Jack Vance
May. 13th, 2004 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI've started in rereading Vance's Lyonesse trilogy. Now, I have to admit that I haven't read all that much of Vance's work. Let's see: I've read Lyonesse, The Gray Prince, The Languages of Pao, Space Opera, Ports of Call, some of the "Dying Earth" stories, and "The Moon Moth", and I think that's about it. So, I'm going to make some generalizations about Vance, but they're based on very incomplete data.
I've never been able to pin down what it is that makes Vance's prose so distinctive, but it's always struck me as unmistakable. It bears some resemblance to Dunsany's, but Dunsany was florid where Vance tends to be brittle. His characters are, most often, grotesques, and I rarely find myself sympathizing with them; it's more a matter of marvelling at their peculiar behavior than anything else. It's tempting to compare them to the characters in the Gormenghast trilogy, but some, at least, of those characters were sympathetic - Keda, Flay, and Fuschia in particular. In addition, Gormenghast is dark and claustrophobic, two words that could never be applied to Vance's work. Not that Vance is never serious; The Gray Prince, in particular, includes some biting commentary on contemporary (mid-1970s, I think) politics.
At any rate, I find that I can only take Vance at long intervals. It takes a definite effort of will to read through something as long as the Lyonesse trilogy. It's worth the effort; the Ska are quite memorable, and Vance's version of Faerie is rather good, for instance. But, in general, I find a little Vance goes a long way.
I've never been able to pin down what it is that makes Vance's prose so distinctive, but it's always struck me as unmistakable. It bears some resemblance to Dunsany's, but Dunsany was florid where Vance tends to be brittle. His characters are, most often, grotesques, and I rarely find myself sympathizing with them; it's more a matter of marvelling at their peculiar behavior than anything else. It's tempting to compare them to the characters in the Gormenghast trilogy, but some, at least, of those characters were sympathetic - Keda, Flay, and Fuschia in particular. In addition, Gormenghast is dark and claustrophobic, two words that could never be applied to Vance's work. Not that Vance is never serious; The Gray Prince, in particular, includes some biting commentary on contemporary (mid-1970s, I think) politics.
At any rate, I find that I can only take Vance at long intervals. It takes a definite effort of will to read through something as long as the Lyonesse trilogy. It's worth the effort; the Ska are quite memorable, and Vance's version of Faerie is rather good, for instance. But, in general, I find a little Vance goes a long way.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 11:15 am (UTC)Why not look for it?