artistic style which has stood the test of time over his nearly 40 year writing career. All the Seas of the World, his latest novel, continues his exploration of fantasy set in slightly altered historical settings, in which magic and the supernatural are part of the story.
Ordinary Monsters, set in Victorian England at the turn of the century, is Steven Price's first fantasy novel, and the first in what will be the Talents series. He is better known for his poetry and his mainstream historical novels, By Gaslight and Lampedusa.
The two authors were well paired. Kay's speaking style is almost
professorial, measured and deliberate in the presentation of ideas based
on almost four decades of writing. By contrast, Price offered a more
frank and immediate commentary on his first foray into the world of
fantasy after a life-long love for the genre.
Over the course of the evening, they shared a fascinating dialogue on the topic of writing and their personal approaches to it - albeit, in Guy Gavriel Kay's case, accompanied by the observations that "The research phase is by far my favourite part of writing. Actual writing is hell. Those who tell you they love it shouldn't be allowed to live, I feel very strongly about this."
When asked about his shift from the classic high fantasy of his first trilogy to historical settings, Kay explained that there were specific personal reasons that he wanted to make a statement in that style, after his experience with the Silmarillion. He had strong thoughts about "what was wrong, what was missing in fantasy at the time", specifically in North America, and The Fionavar Tapestry was his response.
After finishing his statement, he was ready to move on. He acknowledged that there was pressure to repeat his previous success - “If something is successful, people want you to do it again," - but he was unwilling to repeat himself, or, as he succinctly put it, “I don’t believe in four volume trilogies.”
In his writing since then, he's found that his
core interest in history and the past has provided him with a different
tool, a different weapon in the arsenal to “keep you reading until three
in the morning.”
“And it's worked!”
The fantasy elements that he weaves into his novels offer an alternative perspective on history, one which helps him to avoid what he refers to as the smugness of most historical fiction, the tendency to look down on the less advanced beliefs of the past.
To end the evening, Wiersema asked the two authors for reading recommendations. Guy Gavriel Kay recommended Mary Renault's novels set in classical Greece, such as The King Must Die, or The Mask of Apollo, which he considered to be "beautifully written, transgressively written", and which he had first read when he was 12.
Steven Price suggested the book which had changed his life when he was 12, the fantasy classic The Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Leguin, which he described as "profound, timeless and beautiful". For a more contemporary choice, he recommended Spear, a queer retelling of the Arthurian legend by Nicola Griffith.
For me, the most significant part of the evening came near the beginning, when Wiersema asked Price why, given the success of his more traditional fiction, he had turned to fantasy:
"I grew up reading fantasy novels - they're my home, it's where I come from.
I was a very lonely boy, I did not fit in - like so many writers and readers who have that experience – I didn’t fit in, I didn’t have a lot of friends, and I found my refuge in books.
This was in the 1980s before there was an internet, where you could find like minded kids – find your tribe, find your people.
And I took refuge in the fantasy novels of the 80s that I could find at the mall bookstore - Robert Jordan, Anne McCaffrey, Guy Gavriel Kay books, the blockbuster fantasy novels that were available at the time.
I was 12 years old - I decided a lot of things when I was 12 years old - most of them have never come to pass, but one of the things that I stuck with was that I wanted to write fantasy novels. That dream stayed with me all through my adolescence and I never told anybody."He registered for a writing course in university, switched to poetry, and stopped reading fiction for a few years. Following the publication of his first collection of poems, he was exhausted, and needed something to read that was different from what he had been working on.
I went to the bookstore, went to the Fantasy section, and pulled down a book, I remember clearly that it was a Brandon Sanderson novel.
I found this refuge again, this refuge that I had found as a boy.
At this point, he seemed to become self-conscious, muttered, "This is a really long answer", and quickly explained how reading fantasy stories to his children at night had provided the impetus for his novel before falling silent.
I wanted to stand up and shout, "Steven, it's okay, it's safe, you've found us! We're the tribe you couldn't find when you were 12, and that's why we're here tonight!"
So, Mr. Price, my warm congratulations to you, both on fulfilling the dream of a twelve-year old, and on finding your people. Here's hoping that your book will provide the same refuge that you found to a 12 year old who needs one, and that it helps them to find their home.
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