Posted by Dan Gunter on April 10, 1999 at 00:28:08:
In Reply to: A little gem you may have missed posted by Drusilla on April 07, 1999 at 22:17:09:
Let's begin here: If you're looking for a "Vancean" writer, then there's only one writer for you: Vance. Any other writer who tries to be Vancean is going to fall far short of the mark and be far less than satisfying--and not because Vance is a latter-day Shakespeare, but because the attempt to be like Vance (or the attempt to be like any other writer) is the wrong choice for any truly serious and talented writer to make. Any author really worth reading is not going to be Vancean; he or she will be Dunsanian, Smithian, Cabellian, McAvoyan--in short, himselfian or herselfian. Only the occasional very great writer can absorb and transform another great writer, like Melville absorbing and transforming Shakespeare. (And if you think that comparison inapt, then you haven't looked carefully at Ahab's speeches.)
If you like the qualities that Vance brings to his fiction, then look for other writers who bring some of those same qualities--but, again, if they're really worth reading, they'll be worth reading on their own terms, and not because they're Vancean.
As for Shea: I have to disagree with Drusilla. I started out with "In Yana, the Touch of Undying," which I read in paperback many years ago (and that was many years after I began reading Vance). I agree that Shea brings his personal touch to his writing, but I always saw him as trying to work through (or past) the powerful influence of Vance. (I admit, though, that I haven't read his last work.) It's hard to ignore the fact that Shea began with a Vance pastiche--and, to my mind, a rather tiresome one at that. Indeed, even "Yana" is tiresome; Shea's sense of pacing is weak, and his protagonists are always barely escaping from horrific deaths. "Yana" is vastly better than "A Quest for Simbilis," but that's really not saying much. "Simbilis" has some of the obvious motifs and superficial stylistic elements, but Shea lacks Vance's skill at putting together a fully satisfying narrative--and I suspect that that skill, more than Vance's more obvious stylistic talents, is what makes him such a delightful writer.
As for Vance and the picaresque: I'm not sure what it means to say that an author's theme is (or is not) picaresque. "Picaresque" refers to a narrative technique, not to theme. A novel (or, perhaps more properly, a fictional narrative) may be picaresque, yet be unified by a single overarching theme. Many of Vance's novels are picaresque in the sense that the narrative events do not follow logically one from another, but are instead a series of temporally linked adventures. "Eyes of the Overworld" and "Cugel's Saga" are prime examples of picaresque novels, even in Drusilla's restrictive definition (that is, Cugel is a knavish antihero stumbling through a world replete with horrors; Shea's works differ primarily in that the antiheroes are more knavish and the horrors more "horrible"). "Big Planet," the Tschai series, and the Demon Princes series are also picaresque: very little in the plots requires that certain events occur; those events occur only because they occur--or, from another and vaguely teleological point of view, they occur because they make for a pleasing narrative.
And as for Vance's themes: Well, that's an interesting question for which I don't have time at the moment. His themes are sometimes troubling to me; I still don't know what to do with the apparently conservative, even reactionary, overtones of "The Gray Prince," and I've read it a number of times over the past twenty years. Of course, one of Vance's primary themes is the assertion of the individual against society's stultifying edicts (e.g., "Moon Moth," "Emphyrio"). Others may wish to weigh in on this matter.
: After reading most, allright, many, of the posts below re writers like Jack Vance. Or shall we say... "If you like Vance you may like this." Because I do not find that Vance, Peake, Wolfe have so very much in common except that they are all masterful writers, who, while we ramble on about style - blah de blah de blah, invite us into strange and beautiful countries. Here is another strange country for you R. A. MacAvoy 'Lens of the World', trilogy. Hard to find, worth the search. And, oh, what about Brian Aldiss? (I mean, really, if you are going to bring Robert Heinlien into this. Pah!) Try 'Hellconia', incredible, beautiful, difficult, strange.
: BTW. I so emphatically disagree with prior posts re Michael Shea. Shea is Not Vance nor does he want to be. You have mistaken Shea's tribute to the 'picaresque' style of novel, a old form originating in Medieval Spain, for an emulation of Vance. Both Vance and Shea owe a debt to this form, though Shea's is much more direct. Shea draws on almost all of the picaresque elements, knavish anti-heros, who may occasionally seem 'good' only in contrast to the uttererly villianous behavior of their antagonists, cheerfully and uncritically stumbling through a world replete with horrors. When was this ever a Vance theme? Vance's characters may be picaresque but his theme is not, not ever. Shea uses the first person voice and assumes a comic-heroic style of expression. Vance's protagonists never speak in the first person and Vance's humor is dry,ironic and civilized - as are his worlds. Shea's humor is rambunctious and very very dark, and his worlds are unredeemably chaotic. Nifft the Lean is horror-fantasy, with inventive, rich and strange landscapes. Vance also produces such landscapes. But the similarity really ends right there.