Escape

I’ve been ruminating on Col Buchanan’s essay on escapism in fantasy, a topic that perennially interests me. I found his ending quotation from J. Double-R Tolkien especially intriguing, as my reading of Tolkien’s “On Fairie-Stories” inspired an opposite sentiment in me.

Or rather, I can’t tell if our sentiments are opposite. I think it’s more like Buchanan and I both went to the same gallery and then wrote home about different exhibits, so to speak.

First, Papa Tolkien shalt speak in his own words, though. From “On Fairie-Stories”:

Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. … We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness. Of all faces those of our familiars are the ones both most difficult to play fantastic tricks with, and most difficult really to see with fresh attention, perceiving their likeness and unlikeness: that they are faces, and yet unique faces. ...

Mooreeffoc is a fantastic word, but it could be seen written up in every town in this land. It is Coffee-room, viewed from the inside through a glass door, as it was seen by Dickens on a dark London day; and it was used by [G.K.] Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle. ...

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used. … But there are also other and more profound “escapisms” that have always appeared in fairy-tale and legend. There are other things more grim and terrible to fly from than the noise, stench, ruthlessness, and extravagance of the internal-combustion engine. There are hunger, thirst, poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice, death. And even when men are not facing hard things such as these, there are ancient limitations from which fairy-stories offer a sort of escape, and old ambitions and desires (touching the very roots of fantasy) to which they offer a kind of satisfaction and consolation.

I have a love-hate relationship with escapism. I get as good a high as the next guy does from losing myself in other worlds, lives, relationships. My particular weakness is historical British mini-series. I may or may not have consumed BBC’s eleven-hour “Brideshead Revisited” three times in rapid succession, and each time I watched the Venetian vacations, the Oxford luncheons, the hunting parties with the same vicarious pleasure.

But, I can’t stand escapism hang-overs. You know, when you stumble into Monday the next morning and wonder where all of the Baroque mansions and cocktail parties went? You wonder why you have to go to work or, in my case, don’t have work. After all, shouldn’t most people be independently wealthy?

And, so, when I read “On Fairie-Stories,” I came away with a decided focus on Recovery. Fantasy would not be its, well, fantastic self without the other worlds, the magic, the exploration. But, I’d like to see a happy marriage of Escapism and Recovery in my own fantasy, at least. I’d love to write fantasy books with spell-binding worlds and characters and plots, but I’d also love to write books that helped readers become clear-eyed and ready to live their own lives better.

Everyone can have their own dreams, right?