Susan Gerstein's Blog - Posts Tagged "song-of-ice-and-fire"
On reading "A Song of Ice and Fire" "
I have plunged, head over heels, into George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”.
This is what happened:
About two years ago, on a vacation, in the middle of a late evening channel surfing on the hotel's television set searching for news, I was stopped in my tracks by looking at one of my favorite actors, Peter Dinklage, in the midst of what appeared to be, judging by the costumes, a medieval drama. I remembered him from a film some years ago, “The Station Agent”, in which he made one forget his small stature and grew into heartbreakingly large proportions in the course of the narrative. I stopped channel surfing to try to identify the show or at least the channel it appeared on. I stayed with it for the next twenty minutes or so, mesmerized by what seemed to be a wildly dramatic personal combat between father and son, followed by the appearance of dragons born in fire – all in a setting resembling England in its War of the Roses period. However, I waited in vain for the identification of the fragment that I had seen: at the end of it the program simply ceased, a different one followed, also unnamed. I went to sleep. The next morning, leaving the hotel very early, I forgot about trying to identify what I saw; and then forgot about the whole thing.
Many months later, I was reading the book section of the newspaper where I came upon a review of a just published new volume of something called “A Song of Ice and Fire”, by one George R.R. Martin. I am a sucker for long, multi-volume books, but somehow this one had eluded me. I started reading about it. It soon became clear that I found the source of my late night TV show. The volume under review was the fifth in the series; the show was based on a much earlier one – the first, as it turned out, "A Game of Thrones" – but clearly this was it. Armed with my new information, I turned to television-watching friends who assured me that the HBO show had been going on for a hugely successful season and in fact a second season, based on the second volume, was about to start. Peter Dinklage had one of the major roles in it. Of course I started watching, catching up on the first season, promising myself that this would be as far as I went. And because the narrative jumped from one wildly disparate imaginary place to another and one intensely dramatic protagonist to another with the speed that a televised drama dictates, I decided to buy the book. Just one volume, I said to myself, just to clarify the details.
Of course I got hooked: I happened on a phenomenal page-turner. The HBO show became merely an illustration, albeit a very good one: the books turn out to be much more satisfying. The complete world, the alternative universe that is utterly different from ours and yet utterly recognizable gets more astonishing as one gets further into it. I am now reading the third volume, “A Storm of Swords”, and my only concern is that in the final books, volumes six and seven, yet to be published, the author will not be able to pull all the astonishingly widespread strings together and come to a satisfying conclusion. But perhaps he will. I do hope so.
This is what happened:
About two years ago, on a vacation, in the middle of a late evening channel surfing on the hotel's television set searching for news, I was stopped in my tracks by looking at one of my favorite actors, Peter Dinklage, in the midst of what appeared to be, judging by the costumes, a medieval drama. I remembered him from a film some years ago, “The Station Agent”, in which he made one forget his small stature and grew into heartbreakingly large proportions in the course of the narrative. I stopped channel surfing to try to identify the show or at least the channel it appeared on. I stayed with it for the next twenty minutes or so, mesmerized by what seemed to be a wildly dramatic personal combat between father and son, followed by the appearance of dragons born in fire – all in a setting resembling England in its War of the Roses period. However, I waited in vain for the identification of the fragment that I had seen: at the end of it the program simply ceased, a different one followed, also unnamed. I went to sleep. The next morning, leaving the hotel very early, I forgot about trying to identify what I saw; and then forgot about the whole thing.
Many months later, I was reading the book section of the newspaper where I came upon a review of a just published new volume of something called “A Song of Ice and Fire”, by one George R.R. Martin. I am a sucker for long, multi-volume books, but somehow this one had eluded me. I started reading about it. It soon became clear that I found the source of my late night TV show. The volume under review was the fifth in the series; the show was based on a much earlier one – the first, as it turned out, "A Game of Thrones" – but clearly this was it. Armed with my new information, I turned to television-watching friends who assured me that the HBO show had been going on for a hugely successful season and in fact a second season, based on the second volume, was about to start. Peter Dinklage had one of the major roles in it. Of course I started watching, catching up on the first season, promising myself that this would be as far as I went. And because the narrative jumped from one wildly disparate imaginary place to another and one intensely dramatic protagonist to another with the speed that a televised drama dictates, I decided to buy the book. Just one volume, I said to myself, just to clarify the details.
Of course I got hooked: I happened on a phenomenal page-turner. The HBO show became merely an illustration, albeit a very good one: the books turn out to be much more satisfying. The complete world, the alternative universe that is utterly different from ours and yet utterly recognizable gets more astonishing as one gets further into it. I am now reading the third volume, “A Storm of Swords”, and my only concern is that in the final books, volumes six and seven, yet to be published, the author will not be able to pull all the astonishingly widespread strings together and come to a satisfying conclusion. But perhaps he will. I do hope so.
The Sad End of "A Song of Ice and Fire"
In May of 2013, nearly three and a half years ago, I wrote a post about a most interesting reading experience: on how I found, via the unlikely medium of television, the series of fantasy books by George R.R. Martin, collectively called “A Song of Ice and Fire”. As I then described, prior to my discovery of the books, a television series was created based on them; in fact it was that show, “Game of Thrones”, (the title on the first volume of the saga) that led me to the books. At that time five volumes of a planned seven existed. The TV show based on the first volume was wildly successful and a second season based on the second volume was being planned. The show was indeed well done, but, as I said at the time, having commenced to read them, the books were far more detailed, in fact far more interesting; I continued to watch the show periodically for a while, merely as an interesting illustration of the rather unique, phantasmagorical story; and soon stopped. I read three of the existing volumes – and then I forbore reading the fourth and fifth ones, for the author by then was deeply involved in the ongoing television project and I did not trust him to finish the saga. He had been extremely slow in producing it so far; it took him from 1991 to 2011 to produce the five existing volumes. Fans had been clamoring for the final ones; one very much wanted to know how will the denouement be pulled off? But investing the time needed to read on – these are all hefty volumes – would be pointless if we were never going to come to a satisfying end. Meanwhile, it was reported that the TV show was plunging ahead: season followed season, for a while in parallel with the books: successive seasons hued closely to the successive volumes, though taking increasing liberties with them.
My lack of trust proved entirely correct.
Television overtook writing. There was no more talk of the final volumes ever appearing on the horizon: George RR Martin, too slow a writer to satisfy the TV industry, had been left behind and the final seasons, upcoming, will be on their own. While I imagine the author is probably somewhat involved with the ending of his own saga, it would likely be in a mere advisory role, while a committee of screenwriters produce the much awaited answer to the question posed in the long ago first volume: Is Winter Coming?
I had long ago stopped watching the TV series, which became ever more violent and gratuitously sexual. Until quite recently, I kept hoping for those final two volumes to somehow, miraculously, materialize. But I have now given up and accepted television’s victory over printed matter, at least in this instance.
“A Song of Ice and Fire” never was great literature, but it was a riveting story well enough written to hold one’s attention through hundreds, eventually thousands of pages. I find it extremely regrettable that it was abandoned two thirds of the way through and handed over to what eventually became an overheated TV series. Whereas I didn’t begrudge the time it took to read those first three volumes, I would most decidedly begrudge the time required to watch endless episodes of such a story on television. So I suppose I will never really know whether Winter Came.
My lack of trust proved entirely correct.
Television overtook writing. There was no more talk of the final volumes ever appearing on the horizon: George RR Martin, too slow a writer to satisfy the TV industry, had been left behind and the final seasons, upcoming, will be on their own. While I imagine the author is probably somewhat involved with the ending of his own saga, it would likely be in a mere advisory role, while a committee of screenwriters produce the much awaited answer to the question posed in the long ago first volume: Is Winter Coming?
I had long ago stopped watching the TV series, which became ever more violent and gratuitously sexual. Until quite recently, I kept hoping for those final two volumes to somehow, miraculously, materialize. But I have now given up and accepted television’s victory over printed matter, at least in this instance.
“A Song of Ice and Fire” never was great literature, but it was a riveting story well enough written to hold one’s attention through hundreds, eventually thousands of pages. I find it extremely regrettable that it was abandoned two thirds of the way through and handed over to what eventually became an overheated TV series. Whereas I didn’t begrudge the time it took to read those first three volumes, I would most decidedly begrudge the time required to watch endless episodes of such a story on television. So I suppose I will never really know whether Winter Came.
