Last week The Guardian published one of those laments for the death of the novel that seem to be contractually mandatory for writers at a certain stage of their career.  (Or at least a significant option—at page 73 on the Book of Life you find the prompt: “Do you lament the death of the novel?  TURN TO PAGE 44.”)  Anyway, I won’t link the piece because I’m not here to engage with it beyond tipping my hat to recognize that Will Self, the author in question, committed a random act of genius when he referred to a Certain Kind of Fiction as the “kidult boywizardsroman.”

He meant this as dismissive wit, sure, but the phrase crystallized a number of long-suspended thoughts about magic, and especially magic systems—which crystal I’ll try to share with you today.  Be careful, though.  It’s fragile, and tends to crumble.

Magic is an awkward subject for fantasy writers, which might seem strange since it defines the genre, especially by contrast with SF: you have wizard books, and then you have spaceship books.  (Though my personal favorite are the wizard-spaceship books.)  But some authors believe magic is best left as a mysterious and grand force, while others believe magic only works when rigorously systematized.  I’ve heard passionate arguments on both sides.  Without systems you have no dramatic tension!  Systems sap wonder!  That’s why I love boywizardsroman—which might be better rendered as wizardsroman since there’s nothing inherently male about the form.

Bildungsroman means “formation story”—it’s the tale of a person learning the ropes of the society in which she finds herself, and growing to social prominence.  (Or utter failure; Jude the Obscure is a bit of an antibildungsroman, following the accepted form in reverse.)  If we go with Joseph Campbell and accept that the Hero’s Journey monomyth represents an inner voyage toward self-acceptance and initiation into society, then the bildungsroman is the outward mirror of that inner journey.  Levin in Anna K. staggers toward manhood—and inside, he’s chasing the Firebird.  Ulysses isn’t quite a bildungsroman, but it operates on the same theory: let’s assume the Odyssey happens on a mythic dimension inside its real characters.  What is that story?

If monomyth’s the lining and bildungsroman the jacket, then magic, on the inner level, represents no more & no less than the ability to operate effectively in the outer world.

Thinking about magic in this way explains the irresolvable conflict between system and mystery.  It’s nothing more (and nothing less!) than the constant pull-and-tug between phenomena and internal state we feel as we wander through life.

Let’s say you’re unhappy at work.  Do you need a better job, or a better attitude?  Sometimes one, sometimes the other, right?  Depending on circumstances.  The answer to your malaise might be “manipulate social networks and economic systems to find a new job.”  Or you might realize the problem’s inside you.  Maybe you’re unhealthy.  Maybe you’re drinking too much, or not sleeping enough.  Maybe you need therapy, or a vacation, or a night playing board games or jamming on the porch with friends.  Maybe you need to do a lot of bucket work before you have any idea what’s wrong.

Some problems we face trying to survive in the world are systematic and logical.  On the inner Hero’s Journey level, we represent those issues (and our struggles with them) as attempts to master a magical rule-set.  Other problems can’t be simplified to a ruleset (if I just do x I’ll succeed professionally / get the boyorgirl / stop crying myself to sleep); they’re the domain of mystery magic.  We rarely understand the entire system at work for these problems; at best we have a few observations.  (Iron repels fairies.  Vampires can’t cross running water.  An exact one-in-a-million chance is a sure thing.  To fly you only have to fall and miss the ground.)

At this point maybe you think I think the system / mystery question is best answered on a story by story basis.  Is your story about problems of systematic manipulation, or internal logic—is it about plot, or character to introduce a couple more terms into the discussion?  Build your magic accordingly.  But that dichotomy’s as false as any.

Because plot is character, character is plot, personal is political and vice versa.  External problems always have an internal effect.  If you’re unhappy with your job—why did you take this job, or why haven’t you changed it yet?  If you have unresolved anxiety issues, how are those affecting your life, and the people around you?  Some very rare and special books can do plot without character, or character without plot, and not suck.  Most can’t.

Which is why I think the best book-magic combines system and mystery.  Ursula K LeGuin’s Earthsea stories, for example, have sharp rules for magic.  You need a little talent to use it; that possessed, you need to learn the True Speech and the secret names of things.  You can’t lie in the True Speech.  If someone learns your true name they have power over you, and can prevent you from transforming into things.  Etc. etc. etc.  Except… there are dark powers and strange gods in the Archipelago that operate without words, mages’ minds throw shadows, dragons can lie even in the Old Tongue.  There’s a dry land beyond the wall of death, and what that’s about nobody knows.  (At first.)  We have rules enough for the external problems, and mystery enough for the internal.  And, true to form, the problems LeGuin’s characters must resolve are internal and external at once—issues of identity and initiation twinned with dark dead gods in an underground labyrinth.

Pat Rothfuss, in the Kingkiller Chronicles, even creates (at least) two interlocking magical systems—one of which has clear rules for plot mechanics, and one of which follows the True Speech pattern, showing characters coming to terms with their own identities and expressions in the world.  His correspondence magic is great for Solving Plot Problems, but it offers no answers to internal questions; Naming, on the other hand, cuts to the heart of the series—the question “Who is Kvothe?”, which I suspect Chronicler or Bast will have to answer by Day 3’s end.  Rothfuss also plays with epistemology and mystery in the Adem sections, and especially in the (hilarious) discussion about Man-Mothers, in which Kvothe tries and fails to prove to a partner that men are involved in the conception of children.

It’s easy to forget how much mystery Robert Jordan bakes into the magic of the Wheel of Time, too.  The One Power’s described quite exactly, but its use and summoning remains messy and mysterious—especially given how much time characters spend overcoming internal blocks and confronting grief and guilt in a mystical context.

Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire and Hemlock, which might at first glance seem firmly on the “mystery” side of the equation, actually contains a surprising amount of systematic detail.  Sure, we never get a lecture on the underlying mechanics of faerie, but by story’s end we’re comfortable enough with its rules to understand how Polly chases Tom into the fairy queen’s court, and even the story-legalese Polly exploits to save them both.

I could keep going, and there’s a lot more to add about the connections between the bildungsroman and magical instruction, but I’m hovering at the (mystically determined) limits of blog post length here.  So: magic is life!  Long may the wizardsroman flourish!

Also, runes are cool.