As Halloween fast approaches, there are everywhere horrifying 'decorations' calculated to shock, terrify, and disgust. Of course, not everyone puts out a jack o' lantern with that intent; some would rather emphasize artistic ability on an unusual medium, or celebrate the recent and abundant harvest; others seem to simply enjoy stringing lights all over everything for as many months of the year as they can get away with it.
There seems to be a parallel between decorations and stories. Lately, it seems that the categories have become more pronounced - some would rather show off their artistic ability than create a comprehensive story (or create a jack o' lantern that has nothing to do with harvest time or Halloween). These authors are enamored with words to the point that they cannot tell a coherent story with them. They are lauded for being 'original', 'unique', or 'innovative', but quite often it's hard to tell what their point is, other than obfuscating the quintessential denotation of their work.
In moderation, a love of words is a wonderful thing - Tolkien was a philologist who devoted his life to learning more languages and creating his own, and it made his stories richer, because each word he placed on the page meant precisely what he meant it to. But he knew that words without understanding or significance behind them are empty; Tolkien knew well the beginnings of words, and thus his prose was laden with meaning, even if the readers are not philologists as he himself was.
Then there's those who like to figuratively string lights. Quite often they have enthusiasm, but very little expertise, or they just enjoy creating a spectacle. There is nothing inherently wrong with this - movement in a story is essential, and neat ideas or clever twists often keep a reader engaged and willing to continue through a story. Unusual creatures and strange locales help us to think a little differently about our own, rather pedestrian world. And of course, occasionally such excess is used for satirical effect, or to
show us the absurdities of society's way of doing things, as in Gulliver's Travels.
However, when there is too much extravagance, when restraint is considered outmoded, the whirl of strangeness and constant escalating action can be overwhelming and exhausting (at least for me). When every thing in a story must be re-labeled simply to bring a sense of oddity to the story, it detracts from the story that the author intended to tell.
In some cases, authors seem to write with the sole intent to shock, terrify, and disgust their audience, and claim that this is realism. I feel that writing horror is not an intrinsically bad thing; it can be cathartic. But calling horror realistic is an unsustainable idea, for after every pain there is a potential for healing, and before everything went wrong, it had to be right.
This is not shown in, for example, George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. In his world, evil will always prevail, unfailingly, because it is stronger than good and right. Any good is quickly quashed; any kindness remains unrewarded. Evil runs like wildfire across the landscape, because those who are good in a small way are too cowardly to stand against its wrath, and those who are both strong and good are inevitably slain for shock value or to enhance the bleakness of his unhappy landscape.
There are some stories that go against this ethic; their darkness only shows more clearly the unexpected glimpses of light. One such story is the Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix. True, it is essentially a story about necromancy and undead or undying creatures, where magic can be all too easily tainted by corruption and people die with alarming frequency (or travel to Death for arcane purposes) - but in the midst of this rather dark and potentially unhappy tale is a sense that good might after all win. And against overwhelming odds, because of many small kindnesses and acts of mercy and courage, some of which come at great cost, light, order, and goodness have their chance to prevail in the end.
Some stories are celebrations of abundance and a song of triumph over adversity, and these, I find, are best of all. Without forgetting that there is a valley in which the shadow of death resides, these tales celebrate the brightness that makes those shadows flee. These stories remind us that, though evil and perversion and hate may sometimes overwhelm us, if we continue on, those things will pass away. For what is winter but a short space of rest before spring? What is darkness but a temporary absence of light? And what is sorrow but a remembrance of joy, and a reminder of good things to come?
