Okay, I’m the first one to admit when I’m wrong. A few weeks back I was complaining about how dull the opening to one of the Charles de Lint novels was – I believe the word I used was “flabby.” I thought it was taking forever to get going, and I wanted it to begin in the same fast-paced, tense way as his only other novel that I’ve read (so far), Someplace to be Flying. So I gave up about 70 pages in.

Well, I’m eating those words now. Whether it’s just that I have more patience and more attention span to spare, not writing 1500 to 2000 words a day, or if the other book of his I’m reading is better, I don’t know. But I’m quite enjoying his book Memory and Dream. Really good stuff, and from what I understand, the first novel set in Newford, his created city somewhere in the Midwest of America or Canada.

A couple things intrigue me a lot about his books. First, the city itself is great – a place I’d want to live, as it seems to be brimming with artistic types, from painters and writers to poets and dancers, and there’s a Greenwich-Village type of place in their downtown that’s full of art studios, boutiques, art galleries, cafes, and used bookstores. How cool would that be? Especially to me, living in the ‘burbs where we have to drive to get to anything, usually a good 15 minutes or so, a place like Newford is immensely appealing. I want to read all his books set there (see my Amazon wish list for details – June 13th is fast approaching! Heh heh heh!). Hell, it even snows there! He makes me miss the snow! Mostly...

Also, de Lint is not writing to a fantasy audience. He is writing to a literate audience. This is a wise man. One of the big discussions about the New Weird that really interested me was the talk about how SF (mostly) and fantasy (to a much lesser extent) relies upon a set of “protocols” that some writers take for granted. They assume the average SF reader will know about things like FTL travel, the Singularity, the three rules of robots, and many many other descriptive elements that make SF what it is. The problem with that is when writers do not explain such things or make them accessible to all readers – they just assume the savvy SF reader “gets it.” That’s why there are fewer and fewer readers of SF, I think. It’s ghettoizing itself! You have to know the secret Singularity handshake to understand the novels and stories. And so people turn away from that genre, looking for something else that is less murky and inward-focused.

Charles de Lint’s books aren’t like this. He approaches the fantastic in a realistic fashion, but not by explaining every detail of the magic, but instead showing us how his characters react to the magic, giving us their long discussions about how this magic could have come about and whether they should believe in it or not. He’s accessible. He’s putting us in the same mindset as his characters, who aren’t scientists or researchers into the occult, but usually artists or creative types who would be somewhat susceptible to such things, but are still grounded in reality to doubt their eyes and ears when a creature from another world enters ours (as happens in Memory and Dream).

At times I get a bit frustrated because I’ve read a good bit of fantasy and don’t want to see the characters go through this process of accepting the unreal, but that’s what makes his novels and stories so popular – you can understand every step of the way what the characters are going through. Not everyone in the world is going to be an experience reader of speculative fiction – with each novel or story we write, we need to give the reader some sort of map. The level of detail is up to you.

But look at how popular de Lint and Neil Gaiman are. That’s because they don’t require you to know all this fantasy back-history and set of protocols to understand the story (though I’d argue that Gaiman’s American Gods does require a pretty good comprehension of the various gods throughout the world to really enjoy it fully, which I think was a small misstep on his part.

Part of me wonders if this isn’t catering to the Lowest Common Denominator reader, but I don’t think so, in the end. As long as the focus remains on the characters, as de Lint does, I don’t mind sharing their discussions and thought process about the introduction of fantasy into their lives.

Of course, as an imaginative creative type myself, I’d like to think I’d be cool with a goblin showing up on my back porch, but I’d probably freak out just like anyone else, and whack it into pieces like I did the black snake I saw crawling out of one of our hanging ferns last summer as it looked for bird eggs to eat. :)