The Postmodern Prince: George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Magne Mirare
The other day, I stumbled across a video essay about George R.R. Martin’s inability to finish A Song of Ice and Fire. It is one of those thematic/philosophical video essays, and there is stuff therein I wish to comment on. Hence today’s post.
The essay-creator, one Magne Mirare, cites three underlying reasons for Martin’s inability to finish his series:
- Postmodern Deconstruction
- Addiction to Complexity
- Lack of a Mythological Vision
I feel ‘addiction to complexity’ is a perfectly valid critique of Martin at this point, but I have issues with the other theses.
Let us take the ‘postmodern’ accusation first. There is indeed a powerful whiff of the postmodern about the text, with its desire to break down conventional ideas and narratives, twist them around, and critique them. Martin delights in deconstructing modern fantasy’s romantic notions of chivalric knighthood, for instance, by directly calling attention to implicit hypocrisy. Similarly, the fate of Ned and Robb Stark thematically asks questions of the reader: “what does it mean to be good?” and “what does it mean to be a good ruler?”
The video-essay argues that Martin is so eager to deconstruct, there is no real opportunity to erect anything in its place. The problem here is that this assumes there has to be a clear-cut answer to the questions posed. Plenty of fantasy works already contain deconstruction – sometimes of a variety far more cynical than Martin – and yet have no problem with narrative completion. To illustrate:
- Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy from the 1980s is actually an acknowledged influence on Martin’s series. It deconstructs fantasy tropes such as the role of prophecy, undermines presumed royal legitimacy, and gives the scary Lovecraftian Dark Lord a backstory more akin to that of Tolkien’s Feanor than Sauron. The series finishes, but via these deconstructive elements, Williams encourages the reader to think about how they read fantasy.
- Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy (2000s) is far more cynical than Martin. Every little moment of hope is ground beneath the narrative’s heel, after the manner of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. To exist is to play a role dictated by the powerful, and any dream this might ever change is foolish – one is forever held hostage by someone nastier than you. Yet despite this rampant tearing-up of character agency, Abercrombie was able to complete the series.
- Michael Moorcock’s 1960s short-story While the Gods Laugh is literally nothing but postmodern deconstruction. Moorcock’s character goes looking for a legendary book of knowledge… only for the book to have long since crumbled into dust, so the character must work existence out on their own. Sure, it’s a short story, rather than a series of novels, but to my mind, there is one hell of a logic leap when the video-essay suggests a postmodern text cannot have completion.
Even J.R.R. Tolkien serves as an example here. Recall the Northern Theory of Courage, the conception among Germanic warriors that true heroism is fighting on when all seems lost. Tolkien found the Northern Theory of Courage morbidly fascinating, both as an artist and as an academic – but also problematic. He has wise old Gandalf explicitly warn Theoden about the dangers of too much valour and too little prudence. He even goes so far as to write an entire play-script exploring (and, gasp, deconstructing) this very subject:
Tolkien arguably reconstructs the conception – rescuing it from its faults – via the character of Samwise Gamgee, the loyal, selfless subordinate. Well and good… but I would argue that Martin has a similar morbid fascination with chivalry. Sure, he spends much time and space critiquing it, but he is sufficiently romantic to create the character of Brienne of Tarth, one of the most truly virtuous people in the series, and notwithstanding her appearance and gender, someone emblematic of what knighthood in the setting should be.
And when Martin comes to the conclusion that Ruling is Hard, he means it. He is not a cynical Machiavellian – Tywin Lannister might be lifted from the pages of The Prince, but he winds up murdered on the toilet by his own abused son, in an indictment on his terrible parenting. Simply putting The Prince into practice will not, in isolation, give you a happy ending in Martin’s setting – Martin might be fascinated by politics and power, but he also acknowledges that character matters. And all the effective political scheming in the world does not matter when a true existential threat (the Others) comes knocking.
Moreover, I feel the video-essay’s emphasis on postmodernism ignores the strong existentialist streak in Martin. That is, when faced with an apparently meaningless cosmos, the obligation is on ourselves as humans to instill it with that missing meaning. Ygritte’s “All Men Must Die, But First We Live,” is an existentialist call to action, to do something with our lives, and not sulk in despair about a seemingly nihilistic world. Nietzsche would be proud. And to go beyond A Song of Ice and Fire, we encounter one of Martin’s best short stories, The Way of Cross and Dragon, where a heretical sect of nihilists have created a beautiful religious fiction in order to shelter mankind from cruel metaphysical truth – a shelter the story treats as no bad thing. How ever much Martin likes to break down ideas and concepts, he never adopts the mantra Nothing Matters.
Turning now to the accusation of A Song of Ice and Fire lacking mythological vision… I find myself chuckling that Magne Mirare has so utterly misread Martin. A Song of Ice and Fire is not Tolkienian mythopoeia. It is not rooted in mythology, real or imagined. No, Martin’s text revolves around fictional history. It is a medieval-flavoured soap opera, where individual characters compete for power, and in the process express various views as to the role of power and morality.
(Actually, that does tie into Martin’s inability to finish his series. History has neither a clear beginning nor a clear end – but a fictional narrative must. So while Martin is keen on following his stream of invented characters down through the generations, he must eventually stop somewhere. And he must stop in a manner that feels narratively satisfying – hence his difficulty. But Magne Mirare does not raise this point, preferring to contrast Martin with Tolkien. In a manner that misunderstands Tolkien too. But we shall get to that).
To my mind, the best point of comparison with Martin is not an invented mythic vision. Rather, it is Shakespeare’s Hamlet, that great pinnacle of English literature. Hamlet too is a musing on power and morality, and Shakespeare arguably expresses Martin’s own themes in 4000 lines better than Martin himself does in his vast series. Magne Mirare (sort-of) notices this, but argues that Hamlet has hope and morality, in a way that Martin does not. Which is hilarious, given that the main character of Shakespeare’s play is literally immobilised by moral concerns, and that ultimate victory goes to the one who acts (Fortinbras) without getting bogged down in thinking of such matters.
Effective power in the play is divorced from questions of morality (‘Bad people can be good rulers’), and one of the Prince of Denmark’s flaws (like Ned Stark) is that he wants to have his moral cake and eat it. Meanwhile, innocents like Ophelia suffer, the entire setting is endlessly cynical, with implicit royal corruption and hypocrisy… and then everyone dies. Hamlet is thematically tantamount to Martin giving ultimate victory to the Others, because the humans are too immersed in their own foolish infighting to acknowledge the external threat.
(And if you think Hamlet is cynical and devoid of hope… there’s always King Lear, to depress you yet further. These are the great classics of English literature, and Martin is attempting to walk in their footsteps. Shakespeare had no trouble finishing these texts, so I honestly cannot see how A Song of Ice and Fire is thus unfinishable on this supposed basis).
But the cherry on top is that Magne Mirare invokes Tolkien for having a consistent mythological vision. Which is hilarious, given that Tolkien spent sixty years working on his Silmarillion stories, without ever finishing – and had it not been for C.S. Lewis, he probably would not even have finished The Lord of the Rings. Martin might have issues with A Song of Ice and Fire, but Tolkien is not a gentleman I would cite in favour of ‘being able to finish fantasy projects.’ One rather suspects Magne Mirare thinks of the 1977 published Silmarillion as a finished and polished product, rather than a Frankenstein’s Monster stitched together by Christopher Tolkien from decades of manuscripts.
And one can go even deeper into Tolkien. Tolkien did not have a consistent mythological vision across those six decades. In his early years, these stories were what Humphrey Carpenter called the Mythology for England, a mash-up of Norse and Finnish material, as filtered through Lord Dunsany and William Morris. Later, that vision was abandoned in favour of something more stand-alone. Later still, the entire project was hijacked by The Lord of the Rings, a text more Christian in orientation than much of his First Age material. And for the last decade of his life, Tolkien was engrossed in trying to give his invented world an unneeded metaphysical consistency – to the extent of removing the myth from his myth. Against that? Martin’s thirty year journey with Westeros comes across as remarkably consistent. Martin wants to explore the nature and role of power. Tolkien wanted a world for his invented languages to live. One more obviously lends itself to a story than the other.
**
So yeah. Critiquing Martin for his addiction to complexity is perfectly valid. But Magne Mirare deeming A Song of Ice and Fire unfinishable because it is too dominated by postmodern deconstruction? That is a classic case of begging the question – in light of the numerous examples of post-modern fantasy narratives getting completed, and Martin himself not being as cynical as Magne Mirare thinks he is, the video-essay fails to cross the bridge from its premises to its conclusion. Similarly with his accusations of Martin lacking a mythological vision – which not only ignores the underlying purpose of A Song of Ice and Fire, but which also manages to misunderstand both Shakespeare and Tolkien. Oh dear.
A Phuulish Fellow 
Martin-as-nihilist is a weird interpretation I keep seeing crop up. I seriously wonder how many who assert that have actually read ASOIAF properly. There’s a strong theme of yearning for the romantic in GRRM’s work. Martin can be cynical, but it’s a wounded cynicism that wishes for the ideals to be true. Without those ideals, Martin’s work generally suggests, we lose important parts of ourselves. I suspect the much more nihilist ‘nothing matters’ view is a show influenced interpretation, a theme that felt born out of addiction to shock value plot twists and, honestly, not having to bother with the actually thought-out plot ramifications Martin builds his texts around.
I’d agree the complexity is the most obvious reason for Martin’s delay. I do not think GRRM is doing a Rothfuss where it becomes increasingly obvious he’s lost all interest in the project and is probably done marginal work on it. I think Martin is very dedicated to TWOW and ADOS, but bringing this expansive journey of all these plots and people together in a satisfactory manner is damnably difficult now. I also have a personal hunch Martin does not – not at all – want another AFFC/ADWD type book and trying to avoid these structural problems is causing additional difficulty with pacing, structure and timeline.
Tolkien-actually-finished-his-work is another weird interpretation I’ve seen increasingly floated around. I love Tolkien, he’s one of my favourite authors, but he left a lot of incredible yet very unfinished work behind. I do think people assume The Silmarillion as published was a complete work when, as Christopher said, it was largely unfinished and JRRT simply could not manage, at the end, to complete a Silmarillion that was consistent with LOTR: significant rewrites were needed, new characters & their stories were growing out of it, the Second Age grew, and Tolkien was philosophically reimagining much of Middle-Earth in ways that were inconsistent with earlier drafts.
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In my opinion, Tolkien did die on the shore and did come pretty close to finishing the Silmarillion. Most of the material used by Christopher for the published Silmarillion is basically the post-LOTR Annals and Later Quenta, which make up a fairly coherent compendium, despite everything, and which ends with Tuor crossing the Seventh Gate of Gondolin and Húrin saying goodbye to Morwen, as Christopher comments in War of the Jewels.
That Tolkien later wanted to discard that, as he discarded the Quenta Noldorinwa – the only 100% completed Quenta – doesn´t change that.
That is the point. Martin is not even remotely close to finishing ASOIAF – I hope what he said about the 1,200 pages of Winds that he says he already has ready is true -, right now Martin is as if the Silmarillion had ended with the death of Fëanor as soon as he arrived in Beleriand.
That said, for me Martin’s main problem is that he doesn’t know how to decide between low fantasy and high fantasy, as you have hinted. He wants a historical novel like The Accursed Kings, but he also wants something fantastical.
He wants to have his cake and eat it too. That was also the reason behind the failure of the last few seasons of GoT.
So George has to make the transition from ASOIAF to high fantasy once and for all and make magic return to the world through the front door and no one can deny it. Only then can he finish his story.
PS. And yes, for me it is ironic so many people who talk about Narnia as an ultra-explicit Christian allegory – when it really is not so much, except for Last Battle -, without noticing that the Silmarillion – and the Great Tales – is equally explicit as work of christian fiction
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