From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Objectionable characters...? (was: Covenant/LotR parallels?)
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 19:51:39 GMT

In article <1705@blue.cis.pitt.edu> seawasp@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp) writes:

>	As far as not liking the Gap... I've only read pieces of it,
>but what I've seen leads me to believe that he's created even more
>objectionable characters than the early Covenant, with less redeeming
>features. 

"Objectionable characters?"

"*OBJECTIONABLE* *CHARACTERS*?"

Now, I haven't read the "Gap" books & probably won't, so I may be wrong here.
But --

from the context of your earlier comments in the quoted article, the impression
I get is that you do *not* [specifically] mean "unrealistic" characters or
"characters which make no sense."  Indeed, I get the distinct impression that 
you mean "characters I don't like."

Well, shit.

Widdwe boy doevn't wike being weminded that the wo'ld ivn't a pwetty happy
pwafe, doev he?  And doevn't wike people in bookf who awen't pawagonv of viwtue 
he can "identify" wif fo he can feew bettew about the wo'ld?  Oah bookf wheah
it ivn't eavy to identify cweah "good guyv" and "bad guyv" and know fwom the
beginning vat the "good guyv" wiww go fwough tewwibwe twoubwe but win in the 
end?

[drop sarcasm mode:]

There's no problem with characters that *are* wonderful human beings.  Once in a
while.  I still get a kick from the occasional Kimball Kinnison type.

But as a regular diet, they're pretty fucking boring.

As others have pointed out, the unpleasantness of Thomas Covenant is almost the 
whole point of the original "Unbeliever" series [almost:  there is also an 
interesting set of philosophical points being illustrated which have little or 
nothing to do with Covenant's personality, except in so far as it makes it
harder for him to come to grips with them].  It is a story of redemption -- and
stories of redemption are pretty pointless without someone who needs redeeming.

Yer typical [dull] fantasy novel is about the Good People being threatened by
the evil Outside Force.  And, at a certain level, so is the first Covenant 
trilogy.  But that's the dullest level of the trilogy, which is frankly dull if 
viewed only at that level.  What makes it an important point in the history of 
modern fantasy is that it can profitably be viewed at a level where the primary
conflict is inside Covenant, and the external conflict merely a dramatization of
his own soul.

I'm not, for ghod's sake, suggesting that the first Covenant trilogy is perfect,
or that SRD is the second coming of JRRT.  (The second coming of JRRT was Terry
Brooks, and he'd deteriorated a great deal during the years he'd spent dead.)
Donaldson's obsessive style, in particular, could have used the firm hand of a
good editor, which Lester del Rey, for all his virtues as a marketeer, was not.

I *am* suggesting that people who find unpleasant protagonists "objectionable"
are semi-literate boors who probably masturbate over copies of Stanley Schmidt's
ANALOG. . .


			How deserted lies the city
			once so full of people!
			How like a widow is she
			who was once great among the nations!
			She who was queen among the provinces
			has now become a slave.
				-- Lamentations 1:1

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written