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.
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