How to Be a Magician

“Magic was wild feelings, the kind that escaped out of you and into the world and changed things. There was a lot of skill to it, and a lot of learning, and a lot of work, but that was where the power began: the power to enchant the world.” —Lev Grossman, The Magician’s Land

After watching the Syfy series The Magicians, I started reading the novels from which they were adapted and just finished the last of the three, The Magician’s Land. In previous posts I discussed The Magicians as an example of the Dark Academia genre, but it’s also a little bit science fiction and a little bit urban fantasy. The TV series diverged in many ways from the books but is true to it in spirit. 

It was ambitious of Syfy to undertake an adaptation of this multiverse-spanning work, but they pulled it off, actually adding complexity to an already complex narrative. The author supplies transitions that help you, the reader, keep track of where you are in space/time with regard to the plot, but the TV series sometimes meanders without ceremony from one space/time labyrinth into another. I kind of liked that about it, the way it could jump abruptly from one world to the next by way of very shifty portals and occasionally leave you wondering where exactly you were. It was very existential, though it sometimes had me wondering if I’d missed something I was supposed to know about the transition. Well, haven’t we all been landed at one time or another in the middle of a world that looked like the one we’re used to but very palpably wasn’t the same thing at all? Of course we have. This series gets you to feeling that that’s just the type of thing a reasonably intelligent magician has to get used to.

In the novels, Mr. Grossman gives a more explanatory diagram of how various segments of the multiverse are enmeshed, particularly in the episode of the prank in which Plum discovers interconnected worlds behind the walls at Brakebills. In the TV series, it’s often unclear, especially later on, if the characters are in Brakebills (where they appear to be) or somewhere else, some anteroom slightly removed from current reality. In my mind, Brakebills serves as baseline reality, which is actually a joke, since Brakebills is itself separated—by a thin membrane only, but still, separated—from the actual modern world of the northeastern United States in New York State. The Hudson River is visible from the campus, but no one on or near the river would be able to see Brakebills; invisible wards shield it from the eyes of non-magicians.

Some of the characters in the TV series are exactly as Mr. Grossman wrote them, brought to life by a talented cast who seemingly stepped straight out of the pages. Some of the characters have been changed somewhat, or bear different names or roles than they do in the books. One character, Penny, bears only a modest resemblance to Penny in the novel, being much more compelling and dynamic in the series (and actually one of my favorites); I mourned his fate in the series and never really got over his separation from Kady. Penny eventually becomes (in both the books and the series) a Librarian-Magician, and although librarians are not as benign in The Magicians as many people think them to be in real life (having a rather complex relationship with magic that sometimes places them in opposition to magicians), Penny manages both roles, though more satisfactorily in the TV series, I thought, where he was quite a bit more manly.

In previous posts I talked about the idea of magic as psychological agency, and The Magicians is possibly the purest example of this idea that I’ve yet seen. This idea first came to me after I watched a filmed production of The Tempest some years ago, and to my delight, that’s the way Quentin Coldwater, The Magicians’ central character, also sees it: he thinks of the world he wants to create using magic as a kind of Prospero’s island, where he can arrange things to be safe and peaceful. If you ask the question, “What exactly is magic?” I would say, as I think The Magicians does, that it’s a lot like creativity, and not only the kind that spins fantasy worlds and creates symphonies and paintings. It’s also the kind you use in homespun ways when putting together a home or cooking a meal. It’s you putting your stamp on the world, taking what it has to offer and making something out of it that wasn’t there before.

Most, if not all, of the characters in The Magicians are broken in some way or another, and learning magic constitutes a way for them to heal themselves while they are trying to heal the world. They often make things worse, at least for a time, since magic is a messy business limited not only by the magician’s skill but by the material he/she has to work with and the fact that magic has a mind of its own. If you want to get Jungian about it (you may not, but here goes anyway), it’s like the conscious mind, the ego, working with the unconscious, the invisible place of power from whence spring all manner of things, both good and bad. Ever wondered why that spell you cast created a prison world instead of the paradise you wanted? Well, what about that leviathan swimming around down there in your unconscious that shaped your intent in ways you weren’t aware of?

Of course, even going off course with magic can be beneficial in the long run, as Quentin and the others discover. The cliche about the journey meaning more than the destination turns out to be true when you’re jumping worlds as well. You keep trying things out and learning until something sticks, and you suddenly realize you’re home. In the world of The Magicians, it’s only those with an aptitude who ever even learn that magic exists, but I’m not sure Mr. Grossman and I are in disagreement over this. A lot of ordinary people in our world never truly learn what they’re capable of, either.

Wordplay Goes to the Alamo

I’m back home after several days of pop culture immersion at the PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio. I hadn’t traveled anywhere since well before the pandemic, so this was a little bit of flexing my writing muscle, a little bit of pursuing various interests, and a little bit of finding my traveling legs once again. I loaded up with hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, and face masks but discovered—to my surprise—that I seemed to be one of very few people bothering with extra precautions. I thought more people would use masks on the plane, to be honest, but I saw only one or two other people wearing one.

I had decided in advance that I preferred to divide my time between attending sessions and exploring San Antonio, a new city for me and one I was looking forward to seeing. The last time I attended PCA/ACA, I focused on fitting in as many sessions as I could (to get my money’s worth, I guess) but found that strategy to be pretty exhausting. It may be that when participants are representing an academic specialty, they simply go to the sessions related to their field, but my field is probably represented by at least half of all the topics offered, so I consider all of them before choosing. Sometimes I’ll attend a wild card session just to get out of my comfort zone, so the scheduling alone requires a lot of thought. The end result of all this was that attending fewer sessions this time made for a more enjoyable experience.

Unlike my last PCA/ACA experience (in Chicago), this event seemed friendlier and more relaxed. I don’t know whether to put this down to the conference itself being quite a bit smaller this time, to other people besides myself being overjoyed to get to travel again after several years of strictures, or to the location itself. I have always found Chicago to be somewhat chilly (literally and figuratively), though I know some people love it. I found that San Antonio both was and wasn’t what I expected before I arrived, and that I had to feel my way around a bit more thoughtfully than usual. My initial impression on arriving downtown was actually one of surprise that I felt such a sense of disorientation and a little bit of dismay. I wasn’t expecting San Antonio to be bland but the fact that it’s such a popular city for conferences and tourists hadn’t prepared me for an edginess I thought I perceived in my surroundings.

At the hotel, I asked if the surrounding area was safe at night and was told very definitely that it was. Because I was presenting on the first day, I spent my first night and most of the following day focused on getting ready and never really ventured outside the hotel again until after my presentation. I had a little bit of trepidation (that never fully dissipated) but found that, as is sometimes the case, things overall did look brighter with the sun shining and the wind in my sails as I went for a celebratory walk and discovered the Riverwalk, the Alamo, and other sights within walking distance. 

Personally, I found the physical environment to be an unusual mix of the graceful and historic along with the raucous and rough and thought it surprising that none of the guides I’d consulted ahead of time mentioned this dichotomy. In all my travels, I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced a place quite like San Antonio. My conclusions are based on the scant observations of a few days mostly spent downtown and don’t necessarily encompass the entire city, but I think at least a couple of factors account for the complex experience I had: there is a strong military presence because of both U.S. Army and Air Force bases in the area, and the Mexican culture is stronger in San Antonio than in any other place I’ve ever been.

I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that both of these things lent a certain machismo to the atmosphere that I found daunting. I don’t take well to feeling that I have to curtail my activities or do things differently than I normally would to feel safe, but that’s what I did in San Antonio. One night only did I stay out after dark, and even though it wasn’t much past dusk when I got back to my hotel, some of the activity on the street had me feeling less than comfortable. On the one hand, I experienced an absolutely magical walk down Houston Street, with grackles clamoring overhead and colored lights in the trees lending an air of enchantment to the growing dusk. It was wonderful. On the other hand, there was crude shouting in the streets. I don’t think I’ve ever been so self-conscious about being a woman on my own as I was in those few days.

Most people I encountered were charming and friendly, and if any of them looked askance at this gray-haired lady in sneakers flitting around their city, few of them showed it, except for a surly bus driver or hotel clerk here and there. Some people object, I know, to applying archetypes like “masculine” and “feminine” to describe things, but that seems to me the best way to convey the city as I saw it. San Antonio itself, with its beautiful historical buildings and graceful winding river, seemed very feminine to me, but it has attracted a strong masculine presence. There are positives and negatives to both archetypal qualities, but the real crux is the way they interact. The feminine element certainly doesn’t have to be passive, but somehow it did seem to be in San Antonio, in deference to a sort of untamed, insistent masculinity. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that “boys will be boys” is the pervading but perhaps unspoken ethos in the city.

For a reintroduction to the world of travel, San Antonio was in some ways a bit of a challenge, and a bit of a contradiction. I had a better experience at the conference, where I felt an openness and friendliness that was lacking the last time I went. I enjoyed my explorations of the city, which boasts some pretty impressive efforts to revive and preserve its historical buildings and places. I also felt “out of my element” to a degree I wasn’t expecting. Of course, I wouldn’t say I felt “safe” in Chicago either, but it was in more of a “this-is-a-big-city-with-a-high-rate-of-gun-violence” way, not because I felt out of place. The dangers in Chicago wear a more impersonal face, perhaps, than they do in San Antonio.

Eros and Thanatos in Dark Fantasy

This week, I read Roshani Chokshi’s novel The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, a contemporary fairy tale for adults that includes a different slant on the theme of “kids doing magic.” When I started reading it, I wasn’t sure I’d like it, despite the siren call of fairy tale and mythological subject matter and the author’s darkly seductive storytelling voice. Actually, it was probably the latter that put me on my guard, along with the rapidity with which one character, an expert in the history of mythology, falls under the spell of an alluring but clearly dangerous woman, Indigo Maxwell-Castenada. Her name, if not her proclivities, places her in the category of things that are both very much what they seem and more than they seem.

Against a backdrop of glittering wealth and luxury, the two main characters conduct a cat-and-mouse courtship and are soon married. The Bridegroom—as the character is known throughout—agrees not to pry into his bride’s mysterious past, much in the manner of other mortals who married mermaids or selkies without fully understanding the risks involved. In this case, the bride, clearly no stranger to dangerous games, is in the role of Bluebeard to her handsome but somewhat overmatched husband. “Love is blind” is a saying that here is both metaphorically and literally true.

When Indigo gets word that her aunt is dying, she and her husband visit her childhood home, an island mansion off the Washington coast. As the house begins to reveal its secrets, voices from Indigo’s past insert themselves into the story, and we learn of another doomed relationship in which Indigo played the dominant role. As the Bridegroom searches for answers to memories he can’t explain from his own childhood, he picks up the thread of the story of Indigo and Azure, who were inseparable childhood friends until the day Azure dropped out of the story.

It would be easy to condemn Azure for falling under the sway of Indigo’s manipulations except for the fact that she’s not so much gullible as needy (and essentially orphaned). The two girls share a strong bond based on a belief in magic and the faerie realm, which they are able to indulge in Indigo’s home to their heart’s content under the eye of Indigo’s loving but indulgent aunt. The idyll the two girls share is tested as they grow older and Azure begins to feel the pull of the actual real world as an alternative to the Otherworld the girls have created in secret and which they plan to inhabit permanently one day. The descriptions of the girls’ beautifully conceived private realm, their revels, their play with costumes, hair, and makeup, and the luxuries with which they surround themselves have a seductive glamour that—at least in Azure’s case—feeds a nurturing sense of imagination. Her imaginary (and perhaps not-so-imaginary) world helps her survive adolescence.

Although the story is steeped in the seductions of Aphrodite (and Hecate), it becomes clear that the glamour, in Indigo’s hands, is more a snare than a gift. The Otherworld is really an Underworld, and Indigo is the Hades to Azure’s Persephone, a poor girl who keeps trying to return to her mother. The novel is rich in references to European and Middle Eastern mythology and folklore as well as fantasy; the girls have a special affinity for The Chronicles of Narnia (as does Indigo’s Bridegroom) and early on are determined not to meet the fate of Susan Pevensie, one of the siblings who visited Narnia and became a Queen, only to be later barred. (This apparently for the sin of growing up.)

To speak of the novel as Freud might, it’s only Azure who is really ruled by Eros and a lust for life; Indigo, whose main goal is to never grow up, is ruled by Thanatos (the death wish). For every impossibly lovely (and unsustainable) faerie feast of champagne, cake, and crushed pearls there is its dark counterpart, a still life of heavy foods surrounding a dead bird or beast. This story cleverly turns the idea of Eden on its head, suggesting that growing up and out of childhood is really the happy ending and that trying to remain in a state of stasis—no matter how agreeable—beyond one’s natural term is the true horror. This, of course, is a message one often encounters in fairy tales, in which one youth or another is being shown the way to adulthood.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride also marks the second novel or series I’ve encountered recently in which Narnia plays a significant role, the other being The Magicians series by Lev Grossman that I recently discussed. In Mr. Grossman’s novels, Fillory is a magical world that students from Brakebills sometimes find their way into. In some particulars, Fillory pays homage to Narnia: the Neitherlands is something like The Wood Between the Worlds; some of the people from Earth who go to Fillory end up as Kings and Queens there; and the passage between the two worlds is sometimes dismayingly abrupt (you might go there or come back without really meaning to). While characters in The Magicians books sometimes make nerdy references to The Lord of the Rings, their fantasy destination of choice actually resembles Narnia, a more markedly childlike world of storybook castles and talking animals than the more mature-toned LOTR.

While I don’t think it can be said that C.S. Lewis ever really went out of style, it seems noteworthy that his work is having a bit of a run in the dark fantasy of current pop culture. Several films of the first books in the series were completed in the 2000s, and there have been other adaptations in the past. In both Flower Bride and The Magicians, Narnia or a Narnia-like world seems to me symbolic of a place of “stuckness” that adults or young adults are continually longing to get to: the fixation on a fantasy world can be either a dangerous obsession or a necessary detour to recovering something lost. Narnia is a more primitive place than Middle-earth (and so, more dangerous, I would argue), so whatever the problem is, it must be buried pretty deep.