[I should also note I'm also quite often told I don't write anything like him. Both as a compliment and as an insult]
A Scottish blogger whose name, like the Scottish Play, we shall not speak, once flat-out told me I was lying when I said I hadn't read the Applecrumble. I'm tempted to call him a dick again.
Here's a picture of Joe. Handsome fella ain't he?
Anyhow, today I _have_ read something by Abercombie and have been influenced to copy it. I read Joe's best ever fan mail.
And it's moved me to share my own BEST FAN MAIL EVER [edited to reduce spoilers]:
I really think you are one sick disturbed person. I was fine with King of Thorns until I got to the chapter about ****. I got to the part about where **** was in the cart and then flipped the pages. Unfortunately I read the sentence "*******************************"
That sentence is seared into my brain and has given me nightmares. It might be fiction but it is just horrible. There is no excuse for this sort of thing. The torture of an innocent animal. ***************************. You could have found a different way to make you point. I took the book straight back to the library. I will never ever read another book by you as long as I live. I dont know where all this darkness comes from with you but you are
quite obviously disturbed. I don't care if you are with 10 kids and 5 dogs. Sick sick sick.
My reply: "Excellent choice, ma'am."
I'm not at Joe-level and I probably only get a 'thanks for the book' email every three days or so, which is enough to keep my spirits up and to warrant as personal a reply as I can muster. It would take a sight more 'attaboys' than that to stop me responding, but I can entirely get the point that there is a level at which a person would have to stop. I expect George Martin would get a hundred a day if his email was available.
The mail above was interesting to me for several reasons:
i) It embodied the Hollywood advice: slaughter as many co-ed teens as you want, but shoot a puppy and your film is toast.
ii) It brought home to me how differently people's imaginations are wired. Indeed how people without an imagination can mistrust those who have one - failing completely to understand how an imagination works.
Imagination 101:
The innocent animal (I don't recall ever claiming it was innocent mind you) was made of words. It didn't really suffer. Just because I can imagine bad things happening doesn't mean I have done or want to do those things.
That scene was horrible, but it was also very effective and incredibly well written. It had me uncontrollably crying, and it also gave me another look at Jorg's childhood, just in case I didn't believe that seeing your mother and brother brutally slaughtered would screw someone up as royally as it did Jorg.
ReplyDeleteWon't somebody please think of the word puppies?!
ReplyDeletePresumably this person is a redundant animal rights activist who has ended cruelty to animals, and without anything better to do now rails against imaginary ones being hurt?
ReplyDeleteThat scene had me wiping away tears, I don't mind admitting.
ReplyDeleteMy wife had to ask me why I was laughing so hard.
I am still yet to relate to these people who continually make claims about the unacceptable level of violence in your books? I'm starting to feel like a desensitized arsehole, because none of these scenes even caused me so much as a pause.
ReplyDeleteBut I agree, it's imagination and words. Just because these things aren't pleasant doesn't mean they don't happen and they shouldn't be written about. It's the mentality that got Harry Potter banned from religious schools ... writing fiction about witches doesn't mean you think they exist or advocate their heretical ways.
I just think these people must have been reading a whole lot of My Little Pony previously.
Oh man. In these kinds of situations it always surprises me how people make the baseless distinction between "innocent animals" (in this case a dog), and, let's say for example, pigs.
ReplyDeleteThen again, I shouldn't be surprised that this coincides with a lack of imagination.
Reminds me of a line from one of my favorite songs "...as we're sung to sleep by philosophies......save the trees and kill the children"
ReplyDeleteDear Mark,
ReplyDeleteYou have all my symphaties! You know I love your book, so this might not be objective to the subject, but I have also read Joe Abercrombie's Books (all of them to be true - German and Englisch) and although his world is fantastic to drown, in yours is my favourite and I would recoment someone like this best-fan-mail-ever-writer to NOT read books, they can't stand. And it isn't like your bookdescribtion is something along this line: A innocent, lonely boy, who tries - naturally peaceful and without violence - to find the destroyer of his favourit playcar. If it was then such nonsens-email would be justifyed - and i wouldn't have read it - , but his story isn't nice and he isn't either! You didn't even try to hide it, no you remind us every now and then that he isn't only a broken boy but a "criminal" who "choose" - more or less willingly - his own path. So to all those people out there: If you don't like a book or can't stand the impact it MIGHT have on you: Don't read it!
I think you did a great job - even better then Joe and different1 That's clear - and I wouldn't want to miss it for the world. It really kept me hooked throughout - even now, for the 6th time in Germen/English! So don't bother with these silly things and continue to bath in the sunlight which should shine on you, because of you outstanding antihero!
Read you!
Julia
About the whole Abercrombie comparison, I read his First Law Trilogy, which actually were the first fantasy books I read in English (not my first language, you see), and I can see the comparisons, namely the dark and gritty world, and amoral characters, but it ends there, really. In terms of prose they're worlds apart, while Mark's writing is beautifully concise, Joe tends to go on and on, which at times gets a bit tiring. No to say he's worse, just different.
ReplyDeleteAbout that e-mail, man, I don't want to get all psychological here, but I really think that says more about the reader than the book. Speaking for myself, that scene didn't upset me much. I love animals as much as the next guy, but compared to real acts of brutality towards that I've witnessed, it wasn't that awful. Even in the context of the book, there were other scenes in both Prince and King that touched me a lot more.