Eddings vs The Belgariad

I picked up The Belgariad the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. The whole series. I think it was the first time I'd ever done that. I should point out that I don't do that anymore, but it wasn't The Belgariad that made me think that that was a bad idea. I was going off to camp, which I'd never done before, and I needed to take something to read. Well, I thought I did, anyway. I always had something to read; therefore, I needed something to read to go to camp with me. It was just for a week, so I didn't need five books, but I bought them and took them with me just to make sure I didn't run out of books. (Yeah, the thought of "running out of books was just about the most horrible thing I could think of when I was in high school.)

Not that we got free time for that. I don't know that I even opened Pawn of Prophecy on that trip. I had another week long trip a few weeks later, and I took the books on that trip with me, too. Somewhere during the summer, I made it through the first three books, and, then, just after school started, I got sick and missed a couple of days, and I read the last two books on those two days I was home from school. I laid in bed and read, and it was awesome. It was awesome because The Belgariad is awesome. Seriously, The Belgariad may be the greatest fantasy series ever written other than The Lord of the Rings. Eddings had a lifelong fan. At least, that's what I thought.

[I could go into why Belgariad is so great, but there's not really time to do that in  this post. You should just go read it. Unless you don't like fantasy, but, then, I don't know what to say to you, anyway.]

A couple of years later, Guardians of the West came out, part one of The Malloreon, a new five part series. Because I didn't want to have to wait a year or more between books, I waited until the entire series was out before I read it (although I bought them as each was released), then I re-read The Belgariad (just as good!) followed by The Malloreon. Now, The Malloreon was good, but it was good mostly because of getting to visit characters I loved again. It didn't cover any new ground; in fact, it was pretty much the same plot as the first series. But, you know what, I didn't care.

Yet.

The problem came with the next series... The Elenium (3 books instead of 5 and not related to Belgariad) had come out during the same time period as The Malloreon, but I hadn't read that one, either, because I wanted to read Malloreon first. I went right into it, though, after I read Malloreon. And it was the same thing I'd already read. Eddings juggled the characters up some, but, essentially, it was The Belgariad all over again. I liked it well enough, but The Belegariad had been awesome! while The Elenium was just a pale copy.

And that was followed by The Tamuli, the 3-book sequel to Elenium, and it was also the same thing! Just the same plot over and over again. I was getting frustrated, especially since the characters from the two trilogies weren't as engaging as the ones from Belgariad.

But I stuck with him.

Let's jump back a bit. One of the reasons I was able to hold on is that while I was waiting for The Tamuli, I went back and read his first two books. The first was High Hunt, which came out almost a full decade before Pawn of Prophecy. It was about a group of guys on a hunting trip and, while not great, it was a good book. The other was a book called The Losers about a football player (if I'm remembering correctly) that lost his legs in a car accident. This book was also written in the 70s, but it wasn't published until Eddings had met with success through Belgariad. The Losers was an incredible book, and I'd actually like to go back and read it again. As soon as I figure out where my copy is. What I learned is that Eddings was actually capable of some other plot beyond the plot from Belgariad which, by the end of Tamuli, he'd used four times, so, see, I had hope.

And I thought that hope had paid off.

Two books came out in 2000: Regina's Song and The Redemption of Althalus. Regina's Song was actually an attempt at a different genre, so I really hoped for something good. And, true, the plot was new (for Eddings), BUT!

There was this character from Belgariad that was just everyone's favorite: Silk. Silk is the smart mouthed rogue of the group. Witty. Clever. Bad boy. I can count on two fingers the number of people I've known that would name any other character as their favorite. Where Eddings got Silk right, though, was not that witty banter but the flaws. Silk was not a perfect character. But the reaction to the character was all about the charisma and the cleverness, and the farther along in Eddings career we got from Silk the more every character became Silk, I assume from an effort by Eddings to recreate that chemistry from Belgariad. However, none of these newer characters were flawed. What we got was clever, perfect characters.

And that came to a critical mass in Song as every character spent their time trying to out clever every other character, and it was just too much. No one talks like that all the time, but all of these characters did, and it drove me crazy. It was a constant one-upmanship. [Remember this bit, because it's going to be important in an upcoming review. Yes, I will refer back to just this topic of too much cleverness.] Basically, it drove all the realism from the story and was the first time the writing in a book was "too clever" for me. Of course, it was clever in a completely predictable manner, so, maybe, it wasn't clever at all. So there was all of that and the fact that, although a horror novel was new to Eddings, he did nothing new with it, and the whole thing was completely predictable, and, if it hadn't been Eddings, I would have thrown it against the wall.

For some unknown reason, I read Althalus when that came up, and, even though  it was just the one book, it was Belgariad all over again, coupled with every character attempting to be like Silk, and I probably should have jumped up and down and screamed, but, instead, I just wanted to cry, because... because... well, THE BELGARIAD! And that was when I quit calling Eddings one of my favorite authors and only started saying that The Belgariad was one of my favorite series of books.

But it was a hard thing. And I wonder why, now, but, at the same time, I understand why.

At any rate, when his final series came out, The Dreamers, I looked at it long enough to verify  that  it was, once again, The Belgariad, and I put it back.See, you would never put back a book by your favorite author, right? And that was the end. I wouldn't suggest Eddings, as an author, to anyone, although I still think that anyone that likes fantasy should Belgariad. Both of my boys have read it, upon my suggestion, and loved it. My younger son has gone on to some of his other stuff but has agreed that, other than Malloreon (because you get to spend more time with Garion and company), there's not much point.

Why am I talking about all of this? A couple of reasons, actually:

1. As I said, I have a book review coming up that reminded me of my experience with Song, and I figured I should supply some background as to why the whole "too clever" thing annoyed me.
2. Eddings, through Belgariad, had a huge impact on me, but, then, the thought of the way I want to write came up, and I do not want to be like Eddings. I don't want to get stuck on one thing because it was successful, and I want to reproduce it. Eddings just stopped growing as a writer, and I don't want to be that way.
3. Which is not to say I wouldn't want to write something as wonderful as The Belgariad, because I totally would. But I don't want to do it by accident, which, really, is what I think happened with Eddings. It's sort of like making the perfect chocolate cake because you measured something incorrectly and, then, spending the rest of your life trying to reproduce your error.

So, yeah, that was more than two, but who's counting, right?

Shut it.

When Everyone's Special...

...no one  is.

The Incredibles is one of my favorite movies, not just one of my favorite Pixar movies. Not that I couldn't say that about a lot of Pixar movies. But that's beside the point.

This is another post I started quite a while ago, but I think it flows pretty well out of my last post. Really, I'll give my soap box back at some point.

There are two themes in The Incredibles that attract me to it. The first of those is being who you are. Not hiding yourself away and pretending to be other than you are, but that's not what this post is about. This post is about the second theme, the one that has to do with society exalting mediocrity so that everyone can be "special."

It's somewhat of a paradox, too, because we are a society that exalts the "popular" while simultaneously trying to devalue everyone else so that we're all the same. The conflict arises because it boils down to "winners" (like Charlie Sheen >heh<) and "losers." If you're the hot commodity, you're a winner. Everyone else is a loser.

But we live in a society (mostly confined to North American at the moment but spreading) that doesn't believe in having "losers." A society that says everyone can be a winner... no, everyone is a winner. A society that tries to protect the feelings of, well, everyone (and saying "it's all subjective" is the ultimate defense against qualitative judgments of any kind). A society that doesn't believe in pointing out that anything is bad or wrong. A society that says "everything is good all the time." [See my post about the book Bright-sided for more on this.]

Let's use a sports analogy, shall we?

Because my daughter was playing softball (you can read that story here), my wife and I have been doing lots if digging and searching around for information about teams and leagues and all of that sort of thing. Meaning, my wife has been doing lots of research and passing the interesting bits on to me. One of the articles I read that really stood out to me is the rise of Little Leagues that do not have winners. Well, that's not true; they don't have losers. Everyone gets to be a winner. There are no outs. There are no scores. Everyone gets to hit the ball and run the bases. Why? Because we, as parents, need to protect our children from being "losers." And having hurt feelings.

But it doesn't fool the kids. And it doesn't help the kids. The kids want there to be winners, and they're willing to accept the prospect of losing, because they want the chance to win. They want the chance to win.

But none of us want our kids to be "losers," so we take that prospect away from them. We want to make them all winners, but the problem is that you can't have winners if you don't also have losers.

In many ways, I feel like this whole self-publishing game is becoming like these little leagues. We're not allowed to say anything negative, because we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. No one is "allowed" to be a loser, and, if there are no losers, everyone gets to be a "winner." Even if that's not true. And we all know it's not true, but, if no one says anything bad, we can keep pretending.

There's this book I want to read, The Fourth Turning, that's all about this stuff from a generational perspective. We own the book, but it's out on loan (because I didn't get to it fast enough after my wife read it). Of course, loaned books can't usually be said to be owned books very often. That's my perspective anyway. Loaning it out is equivalent to giving it away.

At any rate, my generation, in the book, is known as the "unprotected" generation and looking at how I grew up, I tend to agree. We were the generation of latchkey kids (and I started being one by age 7). The current generation, the millennials, the generation my generation is raising, is known as the "protected" generation, and it is a direct response to the self-involvement of our own parents by trying to be over involved in our own kids' lives. It should be the "over protected" generation. [I've been reading a lot about how our aversion to allow our kids to experience risk is not so good for their internal development. Sure, they don't get broken bones, but they never learn how to take risks or, sometimes, even think for themselves.] And there was this other article about the first of the millennials entering the job market and how they need constant supervision and feedback (because they've never really learned how to be independent).

Anyway... I'm straying a bit, and it's getting late, so I need to wrap this up.

The point is this:
There are people in the world like Dash and Mr. Incredible. Not people with super powers, but people that standout above all the rest. We really don't get anywhere by trying to force everyone into a mold of sameness. The problem we have is that we don't want to acknowledge that there are some people that really need to either find something else to do or work harder at whatever it is before they can be good enough.

Like my brother playing basketball in high school. He was a short, white boy. Shorter than me, and I'm only 5'8". But my brother could play and play well, and it's what he wanted most to do. He had to work hard at it. And he did. Hours every day. And I bet you're expecting me to tell you some miracle story about his hard work and perseverance, but I'm not going to. He did make his high school team. He was the only white boy on the team one year. Mostly, he just warmed the bench, though. Why? Because, as good as he was, he wasn't better than the other boys on his team. Mostly because he just wasn't tall enough. And that's a suck thing to be that good but still not to be able to compete. Eventually, he had to come to the conclusion that he wasn't going to be able to do that thing, basketball, and he went to other things.

But he did try. He gave it his all to see if he could make it, but he just couldn't pull it off. But he still plays for fun, so it's not like it was taken away from him.

To bring this back to writing, I'm going to switch movies. There's a quote at the end of Ratatouille that I love, but I'm only going to paraphrase it for you, "Not everyone can be a great writer, but a great writer can come from anyone." I do think everyone should have the opportunity to take their shot at being a great writer. Or a great anything. However, I don't think everyone can do it. I don't think most people can do it. Which is not to say that you shouldn't try. But, if you're going to try, work hard at it. And take the criticism (both bad and good (because to critique something is not just pointing out the bad)) people give you while you are busy working hard, and use it to get better.

Some people won't be tall enough. Some won't be fast enough. Some will just never get the break they need. Some will never get good enough because we don't tell them they need to work on their grammar so as to avoid hurting someone's feelings. And that's really the worst thing that can happen. To not become a winner because no one ever bothered to tell you that you were losing.

Everyone can't be special, because when everyone's special, no one is.