When I refer to our Palm Springs trips as "reading week" it's not entirely a joke. Life is full of little interruptions that can make it challenging to do any sustained reading, and as such I look forward to the opportunity to spend some quiet time with a book or two - or three. I'm not a swimmer, so while Karli floats around happily in the pool, I'm able to relax in the shade and do some reading.
This trip I brought along the New York Times bestseller The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O, by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland; The Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner; and Urshurak, by Jerry Nichols and the Brothers Hildebrandt, which I had picked up at the newly reopened Lawrence Books in October. Urshurak's reputation had preceded it to a certain extent (not necessarily in a good way), and I was more than a little curious to see how it measured up.
The award-winning duo of Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, known professionally as the Brothers Hildebrandt, were perhaps best known for their interpretations of The Lord of the Rings books, particularly their paintings for the 1978 J.R.R. Tolkien Calendar, and their "Style B" Star Wars poster, along with numerous science fiction and fantasy book covers and illustrations, done both as a team and individually. Their work was distinguished by its lush, luminous style - no one paints white like the Brothers Hildebrandt painted white.
After discovering that they would not be part of the creative team for Ralph Bakshi's 1978 Lord of the Rings animated feature film, the disappointed twins were inspired to create their own epic struggle between Good and Evil, and set about building the world that would be the setting for their story. The result was the land of Urshurak, a monumental backdrop delineated in paint and ink, more than suitable for a mythic adventure.
They originally attempted to have the story of Urshurak made into a live action film, but the project failed to gain any traction in Hollywood. The Brothers then attempted to package the concept as an animated production, but once again had no success with the studios, and finally decided to present their concept artwork as part of an illustrated novel.
Sadly, I couldn't bring myself to like the resulting version of Urshurak. I did my best to read it with an open mind, but neither the plot nor the prose ever manages to rise to the heights of Tolkien, Peake, or Lewis - or Pratchett or Gaiman, for more modern references. Sadly, as cliché would have it, if it was easy, everyone would do it, and taking inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien is a long step away from being J.R.R. Tolkien: a simple and self-evident truth which hasn't stopped many people from trying over the years - and generally failing.
I have this odd desire to apologize for my less than positive opinion. After all, Urshurak was originally intended as a movie project, not a novel, and there are probably hundreds of movie scripts that would fail as novels. Even so, with the best will in the world, the writing doesn't match the epic quality of the paintings and illustrations that inspire it.
The narrative is an uncertain balance between broad comedy and Tolkienesque earnestness, the dialogue is often stilted and unnatural, the characters never quite ring true, and the epic events of the story somehow fail to become epic - it just doesn't work. Sad to say, it might have been better left as just a coffee table collection of spectacular paintings and drawings united by a simple narrative, like still images taken from a film.
It's hard to read the book without wondering what might have been. All that I know about the novel's co-author Jerry Nichols is that the brothers refer to him as "an old friend" in the preface to the book, and research does not produce very much more information regarding Mr. Nichols or his writing credentials, making him an uncertain choice to anchor the project. But, imagine: based on their creative reputation, the brothers could conceivably have reached out to any number of authors* to tell their story.
The book was released in 1979: looking at a contemporary roster of writers, they would have been able to chose from an all-star cast of possible collaborators. Imagine if they had recruited Roger Zelazny, or Ursula K. Le Guin; or how about Patricia A. McKillip, or Mary Stewart? Tanith Lee; C.J. Cherryh; Katherine Kurtz; Samuel R. Delany; for a more classic touch, veteran fantasy authors Fritz Leiber and L Sprague de Camp are still active in 1979, along with Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson.
Would any of them have said yes? Impossible to say, but it's an undeniably talented group with a wide range of writing styles, any one of whom would have brought a unique vision to the story, a vision which might well have turned Urshurak into an archetypal masterpiece that would rival its inspirations, rather than weakly evoking them.
Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure, D.O.D.O was a pleasantly fun read - Nicole Galland is obviously a good influence on Mr. Stephenson - and The Stone Book Quartet, although well written, was not really a fantasy as such, in spite of its author's reputation in the field.
- Sid
P.S. I refer to the brothers Hildebrandt in the past tense throughout this posting: sadly, Tim passed away on June 11, 2006, followed by his brother Greg on October 31, 2024.
* Terry Brooks might have been a bad choice, given that, as above, they had done the cover painting for The Sword of Shannara, his personal LOTR homage/pastiche - one to a customer, as they say.
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