Thoughts on "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie"

Language, tone, and style in fantasy literature

I’ve decided to reread some essays by Ursula K. Le Guin from her nonfiction collection, The Language of the Night. This is a collection of essays on fantasy and science fiction published in 1979 and edited by Susan Wood. Not every essay is a gem, but I’ve been curious lately to dive into some of the theory and thought from this era regarding speculative fiction. I’m also in the process of reading Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy. If there are any other nonfiction books from the mid-20th century about SFF literature, I’d be happy to know their titles.

(Also, perhaps relatedly, I might soon start reading my Christmas present from last year, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. Along with the collected works of Clark Ashton Smith, I’m hoping to journey back through the mists of time to discover some of these older works.)

Language has always fascinated me. This is why I’m most at home in the classroom teaching AP English LANGUAGE and Composition. I love words. I love the history of them, the sound of them, the subtleties of their usage and connotations. I’m really keen on the words we use to tell stories.

A student asked me recently why I like Shakespeare so much (she, on the other hand, loathes him). I said it had a lot to do with the depth of his characters and the multifarious ways actors and directors can interpret his works, but ultimately, it came down to his use of language. Shakespeare’s words are fun to say, fun to play with, fun to perform. The sound and feel of the language as it trips off my tongue is why I love Shakespeare.

I’m really tuned into language when I read. If a word feels “wrong” or lands funny while I’m reading, it can knock me right out of the story or essay.

This is doubly-so in fantasy literature. This is where Le Guin has it exactly right. Elfland should sound different from the normal world; we shouldn’t be able to substitute a few names here and there and have it go from being fantasy to being contemporary fiction. Just adding dragons doesn’t make something fantasy. This is from the “Poughkeepsie” essay, pages 94-95:

“The general assumption is that, if there are dragons or hippogriffs in a book, or if it takes place in a vaguely Keltic or Near Eastern medieval setting, or if magic is done in it, then it’s a fantasy. This is a mistake.

A writer may deploy acres of sagebrush and rimrock without achieving a real Western, if he doesn’t know the West. He may use spaceships and strains of mutant bacteria all he pleases, and never be anywhere near real science fiction… And in the same way, a writer may use all the trappings of fantasy without ever actually imagining anything.

My argument is that this failure, this fakery, is visible instantly in the style.

Many readers, many critics, and most editors speak of style as if it were an ingredient of a book, like sugar in a cake, or something added onto the book, like the frosting on the cake. The style, of course, is the book. If you remove the cake, all you have left is a recipe. If you remove the style, all you have left is a synopsis of the plot.

This is partly true of history; largely true of fiction; and absolutely true of fantasy…

Still, why is style of such fundamental significance in fantasy? Just because the writer gets the tone of a conversation a bit wrong, or describes things vaguely, or uses an anachronistic vocabulary or shoddy syntax, or begins going a bit heavy on the ichor before dinner—does that disqualify his book as fantasy? Just because his style is weak and inappropriate—is that so important?

I think it is, because in fantasy there is nothing but the writer’s vision of the world. There is no borrowed reality of history, or current events, or just plain folks at home in Peyton Place. There is no comfortable matrix of the commonplace to substitute for the imagination, to provide ready-made emotional response, and to disguise flaws and failures of creation. There is only a construct built in a void, with every joint and seam and nail exposed…

This is an awful responsibility to undertake, when all the poor writer wants to do is play dragons, to entertain himself and others for a while. Nobody should be blamed for falling short of it. But all the same, if one undertakes a responsibility one should be aware of it. Elfland is not Poughkeepsie; the voice of the transistor is not heard in that land.”

When I first read this essay, I was 100% in agreement with Le Guin. Fantasy should sound different; it should put us into another realm, out of normal time and space. Whether it’s a pre-history lost to the mists of time (like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth), or an entirely secondary world like Eddison’s Faerie Land in The Worm Ouroborus, it shouldn’t sound like our own time or our own world. Elfland is another country entirely, and so it should have its own language, its own voice. One wrong word, one bit of phrasing that sounds too modern, and the edifice collapses (or, at the very least, risks collapsing).

I had experienced such collapses. I was reading a steampunk romance a few years ago (around the time I’d first read this “Elfland” essay), and there were several turns of phrase spoken by the characters that sounded so wildly contemporary that it jolted me right out of the Victorian setting and ruined the experience entirely. I put the book down and never returned.

Maybe you think I’m being too sensitive, but I can’t help it. If the illusion of the secondary world is broken, for whatever reason (including the language), then I have a hard time suspending disbelief again.

But that was several years ago, and rereading this essay today, I’m not sure I agree as much. I’m not even sure Le Guin would agree as much.

Yes, a wrong word or two can jolt me out of things, but that’s only if the book started in one tone and then switched as it went along. If things begin as archaic, pseudo-Shakespearean, and then suddenly we’re getting some modern slang, yes, that will still be jarring. This is similar to what Brandon Sanderson has called the “tone promise,” and if the writer breaks that promise, it will break our immersion.

But if the story sounds contemporary right from the get-go (even if it’s set in a far-off world or in the distant, alternative past), and the tone stays consistent throughout, then Elfland doesn’t have to sound like Elfland, does it? Too many novels have been written since 1973 when Le Guin wrote this essay for any of us to argue that it’s not high fantasy if the characters don’t sound like they came from a Lord Dunsany book.

I think the deeper point Le Guin gets at in the essay is still relevant, though, and that’s the point about conviction. About believing in the reality of whatever secondary world one is writing about. The “contemporary tone” and the glib style are what writers do when they don’t think readers will grok to the fantasy, when they want to make sure it’s relatable and not too “weird.”

I teach literature to teenagers, so I know how off-putting high falutin’, old-timey language can be for the kids. They think I’m crazy when I say I genuinely like Shakespeare and Beowulf and The Odyssey. They sometimes struggle to connect to these works because the language is too distant from their own experiences of speaking and reading English. And when I was their age, I wasn’t always able to understand these older works either. I had to work at it.

But if I’m writing fantasy today, and I want to reach a wide audience, I simply cannot write something like E.R. Eddison and find a wide audience (if I did, that would be a minor miracle). I’m not sure Eddison found a wide audience even in his own day!

But fantasy was still a bit niche and underground in the early and mid-20th century, and nowadays it’s one of the biggest-selling genres in the world. The fact that most of the characters in a fantasy novel sound recognizable to us contemporary readers is, I think, no coincidence. And the genre has expanded to include more sub-genres and sub-sub-genres that it’s hard to speak of Elfland at all. What is Elfland in our current literary landscape? Is it a foreign realm in which fairies dwell? Or is it the urban fantasy where Fae and human live side-by-side with werewolves and demons in a gritty Pacific Northwest town? Is it Beyond the Fields We Know, over field and fen and through forests untouched? Or is it a cozy coffee shop where imps and ogres drink latte and talk about their relationship problems?

I really love how expansive and multi-faceted fantasy literature has become, but Le Guin’s essay also has me wondering if we’ve somewhat forgotten what fantasy once was. The more our fantasy is just like other contemporary genres — but with dragons! — the more I wonder if we’ve lost any sense of what Elfland could be. If it’s just like our world only with weird creatures, then what IS the point? Why read a cozy fantasy romance instead of just a regular cozy romance?

I don’t know why, but I do know that if a story has dragons in it, I’m WAY more likely to read it than if it doesn’t. If the story has magic, I’m interested. If it doesn’t, I’m a harder sell.

Why that is, I can’t explain, but I also know that I understand Le Guin’s point too, and that sometimes I do wish there were a few more books out today that sounded like the Elfland of old. I also don’t know why I wish it, but I do.

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(Not so many) Blog Posts of Interest

I’ve struggled these past few months to blog regularly, so there aren’t many posts of interest to share with you. I wrote a piece about teaching Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles to high schoolers, and a New Year’s Resolution-y post about blogging more in 2024 (which is embarrassing to read in late February when nary a blog post has been written), but otherwise, nothing.

I have been writing more fiction—short stories and a new novel—so I may start sharing some of that here in the Substack. The fiction will be in addition to my usual fantasy-genre-related essays, not a replacement for them. I’m hoping to get back to a more-regular schedule for the Substack.

I thought when I returned to teaching that I could balance my day job with my writing, but that balance hasn’t quite worked out… yet. I’m hopeful (always hopeful) that I can still make it work. Part of the writer’s journey is to keep going, despite setbacks and health issues and general life-stuff. So that’s what I must do. Keep going.

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That’s it for now. Thank you for reading!

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