Art as Magic

One of the things I’m looking forward to in 2014 is the final novel of Lev Grossman's Magicians Trilogy. The series follows Quentin Coldwater as he attends Brakebills, a school for young magicians in Upstate New York. In high school Quentin is the smartest of the smart kids, but he soon finds himself among equals and betters. The books are labeled as urban fantasy, and an easy description would be Harry Potter for adults. Brakebills is a college, and the characters face problems you would expect college students to run into.

A big difference from Harry Potter and Hogwarts is that the magic system Grossman creates is one of ridiculous complexity. Harry waves a wand, utters some Latin, and he defeats the troll. In Quentin’s world the students have to be geniuses just to take the admissions test, and the magic is based on multiple archaic languages (Latin, Greek, German, Church Slavonic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Chinese, to name a few), their grammars, and an accompanying set of hand movements, all of which must be adjusted for the “Circumstances” the magician casts in, of which there are five levels, each level itself containing different conditions like location on the earth, the season, the stars, distance to closest body of water, all of which have an effect how the spell is cast. Each spell can have thousands of permutations. So being born with the ability is not enough; you have to be smart, and more importantly, you have to work very hard at craft.

When I reread The Magicians over the summer, I couldn't help but think that Grossman was treating magic in the novel as an analog for writing, and, at a certain level, what was said was a sort of ars poetica. While doing my poetry MFA it became a running joke to label a poem we didn't understand as an ars poetica (a poem, really any piece of art, about writing poems, or creating art). It’s an easy out when faced with explicating a difficult poem. Lots of nebulous abstraction, incoherent imagery, complex syntax? Well, then it’s an ars poetica, because writing poetry is an abstract, incoherent, and complex process. It really isn't. It’s just hard work, lots of trying, lots of failure. To be good at it means doing the same thing as it takes to be good at anything else: practice.

So when Quentin and his classmates learn magic, I can’t help but think Grossman is also talking about the creation of art. Yes, you need some innate ability, but success comes down to hard work. (Also, I’m not saying I’m a genius. Quentin is way smarter than I could ever be.) Grossman comes from a literary family. His brother works on the production of video games and has written two novels. His father is Allen Grossman, a poet whose book, The Sighted Singer, traveled well the corridors of UC Davis, where I did my undergrad studies, and who also taught at Hopkins, though he retired before I showed up. Lev is also the a book critic for Time. 

The easiest connection between magic and art is the creation of something from nothing, pulling something from the ether and making it exist in the real world. But I was more drawn to the magic school itself, how the students were taught and how they interacted with each other. They drank like camels at an oasis, and while the link between alcoholism and artists has become somewhat of a cliche, drinking was almost as common as reading among the fellows in my cohort.  One of the other problems that Grossman forces his young magicians to face is the "What are you going to do with that degree" question after graduation. You may think (I did), "Come on. You can do magic. Do whatever you want." But Quentin and his friends experience something of a post graduate ennui that leads them into trouble and acts as a motivator that moves the narrative into the final act. Anyone with a fine arts degree (or even a PhD in the humanities) battles with the "what are you going to do with that" question. There are even books to help wayward graduates find their way outside of the academic institution. 

The most dramatic use of the metaphor of magic as art comes to the surface in a scene where Quentin and his classmates are a day away from graduating and the dean conducts a secret ceremony. They stand in the darkness of the equivalent of a crypt under the school grounds. The stodgy headmaster, Dean Fogg, passes around a bottle of bourbon, and before tattooing demons into their shoulders, gives a little speech about what it means to be a magician:

“I think you’re magicians because you’re unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain […] because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.” The dean goes on to say that magicians use this inner pain and “burn it like fuel” in order to change the world they feel needs changing. 

Magicians, artists, feel the wrongs of the world, feel its beauty, feel its grit between their teeth, more keenly than others, and only they can do anything about it. This is what drives them. They have something to say. But first they must know their craft, practice and hone it, and only then will it have any effect on the world they wish to change.