I posted this to Usenet while drunk. While I'd make some changes to it today, I think it does pretty well sum up my view, so I'm re-posting here as is.
From: arenn@urbanophile.com (Aaron M. Renn) Subject: In Defense of Thomas Covenant Date: 1999/11/13
Ok, I guess I'm forced into defending the Thomas Covenant books. This is an off the cuff rambling, but I'll try to address the objections posted in this group.
To repeat for the record, the Thomas Covenant books (particularly the first series), are my favorite fantasy novels of all time. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not horribly well read in the field, and that a lot of what I've read is often considered to, well, suck. (I agree with some of those opinions). But you've got to go with what you know. BTW: I have read the Lord of the Rings. I like Donaldson better.
A few reasons why (watch for SPOILERS):
1. Donaldson makes us care about the Land. This is the most important differentiator of this series, IMO. My number one complaint about fantasy novels is that they all too often involve "good guys" and "bad guys" and we're never given any reason to like the good guys except that, well, the bad guys are really Evil. In fact, far too often the good guys (or at least the place they are from) are portrayed as not too nice either. I suspect this is done to show how our valiant heroes have to fight both problems within their own ranks (such as ass kissing courtiers who pretend there's really no problem and are more concerned with their own place at court than the well-being of the kingdom) and devil worshipping invaders at the same time. It just makes me wonder why I should care about these fucks other than that I don't like sacrificing people to demons on principle.
Donaldson by contrast spends much of Lord Foul's Bane giving us reasons to care about the Land and the people that live there. In the character Lena, Covenant is immediately exposed to the almost exaggerated courtesy shown to strangers by the folk of the Land. We see the joy of the people of Mithil Stowndown. We see the essential character of the people of the Land in the way that Trell repairs a broken piece of pottery, in the Oath of Peace, in the way they abhor the destruction of life, in the way the Loresraat is defended to the death. We are shows the beauty of the Gilden, of the Celebration of Spring and the Andelanian Hills, of Revelstone, etc. This is a place that matters, not another depressing pseudo-medieval landscape.
2. Thomas Covenant. That's right. The man himself. How many people hated him? Lots. But that's ok. We're not supposed to like him. We're supposed to think he's a bastard. Just attempting a character like Covenant is a bold and risky move. It's obviously one that didn't click with a lot of people. Some because they couldn't get past his rape of Lena, others because they thought he was "whiny", others for different reasons. But what is the alternative? Well, in far too many novels it is the same cliched bullshit over and over: the ragtag band of adventurers, the obscure youth stumbling half blind into his destiny, the wrongly exiled superwarrior, etc. Please stop me from puking. Donaldson takes a character that is a shithead and makes him the main man. Whether you like it or not, that's something that I think deserves a little respect. There's lots of characters in fantasy novels I've despised. But for most of them the author didn't intend it that way. Donaldson knows we won't like a lot of things about Covenant, but makes him the protagonist anyway.
3. The white gold. This ain't SF, so BS about white gold being an alloy and other technical objections are crap in my book. What I love about the white gold is the way that Thomas Covenant turns the fantasy genre on its head. In far too many novels we have the Heroes on the Quest for the powerful Talisman that they can use to defeat the Bad Guy. Once they get it, the ballgame's over. Or even if they have trouble figuring out what to do with it, the climax is already at hand and the matter will soon be resolved. Instead, Donaldson gives Covenant the All Powerful Artifact right off. While he keeps Covenant from really knowing how to use it, the key thing that this allows Donaldson to explore the responsibility and futility of power and the liberating power of innocence. Think of the white gold as the US nuclear arsenal without its conventional forces and you being to see the ethical dilemmas.
4. Is Donaldson a good writer? Some people say they hate Donaldson's prose. Well, I'm not going to argue since I'm no Ph.D. in literature. But I enjoyed his writing at least. I was reading a few raves the other day about Gene Wolfe. One of them was that the person reading him had to keep looking up words in the dictionary. Well, for the record, Donaldson is the only writer who has ever forced me to go to the libray to look up words in an unabridged dictionary. And he did it twice! (For the record, the words were eyot and sabulous, though in fairness I think eyot is not in my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary mostly because it is an obscure alternate spelling of ait). Now I don't suggest that a profusion of fifty cent words is indicative of great writing, but if it's good enough for Wolfe, it should be good enough for Donaldson too, don't you think?
5. Great supporting cast. Ok, so you hate Covenant. He's not the only character in the book, you know. Saltheart Foamfollower, Lord Mhoram, Lord Foul, and others were very distinctive and well drawn characters, I thought. Many of them are even likeable. Heck, even Lord Foul was a bad guy I could relate to. When he said that seven times seven years stuff, I thought about Babe Ruth pointing his bat at the right field wall. I love it when the bad guys talk trash. "Yeah, I'm gonna school ya, and this is how." Larry Bird would approve.
6. Strong cultures. I liked the many cultures displayed throughout the books. The love of sea and song of the Giants, the love of women and honor of the Hauruchi, the weird of the Waynhim. Donaldson took a few strong characteristics of each (much as one might choose individualism and class mobility for American culture) and ran with them, building mostly interesting and distinctive peoples out of them. Tell me you don't like the Giants.
7. The Law of Time. Donaldson's Law of Time - that no act may be undone - infuses the work and shows that actions have consequences. This particularly works well with a scumbag like Covenant. Do you think just because the Lords didn't punish him for the rape of Lena that he escaped unscathed? No, for that act led to the birth of Elena, her ultimate death (as well as Lena's madness), and the destruction of the Staff of Law, paving the way for the Sunbane and all of the second series. In fact, virtually all of the series is derived from Covenant's rape in one way or another (the fall of Trell, the summoning of Hile Troy, the way Triock and Foamfollower summoned Covenant back to the Land, etc.). This Law hold Covenant responsible for his actions - and he knows it. And not just Covenant. In fact, this series could be seen is little more than a brutal object lesson in how we pay and pay for our choices.
8. We have met the enemy and he is us. Donaldson doesn't make Lord Foul some exogenous Evil Overlord, at least in one view we're given. Instead, the evil is right there inside Covenant, and by extension all of us.
9. A strong world. By the standards of the genre, Donaldson gives us an interesting world. I'll admit, his use of foreign terms such as Elohim to represent other tongues in his fantasy world bugged me. But the general setting is fairly solid.
10. The diverse reactions to fate. It's not what you've got, it's what you do. Donaldson shows how different people react differently to extreme circumstances, and the way it turns out for them. Faced with the overwhelming power of the Lords, the Haurchi swear the Vow. In a fantasic world that cannot possibly exist, Covenant demands that it is all a dream. Faced with their annihilation, the people of the Land decide to hold firm to their Oath of Peace, rejecting another Desecration. The different ways the Waynhim and the ur-viles deal with their weird. The reactions of the Giants and the Elohim to the Sunbane. Etc. You can't control the hand you're dealt, but you can control how you play it. There are so many themes like this scattered through the books that it's hard to keep track of them all.
Ok, I'm stopping now. If more come to me (and they probably will, since I haven't read the books in a couple years at least), I might post them. Again, don't consider this the definitive defense of Donaldson.
Do I think the books are perfect? No. But I do think that all things considered, they are stronger than anything else else I've read in the genre.
-- Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/
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