{"id":425,"date":"2009-09-06T08:48:30","date_gmt":"2009-09-05T23:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/06\/lev-grossmans-the-magicians\/"},"modified":"2009-09-06T08:48:30","modified_gmt":"2009-09-05T23:48:30","slug":"lev-grossmans-the-magicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/06\/lev-grossmans-the-magicians\/","title":{"rendered":"Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\n\nVisit Brakebills College for
\nMagic<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\nLast week, I finished Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians”<\/a>. I have a few things to
\nconfess. Well, more than a few, but we will limit things to only relevant
\nconfessions for this post. First, I’ve never read any Harry Potter<\/a> books (wait,
\nwhat kind of page is that Amazon? I appreciate the link to Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter<\/a> but that is a strange page you got there. I should
\ndig up the link to the series page I guess. Maybe later.) I haven’t read any
\nHarry Potter books because they sound like bad Young Adult fiction to me. I
\nlike good Young Adult fiction (see, for example, Garth Nix’s Shade’s Children<\/a>,
\nor for that matter, anything by Garth Nix<\/a>. I am also interested in
\nZoe’s
\nTale<\/a>
\nbut haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.)\n<\/p>\n

\nAnyway, the point is that Harry Potter looks like bad young adult fiction to me.
\nI have watched one or two of the movies, but never with my undivided attention
\n(I’ll divide my attention on just about any<\/a> crappy<\/a> thing<\/a>, wait two of those are
\nactually pretty good…) and definitely not with any sort of anticipation.
\nWell, Cho Chang<\/a> was cute.\n<\/p>\n

\nSo, I have a bias against Harry Potter. I also have a love-hate (hate-hate?)
\nrelationship with alternate-world fiction<\/a> but lately I have been finding
\nexamples where I actually enjoy it. (Also, see Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber<\/a>
\nfor an exemplar of the genre.)\n<\/p>\n

\nA few weeks ago, I noticed the book “The Magicians”, and picked it up. I never
\ngot around to reading it until it showed up on one of my blog feeds. I can’t
\nremember now which one it was, but the tagline was “What if Hogwart’s Academy
\nwas real, and real people went there?”\n<\/p>\n

\nNow this is interesting. What if you put real people into unreal situations? I
\nam somewhat fascinated with this topic; I kind of feel like I have made my life
\ninto a study of this topic. I wake up every morning thinking “I can’t believe I
\nlive in Japan” – which is when you get down to it, an unreal situation for a
\nregular joe from New Jersey. Not even a regular joe, but a somewhat
\nunder-achieving nerd. So I am interested in this topic. Even more, this is one
\nof those good examples of science fiction \/ fantasy where the setting, while
\nunreal, is itself not the main point. The main point of the novel is about the
\ncharacters: how will these people react, and what will they do?\n<\/p>\n

\nThe central question of “What is the point of it all?” comes into full focus
\nwhen you have characters that are, in their universe, masters of great power,
\nand who can conceivably do whatever they wish. What then is left but a
\nphilosophical discussion about the point of life, the universe, and everything<\/a>?\n<\/p>\n

\nAnyway, I really enjoyed this book. I would love to see a follow-up, because
\nthe characters were interesting, and the universe was developed enough that now
\nI think it would be interesting to see further adventures in it.\n<\/p>\n

\nOther points of interest: Lev Grossman is a literary critic at the New York
\ntimes. Shouldn’t he be qualified to write a good book? I think he did. Also,
\nthe Amazon book page has an interview with him. Cool! I didn’t know they did
\nthat. I didn’t know that Amazon.com’s books editors had a blog on books either<\/a>,
\nbut now I do and I will follow it. (What’s that? An interview with China Mieville<\/a>? You had me at word one.)\n<\/p>\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visit Brakebills College for Magic Last week, I finished Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians”. I have a few things to confess. Well, more than a few, but we will limit things to only relevant confessions for this post. First, I’ve never read any Harry Potter books (wait, what kind of page is that Amazon? I appreciate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}