Adam Roberts, author of the acclaimed Yellow Blue Tibia, has blogged on Wolfsangel and deemed it ’sniffs of a classic’, which is terrific.
Adam has a long review here.
In it he raises issues of pitch in language – how you make your Vikings speak and how they see things. My response wouldn’t fit on his comments page so I post it in its entirety here:
Adam
First, thanks for a terrific review. It means an awful lot, as I’m sure you know, when someone likes your work and even more when it’s a fellow author.
I’m particularly pleased you liked the magical sections as it was a risk to stick them in the middle of an adventure story and I was nervous about how they would be received.
A couple of notes on the text.
What you have is an uncorrected proof and I will get rid of ‘evolution’ in the final version. It crept under my radar. I’ll also have a scan for similar inconsistencies.
That said, if you limited yourself only to words derived from, or understandable in, Old Norse you’d have a very different sort of book. No Norman influence at all on the language. There have been experiments in this sort of writing and, while they are interesting, they would put a block between the reader and the story, I feel.
You’re right, though, it’s a balancing act.
Part of me says ‘I’m a 21st century novelist, I have 21st century readers. It’s false to pretend I’m narrating a story from only the 9th century point of view. If I want to use a metaphor involving a jet engine, I will.’
But again, that puts a block between the story and the reader. It damages the ’small f’ fantasy of the novel, that you’re in the 9th century.
The pitch of the dialogue is another call. You can’t do the Las Vegas Excalibur version of medieval English and, tempting as it may be, you can’t make the berserkers sound like modern gangstas – even though their language would likely be very similar in theme and content. (The similarities between Viking Flyting and Rap battles are marked). I know someone has done this in a short story but for a novel of the sort I’m writing the use of ‘whassup?’ and ‘init’ would come over as gimmicky and get in the way.
In the end I decided to go nearer to the modern way of speaking, on the grounds that this is a translation for a modern audience, not a literal transcription of the Norse in which these people would have been speaking. That’s why we have ‘what appears to be the problem?’ rather than ‘what ails thee?’
On love. Again, I think that, to a large extent you’re right. I pondered this for some time. There is evidence from the sagas of love poetry being written – see here . Largely, though, they are from 12th or 13th century commentators looking back on the earlier period. That said, the seeds of what we now call love must have been around at that time and there are some Viking love poems from the 10th century.
One of the things that I tried to show through the character of Vali was that,while there is a prevailing culture, there are currents that run against it, echoes of the world to come. For instance, our modern culture is founded on the acquisition of money, yet some people reject that entirely. Some people embrace it wholeheartedly and most of us, though our world is defined by it, have an attitude that’s ambivalent.
Most interestingly, the Viking saying that ‘it doesn’t do to love a woman too much’ indicates that some people must have done just that.
Again, my approach to the romantic aspect of the story was a balancing act. I spent a lot of time agonising with Theodore Zeldin’s brilliant An Intimate History of Humanity on this one. In the end I thought that – though there is some small historical justification for romantic love in this period – I was worrying about it too much. I decided ‘it’s a fantasy. If I can have a werewolf and a witch, I can have a lover.’ There are at least two similar stretchings of veracity – one historical - but I’m not going to point them out! On the whole I’ve really tried to be absolutely true to the reality of Viking life. However, if it’s a question of veracity vs story, story wins for me every time. Unless it’s work by other people. I’m the man who cried ‘a German Shepherd! Ridiculous! The breed didn’t come about until the late 19th century’ at the start of Gladiator.
There are no Nazi werewolves on the horizon. The next novel is set about 100 years later than Wolfsangel and is still what you might call early medieval. The story will, if the series of books is successful, go forward to WWII.
However, the Nazis don’t feature in it – other than those who might be dropping bombs. That novel is written and it’s set in the Blitz. Nazis enter the story only at 40,000 feet.
Thanks again for this wonderful review and for flagging up a few things that I will change if I have the chance.
Mark (MD Lachlan)
Mark,
Came across here via Adam Roberts’s Punkadiddle reviews, and his notice of your book has already got me looking forward to next May: I shall definitely be ordering…[“Crowd-pleaser” plus “genuinely estranging, eerie, evocative” plus a magic bought “with bitter suffering and endurance and as cold, parching, or starveling as it is powerful” equals “yes, please!” as far as I’m concerned!
]
Both your and Adam’s comments on the balancing act required when it comes to description and (particularly) dialogue, in this sort of fiction are fascinating. (I’m going to risk coming across here as a buffoon (me) trying to tell a pro (you) about stuff you’re obviously well aware of [as you well know, Professor!], but I do find this question of how you tell a historical story with fantastical elements without breaking the narrative spell very interesting, so I shall recklessly charge on nevertheless…)
One approach, which you hint at with the comment:
In the end I decided to go nearer to the modern way of speaking, on the grounds that this is a translation for a modern audience, not a literal transcription of the Norse…
is to go all the way with this, and present the whole thing with a modern frame; as, indeed, a “translation”. (As, for example, Mary Gentle does in her quite extraordinary Ash. (Her “editor” says in the prologue, “I have therefore translated this text into modern colloquial English, especially the dialogue,” and later, of Ash herself, “I’m afraid she does say ‘F—’ rather a lot.” – [my censoring: not sure what ‘certificate’ you want here – MW]))
Of course, this only really works properly if the frame itself (as here) is a vital part of the tale. If not, then, without obviously (until May!) having read this, your solution of eschewing both “whassup” and “what ails thee?” seems exactly the right way forward. (The alternative is something like Lin Carter’s Jandhar of Callisto books [I’ve always wanted to mention them!], where the conscious Burroughsian frames, whatever fond echoes of ERB they (deliberately) invoke, still, nevertheless, end up just as comprehensively breaking the spell as either of the straight up “whassup”/”ails thee” alternatives…)
Finally, you’ve convinced me about the love story:
Most interestingly, the Viking saying that ‘it doesn’t do to love a woman too much’ indicates that some people must have done just that.
That is interesting, and I want to find out more…
Best,
Mark_W
This sort of post always makes me wish I was more meticulous in recording where I get ideas from.
The ‘it does not do to love a woman too much’ is definitely a quote; I remember writing it down. However, where it comes from I have no idea. I think it might be Theodore Zeldin, as that’s where a lot of my information on the evolution of love was drawn from.
There is a Viking short story somewhere where the Vikings speak in a completely modern way. There’s nothing wrong with this and it’s an interesting experiment that did appeal to me when I came to write Wolfsangel. Also, like I said, if I’m an omniscient narrator, what’s wrong with me using modern ways of description or metaphors. Nothing, of course, apart from the fact it tends to jolt the reader, so I don’t do it.
I think, for the sort of novel I’m writing – more concerned with story and atmosphere than with literary experimentation – then it’s necessary to strike a balance. You could call it a fudge if you were being unkind.
I did toy with the idea of doing a Heart of Darkness (or Jakers, if you want to be less pretentious) thing. That is, framing the story, having it explicitly told by a modern narrator who is himself a character. As this series goes forward in time to the present day, that would have been fitting.
In the end I decided I just wanted to get on with the story. The trouble with drawing attention to technique – which ‘init’ and ‘boo yaka–ing Vikings would certainly do, is that – as EM Forster noted – it turns down the emotional temperature of the story. Such a novel, he notes, can only be interesting. That is, it won’t engage as more straightforward texts do.
I think he’s right up to a point. There are some novels where this sort of thing doesn’t reduce the emotional temperature – Clockwork Orange springs to mind. For most writers, who lack Burgess’s conspicuous genius, that road is a perilous one.
Swearing’s another one. There are a couple of swear words in Wolfsangel but that’s all. The reason for this is that there’s no evidence the Vikings did swear, or at least recognise it as a distinct and taboo form of language. Therefore to put in swear words might be the wrong sort of emphasis for translation. That said, I can’t imagine that they didn’t have some form of profanity. However, I still left the swearing out. Unless it comes particularly naturally to the characters, swearing can make it look like you’ve made a self-conscious attempt to be gritty.
Pretty much like in real life, I feel.
My comedy characters in my non-fantasy novels swear all the time. That’s because, as modern English people, the rhythm of their language seems wrong without it. It did occur to me to have one character – in a modern novel – who only ever said fuck, in various tones to indicate surprise, warmth, horror, anticipation etc. Maybe I’ll do it one day.
I’ll have to give Ash a go, when I get some considerable period of free time. 1120 pages! That’s some slab. It looks brilliant, from the Amazon blurb, though.
[...] Adam Roberts’s Lord of the Rings re-read; also, his review of the forthcoming Wolfsangel by MD Lachlan; some more discussion about the language of fantasy, with response by Lachlan here [...]
Mark,
I remember writing it down. However, where it comes from I have no idea.
I’m like this too, in my nobody-ish way. I habitually write things I read that I like down, though often incompletely or carelessly: once, I posted a review on the interwebs where I (I thought) attributed a quote to the person I thought I’d got it from, only for the man himself to pop up in the comments saying, essentially, “Are you sure?” A frantic few days re-researching revealed that I had indeed got it horribly wrong. This is irrelevant, though possibly interesting – I still tend to think, sat here on my own, that no-one else is reading (even though I know perfectly well that this is not the case, and more particularly, that, indeed, it’s entirely possible that the person concerned with whatever-I-write may come across whatever-drivel-it-is-that-I’ve-written.) I don’t know if you’ve come across the Russell T. Davies/Benjamin Cook book “The Writer’s Tale” about the scripting of Doctor Who, [“If you still want to be a writer after reading this, then you probably will be.” – Steven Moffat] but the subtly-titled chapter “Bastards” has some interesting (and, in my case, as someone who is all too prone to have a beer and then think it’s clever it’s dive onto the net, very pause-giving) things to say about this…
I think, for the sort of novel I’m writing – more concerned with story and atmosphere than with literary experimentation – then it’s necessary to strike a balance.
[…]
I did toy with the idea of doing a Heart of Darkness
[…]
In the end I decided I just wanted to get on with the story. The trouble with drawing attention to technique – which ‘init’ and ‘boo yaka–ing Vikings would certainly do, is that – as EM Forster noted – it turns down the emotional temperature of the story. Such a novel, he notes, can only be interesting. That is, it won’t engage as more straightforward texts do.
No, I think you’re absolutely right: the story is the most important thing. I’d not come across that Forster quote, but I think he’s absolutely right about the difference between interesting and engaging; and that you’re absolutely right that it can be a perilous road.
I think Mary Gentle’s Ash gets away with it (you’re very much right that it’s definitely a “slab”: it took me years to start, but I think John Clute was right: “of all the very long novels this reviewer felt merited their length [Clute mentions Crowley’s Aegypt cycle, Moorcock’s Pyat novels and Tappen Wright’s Islandia, amongst others -- MW] Ash is by far the most compact […] the most unilateral, the most intense.”
I think you’re spot on about how and when swearing works too. (And I’d love to read the book where one of the characters only says “Fuck!”
) In Ash, the reason the heroine says “fuck” a lot is because the ‘translator’ feels that the ‘proper’ translation of say, “By Christ’s bones!” would mean the modern reader “feels none of the contemporary shock”…
Anyway, the reason I’ve mentioned Ash a lot here is because I think it’s very much an exception. I think your own method here, of simply (and I use the word “simply” quite wrongly; I’m sure it’s actually quite phenomenally difficult!) telling the story whilst keeping everything at the right “emotional temperature”, without any paraphernalia, is very much the harder thing to bring off: (adopting all sorts of framing devices and literary techniques might make a story more “believable”, but ruin the readers engagement and emotional attachment, and make them simply, [as Forster says] impressed, rather than caught up in the tale and unable to stop reading.) As I didn’t really express very clearly above, most attempts at the “easy” way out end up [to me] coming across like, much as I, in a nostalgic way, love him, Lin Carter. What excites me about what I’ve heard about your latest book, is that it seems, to those who’ve so far read it, that you’ve accomplished what I think is in many (or most) ways a much harder thing than Mary Gentle did. (Though she managed to avoid the traps of ‘just being interesting’ and ‘look at my technique here!’ most brilliantly and readably.)
Is it May yet???!!!!???!
And Merry Christmas!
Mark_W
Arrgh, profreding, ins’t ot?
“someone who is all too prone to have a beer and then think it’s clever it’s dive onto the net…”
should be “think it’s clever to dive…” of course. There are probably dozens of others…
Mark_W
Reminds me of the guy in Annie Hall who’s going on about Marshall McLuhan in the cinema queue when Marshall McLuhan comes from the back of the line and says ‘you know nothing of my work’.
I’ve had too many of these moments to relate.