You've Got Your Genre In My Lit Fic, Mr. Norrell

Two great tastes...

Genre fiction and literary fiction are mortal enemies, locked in eternal struggle, the one firing deadly laser blasts, the other responding with withering nuanced sneers. Climax battles anticlimax, anticlimax has discussions with climax that are rich in ambiguity, and never shall the two be reconciled.

Or…shall they?

Susanna Clarke's 2004 novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell famously thinks they shall. A sprawling 1000 page epic, Clarke's novel mixes the improbable and the mundane with a barbaric yawp and a civilized murmur. It insists that literary fiction and genre are best when there is commerce—and/or mystical ties—between them.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is set in an alternative early 19^th century England, in which magic works, though the methods of summoning it have been long forgotten. Strange and Norrell are the foremost magicians of their age, and their quest to return magic to the land has elements of epic fantasy, comedy of manners, gothic pulp, and historical fiction.

The contrast between low art adventure and high art pretension is blatantly and slyly embodied by the two main characters themselves. The bland Mr. Norrell is the avatar of literary fiction; he wants to domesticate wild, lowerclass, magic and turn it into a "respectable profession." In contrast, Norrell's pupil, Jonathan Strange—with his evocative name—takes magic to the battlefield of Waterloo and boldly walks in the paths of fairie.

Obviously, romping in fairie is a lot more fun than mouldering in a respectable profession, and it's no wonder that Strange is effectively the hero of the novel, with Norrell serving as a kind of fuddy-duddy antagonist/damper.

Their conflict is framed, specifically, as a struggle between (literary fiction) elitism, and (genre fiction) populism. Norrell is a "miser of magic instead of gold" ; he wants to keep all knowledge, and specifically all books of magic, to himself. He forces other potential magicians into contracts whereby they swear to study magic no more. He also races about England buying up all the books of magic for his own library, which he refuses to share with anyone else. His terrified realization that he must share his books with Strange if Strange is to be his pupil is one of the muted high points of the novel.

"After a short silence Strange said, "You advise me to read this book?"

"Yes, indeed, I think you should read it," said Mr. Norrell.

"Strange waited, but Norrell continued to gaze at the book in his hand as though he were entirely at a loss as to how to proceed. "Then you must give it to me, sir," said Strange gently.

When Strange publishes his own book of magic, Norrell actually casts a spell to make every copy disappear. Books are only for the respectable, the elite, the initiated. They must be hoarded for the best people, lest the rabble get ideas.

Strange, in contrast, wants to give ideas to the rabble, and magic too. "England is full of magicians!" he exclaims. "Hundreds! Thousands perhaps! Norrell refused them. Norrell denied them. Norrell silenced them. But they are magicians nonetheless." Like genre fiction, magic belongs to everyone, and charges the world with life, excitement and adventure.

Clarke encourages you to root for genre to be free to thunder across the moors on a snorting black stallion. But she's sympathetic to Norrell, and to his skepticism as well. Literary fiction can be boring, but fantasy has its own kind of tedium.

Norrell's worst sin in the book isn't his dry-as-dust refusal of magic. It's his decision, in one instance to embrace it. Faced with a chance to advance his own career by bringing the wife of an important member of Parliament back to life, he summons a fairy man with thistledown hair. Said fairy proceeds to kidnap a number of mortals for his entertainment. Those mortals, including Strange's wife Arabella, are swept off to a fairy dance, where they spin and bob and curtsey in enchanted finery forever.

The thistledown man takes a particular liking to a black butler named Stephen. He can't walk down the street without being showered with gold or magic swords, and his life becomes a weariness of wonder. He is like a man who is forced to do nothing all day but watch Star Wars movies, until he longs for the variety that would come from sitting at a desk and filling out insurance forms.

Clarke, too, sees the allure in low-key lit fic blandness. One of the most idiosyncratic and affecting parts of the novel is the relationship between Strange and his wife Arabella. The two are for the most part happy together, though Strange's obsession with magic, and the danger it puts him in, strains their marriage. When the thistledown man kidnaps Arabella, so Strange thinks she is dead, he is plunged into grief.

This sounds like a somewhat familiar genre story about a woman who needs saving and the daring man who rescues her. That is more or less the story that is told in the BBC adaptation miniseries adaptation of the novel in which the romance between Jonathan and Arabella is the central storyline. At the end of the series he sacrifices himself for her, setting up a melodramatic, tearjerking, final parting. It's a crowd-pleaser.

The storyline in the novel, though, is much more ambivalent. Arabella's role in the book is less prominent throughout, and while Strange does rescue her, he doesn't exactly sacrifice himself. Instead, the two separate because Strange is under a curse to always live with a literal black cloud following him—and Arabella, after escaping one enchantment, doesn't want to live with another. "She did not offer to go into the Darkness with him, and he did not ask her." She promises to wait for him, but he tells her not to wear black or mourn. It's romantic and sad, but it's a wavering, sad romanticism—a lit fic parting.

Norrell is cursed to stay with Strange in the black cloud too; the former enemies are now colleagues, friends, and constant companions. Their enchanted idyll involves erudite seclusion. "Think of me with my nose in a book!" Strange tells Arabella before he leaves her.

The two men in their dark tower will sit side by side, one with a respectable tale in which nothing happens, one with a rip-roaring story of war and magic and romance. And then, every so often, they may switch volumes, so the magic and the prosaic get mixed up together. Clarke knows that books, and lives, are best when they have a bit of both.

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This first appeared some years back in the Escapist. I still love this novel, though, so thought I’d share it again.