I can't finish reading this novel
I don’t personally read fiction as escapism. To be honest, escapism has never felt particularly appealing to me. I don’t mean to say I never engage with it, I certainly have spent more hours than I’d wish on endless scrolls or sucked into a mindless game just to patch the dreaded anxiety hole I’m unconsciously running away from. But I rarely seek this behaviour; it’s something that I find myself “caught in”. And of course there’s also times where I like to play something unchallenging and relaxing to unwind. But the notion of reading fantasy literature or playing a TTRPG to “escape” and dive into a different world has always seem kind of alien to me.
Instead, reading literature has always been an actively engaging thing for me. Whether it’s the more literary™ stuff or series that lean more towards “entertainment”, I enjoy books more when they engage me in ways that make me think: about the worldview of the characters, the implications of what happens, the themes a work explores, the affects they produce in me. I like reading fiction because of how it moves me and compels me, because of the things it shows me about people and myself. There is always a bridge, a dialogue, between the fiction and my life. I don’t escape, I relate.
So, with that being the case, I suddenly became incapable of finishing the novel I was reading around September. I have been reading Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy. I really enjoyed the first book, the complex relationships between characters and the limited point of view of the Fitz as a young, inexperienced and traumatized protagonist trying to make sense of his life. The Second book (Royal Assassin), However, became a more challenging read. The first 3/4 of that novel feel like an exercise in impotence, an ode to inaction, a frustrating stroll through futility. It’s not the slow pace of the book, but the fact that the main character, Fitz, finds himself in a shitty situation and things continue to get worse through inaction, since himself and other characters continue to justify why nothing can be done about what’s happening, or why acting otherwise would be unwise, while things remaining as is only make the situation continue to become more dire every chapter.
The situation with the red ships that invades the coast continues to get worse, and this costs the Prince Fitz serves much needed political legitimacy. Apparently the realm is unable to confront it in ways that are effective, although why they can’t send soldiers to coastal towns is not explained in a convincing manner. Whatever progress is made is invisible to the folk at large and is rather perceived as reclusive inaction by the prince. This all boils down by the last quarter of the book when all of Fitz’s allies leave the keep and his rival begins taking control of things by spinning false narratives that embellish him and disgrace the Prince.
This was in itself extremely frustrating for me. It made me recognize one of the things I am most triggered by is manipulation of what is patently true for personal gain or political support Horrible injustices and human atrocities happen around the world all the time. The most present in my mind is still the active genocide of Palestinians, but there are so many others. Using the memory of the holocaust and antisemitism as shields to justify the genocide being carrying out is twistedly outrageous, deeply saddening, and morally disgusting. And they are worth denouncing and fighting for. They are worth expressing outrage for. Yet for some reason its this “twisting of the narrative” that always hits me like a truck. I wish it was the atrocities themselves that gutted me the most, but while they do gut me, the added insult that is this “twisting” infuriates me beyond words. So when I saw this “twisting” begin to happen successfully in the book, I noticed myself getting furious. It would be 2am in the morning and I was reading a chapter before sleep but now my body was activated, my heart racing, and I could feel myself getting angrier by the page. All hopes of falling asleep gone.
It’s not that I can’t take challenging literature, or that this plot was particularly challenging in itself (I mean, it is a rough story about trauma, but its also not so harsh that it is disturbing). But right about that time, the Charlie Kirk assassination happened. And the twisting of the discourse then became equally unbearable and infuriating. Seeing people in my home country of Peru using the Municipality’s money to host homage events to Kirk only to gain more legitimacy with the right-wing voters and growing a disturbing political agenda, while I was far away in Finland, filled me with extreme impotence. The frustration I felt about the impotence in the book paralleled my own feelings of impotence, seeing things everywhere get worse with little I could do, especially far away, and struggling with my own everyday shit. Reading the book kept confronting me with these feelings and putting me in a horrible place emotionally. I could not take it and had to stop.
At the time I wanted to make a more pointed post about the parallels between the book and the situation with Kirk, but it felt like there was enough Kirk discourse going around and I didn’t want to contribute to it anymore. Yet now, thinking back on the book, I was more interested In exploring the ways in which the bridges between our fiction and our lives affect us, and how important challenging literature can be, but also knowing when to take a step back in order to come back. I think that immediately running away from discomfort would only bring complacency. Confronting the uncomfortable emotions is part of what literature and fiction does well. Its part of what I like about it. Like Willow discussed in this video, it is especially when we are going through hard times and are looking to make sense of things that running away into escapism can be detrimental while challenging literature can move us most and inspire us to go on in creative ways.
After playing through Clair Obscur since the start of the new year, and working through the strong themes and harsh realities of that game, I feel reinvigorated towards the power of narrative and wanting to continue to read things that are moving and inspiring. What was particularly impactful about that game for me was that, without any spoilers, no ending is truly “good”, and whatever happens will always confront you with a harsh, gutting implications. Similarly, Hobb’s trilogy is far from a “feel good” fantasy, and I have little expectation that things will turn out well for Fitz in the end. But exploring those harsh emotions and challenges feels worth it to me… So I hope I can finally come back to it.