Rereading One for the Morning Glory this time, I was struck by how serious a book it is. And how the seriousness is difficult to describe, given how silly a book it is.
The silliness is easy to describe. The book is full of goofy puns, the people know (or at least suspect) that they are in a story, Our Hero is only half a man (the right half), and the book is absolutely chock full of goofy puns. And it’s all fundamentally silly anyway: the plot, and I should probably mention that this may possibly spoil your enjoyment slightly but not much, is about the Prince, who is in love with the Princess of the neighboring kingdom, but when the Usurper took that kingdom, she was the only one of the Royal Family that escaped, and is now living incognito. The Usurper eventually gathers an army of goblins and the undead, invades the Prince’s home and kills the King, and the Prince and Princess escape, form an army and vanquish the Usurper, finally joining the two kingdoms in their victory and marriage. La.
The seriousness, on the other hand, I find difficult to describe. It’s not just that there is, a long the way, a fair amount of danger, death and emotion. Nor is it that deep philosophical ideas are addressed in depth; they are brought up and referred to, but not delved.
Is it that the characters within the book are serious? But they are silly, as well: the Twisted Man, who guards the Prince, the mysterious Witch, the jolly Alchemist, the sweet Nurse. The loyal companions with wicked pasts. The Prime Minister who chews his beard. The King, the Usurper. The tavern wench.
But somehow they are serious as well. They respond to difficulty, and to evil, with seriousness. With resolve, but also with brains and with love, and with courage, when they can.
There is, in The Two Towers, a bit of dialogue when (if I remember correctly) Eomer wonders how to choose right action in days where—hold on, I’ll get the book.
‘It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange. […] How shall a man judge what to do in such times?’‘As he ever has judged,’ said Aragorn. ‘Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.’
Somehow, I think John Barnes would connect that bit with this book.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I love that book!! I thought no one else had read it but me… 🙂
You’ve reminded me that it’s been far too long since I reread that one. I hope it hasn’t fallen apart yet; last I saw it still had its cover.
And agreed about the silly/seriousness.
Perhaps the silly/serious feeling comes partly from the fact that the characters take _style_ to be essential to substance, which seems a frivolous position, and indeed it justifies considerable frivolity in the course of the narrative, yet the characters’ willingness to risk their lives in order to maintain this style, even when it is silly, reveals just how serious it is?
What is it that Sir John Slitgizzard says near the end about not being serious? (I’d try to quote it from memory, but it’s a kind of spoiler of a sort.)