Lud in the Mist is lauded as one of the scant pre-Tolkien fantasy novels of quality and literary merit. I think that's accurate. It's mature not in the sense of topic or tone, but with respect to prose and the characters' stage in life.
The novel is set in Lud, a town that has within the past few generations thrown off the yoke of aristocracy. Now ruled by town council and mayor Nathaniel Chanticleer from the upstart burgher class, the town is beset by a plague of fairy-fruit, a magical intoxicant smuggled in by those loyal to the old guard. Even though this magical fruit threatens to upend the new order, the laws and charter of the town are themselves likened to a sort of magic, and Chanticleer sets out to personally solve the matter. But, as Mirlees puts it, "legal rights can be but weaklings - puny little child princes, cowed by their bastard uncles, Precedent and Seniority."
I enjoyed this book but as with some other fantasy novels, I have a hard time articulating why. It's not a difficult or particularly complex, but I feel my usual attempts at exegesis and delight in pointing out symbols might rob it of its charm. I'll try to let some of my favorite passages speak for themselves.
Please don't hold back at attempts to explain why you enjoyed the book! The quotes are great, but I greatly appreciate the personal perspective.
Fantasy is a personal blindspot for me, and I still have some trouble seeing its appeal, even though I––like everyone else––enjoy obvious works like those of Tolkien or Howard. I'd like to understand this better. For one, fantasy fans do really love fantasy almost to the exclusion of anything else, and a hope is that somebody here, where the median book is more in my wheelhouse, would help me in my ignorance across this block. There's no obligation on your part, of course, but that's where I'm coming from, and why I'd be very receptive to what you'd have to say here.
I’m not one of those who exclusively reads fantasy but I really enjoyed the Game of Thrones novels. For me the appeal is that it restores the magic of life in the sense that fantastical things can exist.
Sometimes when I look at the moon when it’s particularly large, or a rising sun when it is unusually bright I feel if I had not been spoiled by science class when I was a teenager then I would assume this thing amazing thing is some sort of magnificent god.
Like to a medieval person god and the devil was everywhere. If you were lucky enough to get a good harvest then it was the grace of god and if you fell to some temptation then it was the devil at work. I think it’s hard for a modern person to comprehend this. The idea that the devil was literally stalking you, god was above you and both were in battle for your soul. To them it wasn’t metaphorical.
And there were still parts of the world that were mysterious and unexplored. I can’t imagine an Englishman meeting a Native American 500 years ago. My brain can’t comprehend it. It’s the closest equivalent of meeting aliens to me. Just a totally independent and foreign people who look and behave entirely different to you.
I love this stuff anyway. I’ve never seen a ghost but I really want to have a ghost experience for the same reason that it would allow me to believe that something weird can happen.
George Eliot touches on it in Middlemarch but properly puts it into words in her horror sci-fi novel The lifted veil. Knowing/seeing everything to what end? Lydgate and Casaubon in Middlemarch both trying to discover some ultimate truth to life in history and in medicine- both ultimately fail because life is ultimately unknowable. And Latimer in The Lifted Veil does discover real truth through telepathy and prescience and is utterly horrified and his life is rendered meaningless because there is nothing more for him to know/desire.
I just think it’s fun to put yourself in a place where things are still cool…
Beautiful, that was really awesome. Thank you for sharing!
Fantasy fans really do tend to love fantasy to the exclusion of everything else, with the possible inclusion of science fiction, and a lot wrongly see themselves as intellectual for it, my younger self included.
In the absence of literary devices, science fiction’s poignancy and literary merit can at least bolstered through conceptual means, showing the human condition changed through a feasible technological change. Fantasy can do the same thing but through magic. However, it’s a powerful tool easily used too bluntly, and when used with too much force it can break the work. With a lot of fantasy this devolves into focusing on the magic or the “secondary world” itself.
I suppose for fantasy to be literary the magical elements in fantasy (the secondary world, the means of character power and agency, or plots’ antagonism) need to effectively support or enframe something literary. The more fantastical elements an author adds, the more they need to serve that purpose.
If an author is going to add a fantastical element that element needs to justify its existence. Why use something fantastical rather than a realistic one? I think elements of narrative (prose, setting, symbolism, character psychology, theme) should mesh together and all connect on some artful way to be literature.
With fantasy the bar to literature is higher because it’s harder to stick the landing. As an author it’s harder to create and communicate all those connections in a manner the reader will take note because many of the elements are being introduced by the author de novo. As a reader they’re harder to see, and if a reader notices it, it’s more work to explain to a third party.
I think with my more lengthy reviews, I tend to focus a lot on symbolism that has a mythical, religious, or historical basis. It’s something I naturally glom onto when reading personally aesthetically, so I find it easy to point out in reviews, especially since it exists outside the text. Sometimes fantasy, the symbolism can have an internal logic that’s set up diegetically. (I guess that can happen in more realistic fiction as well, but with that there’s more real and familiar elements for the reader to use as a foothold)
With regards to Lud in the Mist, the fantastical elements are quite muted. There is the fairy fruit, the setting, and remnants of an arcane ruler. All, I think, help lend themselves to Chanticleer’s characterization and psychological growth through the novel. While good on their own, the prose and imagery about the magical setting also have a symbolic accord with the characters’ milieu and their ties to a magical past, a mundane burgher, adult present, and his children’s fey escapism.
This isn’t one of my favorite novels, but I did enjoy it, and it’s a fantasy that I think clears the bar to literature with sufficient finesse.
Thanks for the elaboration! Trying to draw that line between "fantasy" and "literary," and being precise about it, is a very interesting question or meta-question. What kind of story is best told through the former than the latter? Seeing how symbolism is used in both is an excellent focusing idea as well. Lud-in-the-Mist definitely seems like something right on that border, and making it sharp brings up a lot of great points.
By the way, I don't think it's wrong to think oneself as a little more intellectual for reading fantasy or sci-fi. Doubly so if said reader is venturing beyond the "entry-level." There's plenty of pulpy stuff, like any aimed at a mass market, but it's more niche than, say, the kind of bestseller that typically gets optioned for a movie, and requires a certain sensibility and background. I think it's a great thing, and am happy to see things like GoT become cultural phenomena instead of your standard fare. Magical realism is one thing, but to have a separate coherent system of magic is another, and a lot more work. Borges has fantastical elements, but he didn't create anything like Middle-Earth. Is it precisely this kind of extra baggage that becomes unwieldy to use without tripping over yourself? Maybe having these kinds of perspectives can help me orient myself better as I step further into fantasy as a whole. Great food for thought!