A few years ago I talked about The Traitor by Michael Cisco and some of you even ran out to buy that wonderful short novel. Well, I'm back to tell you about Cisco's follow-up The Narrator, in the hope of getting the same result.
A man named Low is the narrator, and also The Narrator, of The Narrator. But it isn't quite that kind of twisty turny ho-ho I've got you now dumb reader! sort of book. Just as The Traitor was about the rise of the state, The Narrator is about how the state exists via ideo-linguistic concent. Narrators in Cisco's imaginary Europe—there's a da Vinci in this setting at least, along with magic and spirits—tell the stories the wealthy and powerful need everyone else to hear. Competition is pretty fierce actually, and our man Low is a polyglot of significant ability. He'd need to be as the world he navigates and narrates is awash in languages both written and spoken. Indeed, the wealthy often commission the creation of their own alphabets (not fonts, alphabets) from Narrators like Low.
And poor Low has been drafted, and his conscription has been cemented by the supernatural gaze of an Edek, a blind remnant of once-great imperial power. Low is not happy. "An army is a horror," is how he decides to start his story, "It's a horrible thing. They say you might change your mind about that when the country is invaded and your people are suffering wrong, but for me this is all just more horror, more army-horror." Not a sentiment one often hears today, but then again today the narrators of contemporary wars don't really concentrate on conflicts between the armed forces of countries that have a rough military parity, do they?
Low quickly falls in with a bunch of other people about as well-suited to engage in war as he is. There's Jil Punkinflake, a sort of priest of death and dying, who is actually jovial and fun, as his fantasy name suggests. In any other fantasy novel about war, he'd be the guy singing songs and falling headfirst into buckets for comic relief. There's also Makemin, the brave and resolute commander who definitely deserves a fragging. There's even a kick-butt fantasy heroine with a strong arm and a stronger will. Of course, she also spent a fair amount of time in the lunatic asylum, as one would.
Low's forces are hoping that the spirits in a far-flung corner of the land will support their operational goals over those of their enemies. The Narrator and the narrator and Our Narrator run up against the central question of history—what the hell is actually going on, and why are people even bothering to risk their lives doing things like securing a harbor? One is reminded of the only funny thing ever to come out of the mouth of a Maoist: when Zhou Enlai was asked about the historical impact of the French Revolution of 1789, he responded, "It's too early to tell." Well poor Low is right up against it, and as the guy in charge of telling the story of the war he's in for his side without the benefit of hindsight, or any stake in the outcome of the war, or even safety, he's come up a bit short.
There are many exciting battles and action scenes in The Narrator—the enemies are called blackbirds because they use lighter-than-air metal wristlets and anklets to fly for short distances. Low's squad is augmented by loonies from the mental hospital, and they're always fun, if unpredictable, in battle. Low is a medic and a translator, so spends a lot of his time observing the fight and then watching his friends die. Then he is given a magic charm that will allow him to lead his team more or less safely past the Lake of Broken Glass—a neverending windstorm of glass shards that swoops around every so often—and ruins proximity to which causes people to sicken and die (radiation?), to finally petition the gods for success. Too bad the whole point of having a narrator around is to have a story for posterity, so nobody really cares what Low thinks or says in the moment. There is even a traditional "meet the enemy and he is us" moment, when Low encounters the narrators from the other side of the war. They don't really know what the hell is going on either.
The Narrator is about the dual frustrations of the intellectual in an era of endless conflict—they're smart enough to know what's not going on ("They hate our freedoms!"), but can't get anybody to believe it. There's also no lone intellectual smart enough to know what actually is going on, despite the tendency to speak definitively on historical subjects. Quick, why did the Soviet Union fall? Really? Is that all? Is that the only reason? The only five, the only ten? And anyway, Low isn't half as smart as he'd like to be, or as his troops hoped he would be.
One might get the sense that Cisco is "subverting" fantasy tropes here, but of course these days apparently every fantasist in the world gets to make that claim if they do anything other than photocopy The Lord of the Rings and hand it in as their manuscript. But one might say that Cisco is a subverter along the lines of China Mieville rather than the my-elves-are-different crowd. So why is Cisco so obscure while Mieville is popular? Editorial pique, I suppose is most of it. The rest is probably a mix of personal charisma, Fortuna, and Cisco not whipping up enough monsters for the fanboys. Sad, that. If only Bruno Schulz had survived his war experience and launched a great fantasy trilogy, then Cisco would be richer than ten Bolivian Nazis! In another world, perhaps the world of The Narrator, this may have already happened.
A man named Low is the narrator, and also The Narrator, of The Narrator. But it isn't quite that kind of twisty turny ho-ho I've got you now dumb reader! sort of book. Just as The Traitor was about the rise of the state, The Narrator is about how the state exists via ideo-linguistic concent. Narrators in Cisco's imaginary Europe—there's a da Vinci in this setting at least, along with magic and spirits—tell the stories the wealthy and powerful need everyone else to hear. Competition is pretty fierce actually, and our man Low is a polyglot of significant ability. He'd need to be as the world he navigates and narrates is awash in languages both written and spoken. Indeed, the wealthy often commission the creation of their own alphabets (not fonts, alphabets) from Narrators like Low.
And poor Low has been drafted, and his conscription has been cemented by the supernatural gaze of an Edek, a blind remnant of once-great imperial power. Low is not happy. "An army is a horror," is how he decides to start his story, "It's a horrible thing. They say you might change your mind about that when the country is invaded and your people are suffering wrong, but for me this is all just more horror, more army-horror." Not a sentiment one often hears today, but then again today the narrators of contemporary wars don't really concentrate on conflicts between the armed forces of countries that have a rough military parity, do they?
Low quickly falls in with a bunch of other people about as well-suited to engage in war as he is. There's Jil Punkinflake, a sort of priest of death and dying, who is actually jovial and fun, as his fantasy name suggests. In any other fantasy novel about war, he'd be the guy singing songs and falling headfirst into buckets for comic relief. There's also Makemin, the brave and resolute commander who definitely deserves a fragging. There's even a kick-butt fantasy heroine with a strong arm and a stronger will. Of course, she also spent a fair amount of time in the lunatic asylum, as one would.
Low's forces are hoping that the spirits in a far-flung corner of the land will support their operational goals over those of their enemies. The Narrator and the narrator and Our Narrator run up against the central question of history—what the hell is actually going on, and why are people even bothering to risk their lives doing things like securing a harbor? One is reminded of the only funny thing ever to come out of the mouth of a Maoist: when Zhou Enlai was asked about the historical impact of the French Revolution of 1789, he responded, "It's too early to tell." Well poor Low is right up against it, and as the guy in charge of telling the story of the war he's in for his side without the benefit of hindsight, or any stake in the outcome of the war, or even safety, he's come up a bit short.
There are many exciting battles and action scenes in The Narrator—the enemies are called blackbirds because they use lighter-than-air metal wristlets and anklets to fly for short distances. Low's squad is augmented by loonies from the mental hospital, and they're always fun, if unpredictable, in battle. Low is a medic and a translator, so spends a lot of his time observing the fight and then watching his friends die. Then he is given a magic charm that will allow him to lead his team more or less safely past the Lake of Broken Glass—a neverending windstorm of glass shards that swoops around every so often—and ruins proximity to which causes people to sicken and die (radiation?), to finally petition the gods for success. Too bad the whole point of having a narrator around is to have a story for posterity, so nobody really cares what Low thinks or says in the moment. There is even a traditional "meet the enemy and he is us" moment, when Low encounters the narrators from the other side of the war. They don't really know what the hell is going on either.
The Narrator is about the dual frustrations of the intellectual in an era of endless conflict—they're smart enough to know what's not going on ("They hate our freedoms!"), but can't get anybody to believe it. There's also no lone intellectual smart enough to know what actually is going on, despite the tendency to speak definitively on historical subjects. Quick, why did the Soviet Union fall? Really? Is that all? Is that the only reason? The only five, the only ten? And anyway, Low isn't half as smart as he'd like to be, or as his troops hoped he would be.
One might get the sense that Cisco is "subverting" fantasy tropes here, but of course these days apparently every fantasist in the world gets to make that claim if they do anything other than photocopy The Lord of the Rings and hand it in as their manuscript. But one might say that Cisco is a subverter along the lines of China Mieville rather than the my-elves-are-different crowd. So why is Cisco so obscure while Mieville is popular? Editorial pique, I suppose is most of it. The rest is probably a mix of personal charisma, Fortuna, and Cisco not whipping up enough monsters for the fanboys. Sad, that. If only Bruno Schulz had survived his war experience and launched a great fantasy trilogy, then Cisco would be richer than ten Bolivian Nazis! In another world, perhaps the world of The Narrator, this may have already happened.