Gratuitous Hero Torture

[malsperanza]

I thought it might be useful in the course of this discussion to name some books that I think use Gratuitous Hero Torture and that are not, in my opinion, "genre" fiction--defined, in part, as fiction that uses GHT in formulaic ways.

This is a random list, meant to be illustrative of range, rather than comprehensive in any sense.

Ernie Levy in The Last of the Just (possibly the most serious book I have ever read, though it is also very funny).

Zeno, the persecuted alchemist in The Abyss

Wyatt Gwyon, the forger in Gaddis's The Recognitions

Heathcliff

Jim in Lord Jim

Maybe even Aschenbach in Death in Venice, if it's not too bizarre to call him the hero

Harry Potter

Frodo (possibly)

Pyrrhus in An Arrow's Flight

Lear (not sure about this one: not sure about his hero status)

Hamlet (see discussion below)

Marlowe's Edward II (ditto, courtesy of Conversant)

Shakespeare's Richard II? Hm, not convinced but willing to try it (per Conversant)

And I have to mention one example that isn't available in English, alas, Mr Silvera in a lovely Italian novel called The Lover with No Fixed Abode (L'Amante senza fissa dimora)

Jesus, in the Gospels of the New Testament (possibly genre fiction, depending on how we resolve the question of wish-fulfillment as a marker of genre)

Gilgamesh (exile and angst! exile and angst!)

Most of the Greek canon:

Iliad
Odyssey (maybe)
Oedipus
Antigone (a rare female tortured hero)
Orestes (in fact, the whole Atreides family)

And now a couple of titles that are usually called "genre" fiction, but that are, IMO, very good books:

Philip Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely (where he gets beaten so badly he tries to commit suicide)

Similarly, Ned Beaumont in The Glass Key

Lymond and Nicholas in the two Dorothy Dunnett series

James Cobham in Freedom and Necessity (a lesser book, but a good example of the tortured hero)

And then there is The Fountainhead, a veryverybad book, but no one could deny that it is chock full of GHT


It would be fun to add to this list. I'm prepared, frex, to include both Harry and Draco from the Draco Trilogy . . . depending on how it ends. Because, as we shall see downthread, How It Ends is key.

Other suggestions are invited.

ETA:

From Tipgardner (I haven't read these):

Saladin Chamcha (Satanic Verses)

The narrator of Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Murakami)

Protagonists in:

Money, by Martin Amis
Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
Fall of a Sparrow, by Robert Hellenga
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, by Haruki Murakami (Not sure I agree: he is confused, befuddled, misled, mistreated, but it's hard to say how deep his angst goes... well, maybe. Worth putting on the list anyhow)

Comments

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

RE Hamlet: yes, you're right. *puts Hamlet back on the list* He's my favorite character of all time anyway, so I'll put him on any list you like. ;-)

RE Marlowe's tortured hero and Shakespeare's: If I follow you, Edward is genre but Richard is not because Edward is sympathetic, whereas Richard is deeply problematic? That is, the genre definition in this case depends on the reader's relationship to the hero? The easy bonding of the reader with Edward tosses the hero into a wallowing pool of genre? Catnip to me, with my seduction-of-the-reader obsession, but I'm not sure that's sufficient. Can you elaborate?

In both cases, the reader falls in love with the hero--sooner with Edward, very late in the day with Richard. And the sexual seduction of the reader by Edward does not exist (I think?) in Richard. (Because, I think, Shakespeare wanted Richard's crisis to remain a nuanced political one, while Marlowe was interested in politics in that play only as it shaped Edward's personal dilemma.)

One could propose that the reader falls all the more heavily for Richard, having first despised him. I fold too. (Oh, let us sit upon the ground... wah!!) But I also fold for Edward, bigtime.

The word that jumps out at me here is "sentimentalize." That is a technique of genre, for sure. It's a marker--though again with the possible false syllogisms: genre fiction is often sentimentalizing; but a sentimentalized fiction may still transcend genre, though I bet it doesn't happen often. Quixote, maybe? Or how about Lord Jim?

In any case, I have never seen Richard II and Edward II discussed together like this. Food for much thought, thank you.

Part One

[conversant.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can be rigorous tonight on this (or any topic): I've just had a couple of glasses of wine over dinner and only one cup of filter coffee to balance it out. However, I'll try.

My hypothesis about EII v. RII is, as you've said, that EII is genre-fic in that it exploits the tools of a seductive genre to do something radical, if it worked/works, which is to make the central character not only a selfish, uncaring husband and a careless, impolitic king, but also a blatant and unapologetic sodomite sympathetic in an age that was very uneasy about boy-sex. (This is a complex issue, to be sure, given that Marlowe and his theatrical peers depended on, and to an extent, surely, normalized the eroticism of the transvestite boy players. However, Marlowe's play opens the issue and whomps its audience over the head with a convention that had been cool in large measure because it was so deliberately coy.)

I'm finding it difficult to argue the main point here in a straight line because of the continual need for qualifications (or perhaps it's the wine).

In any case, despite the fact that Marlowe is using the genre to accomplish something important, I don't believe it changes the fact that he *uses* the genre: he plunges into it unapologetically, and he doesn't break the mold because he needs the genre to work according to formula. And if it's played properly (and cast properly) this play can sell the world's worst king as a fellow who would have been content in a forgotten corner if he could only have had his Gaveston beside him (not that this would ever have satisfied Gaveston, mind you).

I disagree that RII becomes genre fic because it uses the sympathetic appeal of GHT at the end to make us feel for Richard. On the contrary, I think that what Shakespeare accomplishes is something much more brilliant than genre fic can: he makes his unlikely protagonist (appear to) grow by borrowing this convention with which his audience was surely familiar in order to convince us that the central character, who has never merited the title, 'hero,' has gained substance through adversity, has had the necessary moment of self-recognition, and has come to understand the events/choices/failures that led him to that point. If we believe he has had this 'anagnorisis,' we not only might see something approaching tragedy in RII's failed reign, but we also see Bolingbroke in a new light. If Richard remains an incompetent, petulant idiot, the play is in danger of making Bolingbroke seem to be a merciless bully. (This is a dicey thing, because at the beginning it is clear we are to see him as having been wronged, but once he deposes Richard, the balance shifts and he could easily play as a tyrant instead of a justified conqueror. To go back to EdII, Bolingbroke could easily come off the way Mortimer, Junior does.) My position is that Shakespeare uses a carefully measured dose of genre-fic's conventions (or perhaps just a careful allusion to the genre?) in order to rebalance the two central characters, while still making it clear that Bolingbroke's coup was necessary and merited. (Oooh, lots of loaded terms there for you to jump on, but I'm going to leave them for you.)

Now for the one term I've continued to use: sentimental. You said, 'The word that jumps out at me here is "sentimentalize." That is a technique of genre, for sure. It's a marker--though again with the possible false syllogisms: genre fiction is often sentimentalizing; but a sentimentalized fiction may still transcend genre. I agree completely and I do not mean to suggest any sort of reductive equation of sentimentality with genre-fic. I'd take your formula one step further in fact: genre fiction is often sentimentalizing; however it does not have exclusive use of the technique. Not only may sentimentalized fiction transcend genre, but [what are we calling the other category?] literary fiction [??] may make use of sentimental coding [in action, character, mise-en-scene, whatever] in carefully managed doses to achieve an end that quite definitely transcends genre.

Part Two (epilogue)

[conversant.livejournal.com]

About Shakespeare's borrowings from Marlowe: they are legion, and every time fanfic writers get too huffed up about 'plagiarism' when it is really just riffing on favorite pop-culture lines in the public domain, I think of Shakespeare's opportunistic mining of Marlowe's plays for their best moments. Shakespeare explicitly re-worked Marlowe several times: most famously, of course, he reworks The Jew of Malta in The Merchant of Venice (and in this pair, I think Marlowe comes out on top), but he also quite openly borrows scenes from Tamburlaine in Henry V (Henry's scene with the governor of Harfleur reworks T's remorseless treatment of I can't now remember which city) and then there's the ruthless treatment of the deposed monarchs in EII and RII.

Shakespeare treated Marlowe's plays as grist for a clubby sort of 'Did you catch all my allusions to him this time?' way. His most obvious riff on Marlowe happens when we here how Shylock reacted to his daughter's elopement with a Christian: Salanio says:

I never heard a passion so confused,
So strange, outrageous, and so variable,
As the dog Jew did utter in the streets:
'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!
Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!
Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter!
A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,
Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter!
And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones,
Stolen by my daughter! Justice! find the girl;
She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats.'
Salarino replies with even more mockery:
Why, all the boys in Venice follow him,
Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats. (2.8.12-24)

This borrows what must have been an infamous representation of the stage Jew in Marlowe's Barabas, who is overjoyed when his (at that moment, still-faithful) daughter steals his treasure back from the Christians and throws it down to him in the street:

Oh my girle,
My gold, my fortune, my felicity;
Strength to my soule, death to mine enemy;
Welcome the first beginner of my blisse:
Oh Abigal, Abigal, that I had thee here too,
Then my desires were fully satisfied,
But I will practice thy enlargement thence:
Oh girle, oh gold, oh beauty, oh my blisse! (2.1.51-59)

need a better proofreader!

[conversant.livejournal.com]

when we here
when we hear

*goes to bed*

Re: Part Two (epilogue)

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I haven't time tonight to absorb this properly, and so must be satisfied for now with just thanking you--it is fascinating, as are your other comments, upthread. Much to think about...