Epic Epic, Anyone?

The Magicians by Lev Grossman. The last thing I did before leaving Los Angeles yesterday morning was start this book, and I finished in some pocket of air above Manila, according to the flight map on my screen. I gave up both my sleep and my movie-watching to devour it cover to cover (the movies weren’t actually that big a sacrifice. I think I’ve suddenly passed the age where it’s still acceptable to watch anything on a 7cm-wide screen. The age, or the level of cinephilia).

You know how some things seem to come along at exactly the right moment? Me reading this book on that plane seemed somehow special, like it was the best possible time in my life I could ever have read it. It’s more than the fact that I received it from Amazon on Wednesday night at practically the very last minute I could have retrieved my mail before I left UCLA for break. More than the fact that I needed some entertainment during the twenty-hour time-space-continuum gap yawning up ahead of me on a plane with 7cm-wide TV screens. Even more than the fact that I was immediately seduced by the “Narnia-meets-The Secret-History” or "Harry-Potter-grows-up" reviews (how could I not read a book described as such? Those 3 titles, I think I have collectively read maybe 40 times. I was a goner).

But no, it was more because, like Quentin, the protagonist of The Magicians, I know what it's like to have deeply, deeply assimilated some kind-of-silly fantasy series like Narnia (or “Fillory” as Grossman thinly disguises it in the book) as a kid and as a, uh, not-so-kid. I too have privately ached to be told that perfect magical Narnia does exist and I can live there forever (Cair Paravel! Sigh). Like Quentin, I go to college in a foreign world (OK fine, Los Angeles, not some supercool Magic!school, but still) and understand the necessary mental and emotional adjustment one makes to an unfamiliar life. I too have experienced the growing anticlimax and disillusionment of each progressing school year. I too am trying to distinguish my adult-y dreams from my childhood dreams, and trying to separate nostalgia from escapism.

But most importantly, as the product of perhaps one too many fantasy novels, I too have grown up feeling just a little cheated about what real life’s really like, and part of me wants to blame my younger self for putting just a little too much stock in everything Aslan said when I was 7. Because, like Quentin, I don’t believe in God and I know, through and through, that life is a series of random particles colliding, governed by nothing, that there is absolutely no statistical limit to the amount of grief and suffering that anyone can encounter; yet deep down a part of me still believes in spite of everything that there is a secret repository of fortune and joy out there with my name on it, that because essentially I am a kind and good person, nothing too horrible can ever really fall into my path; those things happen to other people and not me, because I am the secret protagonist of a ultimately happy story that a wise, benevolent, cosmic Tom Stoppardy author-figure is writing up there. Doesn't everyone kind of feel that too? Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern syndrome? Like you’re the hero of your own story? When that’s the biggest fallacy of them all? That's the real reason I wanted to live in Narnia, not for any fauns or talking beavers but because of the neat, calm reassurance that somehow things would always work out for the best. Good guys always get rewarded and bad guys punished. So like Quentin I feel a little justified in thinking that Narnia and co. fucked me up just a smidgen. I still love 'em dearly, of course, but I do believe that.

If you have ever felt any of the above things, I recommend The Magicians. I have it and am willing to lend! No, it's not perfect, but really it hit home a lot with me today (even the little touches, like when Quentin gets offered a place in magic school and he thinks, wait a minute, better make sure I'm not accepting some lousy Magic Community College when I could get into Magic Harvard - hah! so Singaporean). And if I managed to make all that sound like sad, dreary bullshit, believe me that it's as dreary as someone pulling a machine gun on Mr. Tumnus (sorry, Shu). They could definitely have used a better cover though... I'm just sayin'. I think it kind of sucks.