Sorcerer's Soul reading list and an interesting thought.

[Trevis Martin]

Hello everybody,

I've just finished reading the Ross MacDonald novel "The Zebra Striped Hearse."  (And Rons right, I think I've blown a cornea keeping track of the realtionships.)  I've also read recently (and purchased) The Galton Case, The Goodbye Look, Black Money, and Sleaping Beauty.  I've read a couple of the others at the library also.  All of these are available in paperback editions from Random House under their Black Lizard imprint.

First I can see why Ron uses them for Sorcerer.  The terrible humanity of the situations practically slaps you in the face. The people are very real. Each of these has been a page turner for me.  I rarely take longer than a day or two to finish it.

Secondly, I found myself thinking something interesting about the novel (Zebra Striped Hearse) and its relationship to rpgs.  Lew Archer, the detective, isn't really a hero per se, though he does the right thing as best he can.  Instead he elicits the stories from everyone involved.  And for the most part they spill it, because their internal pressure forces them to.  IF they can't, then he ups the pressure on them till they do.  THEY are the main characters in the book.  Lew, thoough there are bits of him and his development here and there, is mostly a transparent, acting as our eyes and ears. It made me think of the GM in a game, and his role as facilitator.  Archer goes and applies pressure to the right places and draws the story out of the characters.  He never forces his version of events on any of the other characters, unlike the police, he lets their version (thought sometimes it takes several interviews) emerge.

I'm not inteding a rehash any argument that rpg's are like fiction or should be.  I just thought it an interesting relationship of novel genre, narrativist play, and Sorcerer.

Anyhow...read the books, they're worth it for their own sake.  I've read the some of the Chandler too, but so far I like MacDonald's books the best.


regards,

Trevis

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Trevis,

Secondly, I found myself thinking something interesting about the novel (Zebra Striped Hearse) and its relationship to rpgs. Lew Archer, the detective, isn't really a hero per se, though he does the right thing as best he can. Instead he elicits the stories from everyone involved. And for the most part they spill it, because their internal pressure forces them to. IF they can't, then he ups the pressure on them till they do. THEY are the main characters in the book. Lew, thoough there are bits of him and his development here and there, is mostly a transparent, acting as our eyes and ears. It made me think of the GM in a game, and his role as facilitator. Archer goes and applies pressure to the right places and draws the story out of the characters. He never forces his version of events on any of the other characters, unlike the police, he lets their version (thought sometimes it takes several interviews) emerge.

Jesse Burneko and I have discussed this a lot. I claim that Archer is very much a protagonist, but you have to get used to seeing what's not said, or only hinted.

1. He refuses to leave a situation when it turns out that his original hook into it is irrelevant - because his real Kicker (not a hook) is usually the desire to nurture someone he's found during the course of the interactions. His other big Kicker is to Speak for the Dead. That's the primary one both in Find a Victim (think of that title!!)* which begins with an accident victim dying in his arms, and The Chill, in which he dismisses what seem to be the neurotic advances of a woman and she turns up dead the next day. He never states these agendas of his outright, and it's interesting that he refers to the relationship maps' history as "cases" even when the legal or criminal aspects of it have long past vanished from his interests.

2. He gets night sweats and nightmares when he can't figure out who's lying about what.

3. When he sees himself in mirrors, he is always distorted or fogged into a monster. (Sorcerer terms: Archer fears he is becoming a demon.)

4. He is absolutely relentless about punishing the culprit. It comes in three ways: getting them arrested (rare), killing them outright by goading them into a fight (sometimes), and confronting them so painfully that they commit suicide (common). I submit that the unspoken end of The Chill, which textually ends with the line, "No more anything, Letitia," is that he simply executes her.

I agree with you about his investigative methods - he knows that people are dying to share their perceived "the world is about me" story with anyone who will listen, and also that the emotional pressures of the map-history are intolerably powerful - just waiting for someone to elicit them. His techniques are all psychotherapeutic: ask, repeat, ask again, repeat, listen, listen, listen ...

... except that then he brings down a judgment which is as opposed to the ideals of psychotherapy as anything could possibly be. In terms of the diagram in the first chapter of Sex & Sorcery, Archer walks the path of death.

I don't think Archer acts as the reader's eyes and ears. I think he acts as the kind of man that some of us wish we were, very much in the sense of Howard's sense of fulfilment in writing Conan stories, and that found by some audience members in reading them. My take is that Archer's combination of total engagement with total disconnection, both unswervingly bent on justice (and brief relief of his obsessions, same thing), is something that few of us could hope to achieve, or be willing to pay the price for. The extremely first-person, deeply in-his-head writing of the novels is, I think, a way for us to engage in a form of reasoning and empathy that we'd be hard-pressed to do by ourselves.

Best,
Ron

[Trevis Martin]

Ron,

Of course you are right.  I somewhat overstated the chord that was struck in my head.  One of the reasons I like Archer so much is that he is he won't let things go.  The fact that he cares so much about it helps me to care that much about it.  Thanks for helping me clarify.

Total engagment and total disconnection.  What a great way of putting it, and again it jangles the chord of gm to player group relationship for me. Though I'm feeling hard pressed for words on it.  I think the way he elicits stories from everyone is what struck me the most as a parallel.

What jesse said recently in this thread

NPCs should be treated as opportunities not obstacles... snip...Clue hiding and NPC stonewalling is next to impossible in Sorcerer. Instead the NPCs are there to grab the player's attention. Sure, they might have a vested interest in keeping some tiny subset of the backstory hidden but they'll probably be pretty chatty about the other parts of it and also maybe want the PCs to help them out.

is a great verbalization of what seems to happen in the novels that is so valuable.  Which around here is a bonehead realization.  (Why is everything so zen around here...I smack myself upside the head and I say "my god, it was there all the time!")

I've been reading the Conan stories too (from the recently published collection), and they are an interesting contrast in inspiriational ficition for this game.  Though what I've found interesting about Howards stories is the plain up-front and electric quality of the action, and the sudden switching of situation.  The story starts out one direction then has a couple of major shifts such that you end up dealing with something that wasn't even on the map in the beginning.

Its been a long time since I really read much new fiction and I can't thank you enough for introducing me to both those fine authors.  I have enjoyed them immensely.

thanks

Trevis

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Trevis,

I was thinking about Marlowe vs. Archer.

Marlowe's a tricky guy to discuss, because we have (a) four really good books, (b) three outright stinkers (Chandler never wrote a mediocre story; it's trash or brilliant, period), and (c) there are two waves of movies that have added whole reams of content as well.

Me, typically, I like to stick just to the four basic books: The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, The High Window, and Lady in the Lake. (I think The Little Sister, Farewell My Lovely, and Playback are very poor.)

What's Marlowe like in them?

1. He's younger than in the movies, and much better groomed and well put-together. The movie version of The Big Sleep is ... well, interpretive, and despite its impact on the genre, isn't Marlowe in the books at all. He's described several times as quite large and handsome.

2. He played some football, speaks some Spanish, and does chess problems. He very much likes to hang out with random people, especially those who live outside the middle-class post-war parameters, and to validate them to themselves in some way - showing that he knows they're people.

3. He has a pretty healthy sex drive but extremely high standards for applying it - not at all like the movie gumshoe who's always sleeping with the suspects. Like Archer, he doesn't let women push him around through sex (exception for Archer: the absolutely gut-ripping The Goodbye Look).

4. He literally hates corruption, and will go out of his way (e.g.) to slug a bent police officer if he can get away with it, and sometimes when he can't.

5. He's doomed. He will never marry, never find a better job, never reach people any better than he does already ... in fact, I'd say that he is always giving (including his blood and bones), and never receiving whatever feedback he needs.

6. He does not carry out the Angel of Death role that Archer does (and now that I think of it, the Continental Op). He moves into situations without agenda (unlike Archer) and simply feels his way through them, finding stuff out mainly because he runs into it face-first, and caring more and more as he goes. I see his chess problems and his "detective" work as the same thing, the latter different only in that his heart bleeds when he does it.

A number of people have identified Marlowe as a romantic knight figure, and I think they're right, especially if you think of love always eluding him rather than motivating him.

Marlowe's immediate passions are muted. He is content to chat with the taxi drivers or bartenders and to work his chess problems. When he flares up, sexually or angrily, he usually damps it down fairly soon. His real passions, it seems to me, operate at an extremely high and rarefied philosophical level: in the middle of a "case" (same quotes as for Archer), he tries to withdraw from human contact, and he sometimes writhes with hate for humanity ... and then he's in there pitching again.

In some ways, Marlowe is more than his "Marlowe archetype" has become through all the cinema influences, because he's a whole character with identifiable values rather than just a style; but in other ways, he's less, because he is essentially limited. He will go into action, and he will be betrayed; he will suffer, and the truth will be uncovered, but no one will want to know.

What all this musing is about, I think, is protagonism. Archer, I get just fine - once you read across some books and between some lines, he's cathartic at every step and almost terrifying when he moves. Marlowe excites my sympathy and my admiration for his determination and (perhaps) for his quest to find someone innocent, anyone at all. But he's a more difficult protagonist for me to get with, in my mind; he lacks arrogance.

Best,
Ron