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in ur novel eatin ur book

The Rape of Beowulf
I picked up Gaiman's Stardust, got about halfway through, realized I couldn't give two shits about any of the characters and that there was far too much extra padding word-wise, and put it down.

I picked up Charles de Lint's Widdershins, realized that it was cut from the same cloth as Gaiman's American Gods, and got maybe four chapters in before my overused concepts sensor started shrieking about NO MORE FAIRIES NO MORE FAIRIES AND ESPECIALLY NO MORE EUROPEAN FAIRIES TRANSPLANTING TO AMERICA. Then I put it down. Too bad--I liked his straight-up native oddities stuff.


I picked up Kiernan's novelization of Gaiman's screenplay Beowulf, mostly out of a morbid sort of curiosity--how would modern-day storytellers take on the work that'd been one of the (many) banes of my Major British Writers class?


Well, I didn't put that particular header on this post for no reason.


Overall the book wasn’t good. There were a lot of problems, like when the characterization was inconsistent (Beowulf speaks well of Norse gods in one breath, then basically denies them in another), or when the dialogue went from modern-sounding vernacular to stilted lines to the semi-consistent use of “swifan” as a fill-in for “fuck.” Or when characters’ names got confused, resulting in instances where a character miles way somehow remained active in the conversation. Or when the narrative leapt from borderline-poetic to urple to sounding like a lead bar dropped on a wooden floor. Or when the random use of italics in speech made me stop and try to sound out the sentence. Or how someone was watching waaay too much 300 when this got put on paper.

Beowulf, his intro chapter: Pull for Beowulf! Pull for gold! Pull for glory!

Me: Pull for . . . Spartaaa?

By p. 304, I’d given up on anything resembling seriousness.

Beowulf: This is madness!

Me: THIS. IS. GREENLAND!

(See, editors? We italicize the punctuation if it belongs to an exclamation in italics—CMS 6.3-6.6. It bothers me when you don’t.)

But frightening the coworkers with my Spartan declarations aside . . . This book read like a dirty bastard compilation between Frank Miller and Diane Paxton. Every female character mentioned was young and gorgeous, or ageless and still pretty good-looking, or terribly mind-breakingly beautiful. And whores (whores whores whores whores). The random ones want to indiscriminately sleep with Beowulf & his men if they aren't nameless arm-candy/victims. Kiernan pushes for some sort of characterization for the queen (who gets passed along from king to king as violet-eyed arm-candy & bed-warmer)(They’ve always gotta have one with “violet” eyes, don’t they?), but the result feels hollow. Even the bright-mossy-green-eyed seer (older than the horribly bent and weathered Unferth but still hot) basically admits to random acts of WTF: when accused of selling her body to demons, she returns with "What I do with my body is no concern of yours" (p. 250).

And then there's lapis-eyed Grendel's Mom, who has no name and also has no sense. She's said to be dearly dreadfully hurt every time something she knows/loves dies—so she keeps nailing kings and having monster babies for the next king to kill. I understand that the source material was more a man’s manly man epic (of mandom) with barely a mention of women, but srsly now.

Even more blatant than this is the heavy-duty CHRISTIANS BAD, PAGANS GOOD theme. Post-Grendel (I'm pretty sure the book said the time jump was thirty years, though historically fifty passed between Beowulf's gaining kingship and fighting the dragon) everyone that's a pain in Beowulf's ass is a Christian. And they're the hella shitty Christian-types too: Unferth murders the seer in cold blood, but he goes on as if nothing's happened as his Christian son (who witnessed the murder) just kinda goes home. Beowulf's Christian queen is frigid. The Christian priest is there to be dour, mope when he’s excluded from funerals, and stutter on about “If you question it, you’re endangering your immortal soul!” when Beowulf decides to try his hand at religious persecution.



But what really bowled me over with WTF was something that took a little bit to synthesize. Inconsistent characterization means that though Grendel’s Mom tells him that he’s a bigger monster than Grendel, Beowulf doesn’t actually really do anything monstrous besides nail her. And even in that instance, it wasn’t really his fault.

No, really.

Like I said, I didn't drop this particular title on this particular post for no reason.

Grendel's Mom comes out of the water, disarms Beowulf, and magics him beyond thought or resistance.

There's a word we use for this.

Yes. Grendel's Mom rapes Beowulf.



(If you listen, far away, you can hear the English majors shrieking.)

But for all intents and purposes, this could've been pulled off in a decent way. Beowulf isn't quite himself when he comes back out of the pit the next morning, and he doesn't even have a story ready for when people start asking him what happened. This totally could've been played that he was a victim who kept a thirty-(or fifty-)year silence out of shame. But when everyone starts shrilling later about the "sins of the fathers," this theory goes out the window.

Unless you count being the victim of sexual assault as a sin. If that’s the case, I might need to set someone on fire. Accepting ill-gotten gain isn't excusable, but one can't really blame Beowulf for entering into a bargain when he didn't have a choice in the matter at all.

So yeah, Beowulf gets raped, goes home with Grendel's head, and is declared a hero. He gets the kingship, the old king’s hawt wife, and super luck in future battles—everything except a kid. Then thirty or fifty or however many years down the line, Grendel’s Mom pops back up and is all “O hay thar, ur kid? A dragon.”

Well, not quite like that. Beowulf goes to see what’s been setting his people and kingdom on fire and meets up with this beautiful beautiful golden man who’s beautiful and naked except for his bondage gear. The man starts going on about how he never really had a father to love him or give him a name and that’s his excuse for being a gigantic flaming shit. And at this outpouring of naked (beautiful) frustration, Beowulf becomes understanding and—NOT! Come on, Geat-man! All the kid wanted was a hug and a name! But nooo, you had to snub him and call him things so he'd turn into a gigantic dragon bent on destroying everything and everyone you ever loved.

See, I can even give Grendel’s Mom’s kid a name. A perfect name.

He was a man. I mean, he was a dragon-man! Er, maybe he was just a dragon! And he flies about burninating the countryside, and burninating the peasants . . .

Beowulf's kid is Trogdor.

“O hay, ur kid? Trogdor. Sorry, j0.”


Seriously, this is the best part of the entire book—imagining Beowulf clinging for dear life to Jr. as the Trogdor theme screams as the background music. Otherwise, this book was pretty much made of fail.

But now I need screenshots of Trogdor/Beowulf Jr. I could make the best icon ever.



I'm afraid to see if the movie's any better, so I picked up a Best of Lovecraft collection and am still working on Laurie’s The Gunseller, which is still good. Mm, brain cleaner. :P