William Tong: "To Mr. Gladstone: A Sexy Narrative Needs a Sexy World"

To Mr. Gladstone: A Sexy Narrative Needs a Sexy World

By William Tong

The first time I picked up The Lord of the Rings, I was pretty hyped. Fresh from my adventures There and Back Again and surfing the waves of a fantasy high, I plopped down on my special reading couch, savored the cover material with solemn delicacy, and proceeded to read. Before long, I was deeply, wildly, overwhelmingly! -- asleep.

No offense to Tolkien, of course. He’s a whiz with invented languages, built a beautiful world, revolutionized modern fantasy, etc., etc., but to be absolutely honest, no reader could possibly stomach pages upon pages about Hobbit marijuana, even if Tobold Hornblower of the Southfarthing’s Longbottom family really did grow the first true pipe-weed in the days of Isengrim the Second. Don’t get me wrong--the details where great and everything--but sometimes, I’d be hurting for a little Gandalf-sorcery-magic-awesomeness before getting slammed with a short novel’s worth of talking heads and background minutiae. To be fair, it was a pleasant read and tickled my geek-bones. But in the end, it took me somewhere in the ball park of seven or eight tries before finally, like Sam and Frodo wrestling the One Ring up the last few steps of Mount Doom, I (almost) finished! -- needing only a well-timed bite from Gollum (in this case, a Speech Team coach) to bring the darn thing home.

So I suppose, in summary, I liked The Lord of the Rings. I just didn’t like reading it.

Ironic as that sounds, when I think back on LotR, The Hobbit, and (especially) The Silmarillion, I don’t remember how mind-numbing the books could be. What I do remember is the allure of the setting, the intrinsic magic of the world. At the end of the day, the specifics of the prose and choices in pacing don’t matter nearly as much as the peace of the Shire, terror of Mordor, fading richness of Lothlórien, and revitalized glory of Gondor. Reading the Lord of the Rings, in that sense, not only provided a surefire cure to the hardiest strains of insomnia, but also offered a chance to trek across a world at once recognizable yet perhaps infinitely more wondrous than my own.

So to answer the question, the single most important feature of any narrative that makes it “kinky” for me is the quality of the world. A story could have a breathtaking plot, perfect pacing, prose so clean you can eat off it, but unless it’s got a setting and premise to match, it slips through my mind like sand through a sieve.

To draw examples from class readings, consider the perennial SF favorites Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Lord of Light.

 For me, reading Dick’s novel was a thrill ride. There was fighting. There was killing. There was trickery. Heck, there was even taboo sex with a manufactured lady. I finished DADES? in just a couple breathless sittings, enjoying surges of adrenaline from the comfort of the sofa.

Zelazny’s story, on the other hand, took a far more mellow route. He took his time, meandering around the world, exploring the intricacies of the politics, taking care to convey a measure of culture, stripping away enough of the religion to reveal tantalizing glimpses of the technological machinery whirring underneath. In short, he developed a vibrant world replete with neat mechanics, complicated relationships, and--most importantly--the illusion of depth and the sense that it could really exist in some far off, magical dimension. While reading Lord of Light was not nearly as edge-of-seat gripping as Androids, thinking back months later on the two stories, it’s Great-Souled Sam wandering beneath the Bridge of the Gods I remember and ultimately enjoy more, much more than Deckard and his guns.

Ultimately, I read stories to escape Bolingbrook, Illinois for a little while and adventure across Middle Earth, the surface of another planet, or someplace wilder, more magical still. I don’t really need the action-packed plots or heart-thrumming story-lines (that’s what Netflix is for). What I do need is a rich, deep, engaging world--and that’s something I can find only in a sexy narrative.