Corwin Is Wrong

 Spoiler Warning: I'm going to spoil a bit of book 5 of Roger Zelazny's Amber novels, and I'm also really going to spoil his unrelated short story "A Rose For Ecclesiastes". 

 

I say the following sentence frequently when I'm talking in person about Amber, but it dawned on me that I'm not sure I've ever put it directly in writing on this blog:

I believe that the thesis statement or through-line of the first five Amber novels is "Corwin is wrong." About everything. Every 50 pages, the reader discovers something new that he's wrong about. At least once per novel, the thing he was wrong about is huge and world-shaking, and utterly transforms our understanding of the universe. Being wrong is kind of Corwin's thing.

This is important. Not only because it's a major theme of the books, and critical to their mystery and procedural plotlines, but also because Corwin is a misogynist. He is instantly contemptuous and dismissive of his sisters in book one, writing them off as unimportant, incapable, and at best worthy of his big manly protection. This, like everything else, is an assessment about which Corwin is tragically wrong.  Deirdre is a bad-ass hyper-competent warrior-woman who cracks the spines of werewolves with her bare hands, and all of his sisters are way more clever and skilled then Corwin gives them credit for. To say more verges on spoiler territory, but if you don't understand that Corwin is wrong about everything, those early opinions he shares about his sisters in book one are hard to stomach.

I mean, yes the novels are older, and from a less-enlightened decade... and I'm not saying Corwin isn't a wrong headed pig...but I feel like the truth that is clearly there in the subtext (but just not on Corwin's conscious radar) is a lot less dated and objectionable than it seems upon first reading of the first book. A book whose title, unfortunately, also pushes the sexism by declaring in large font that only male heirs of Amber matter. Even knowing it's wrong and that's subtly the point, there are still passages that are cringe-inducing. It's a shame, because the books are full of wondrously imaginative concepts, multilayered mythologizing, vivid and unique imagery, and clever wordplay. All of that greatness is potentially rendered unpalatable by his main character's sexist worldview, and by the slow understated way the author gradually reveals the inaccuracy of this aspect of Corwin's philosophy, threaded amongst all the other flashier things he's likewise proven wrong about. I would have loved to see Deirdre or Fiona or Dara directly call him out on this BS, and they never do. 

Now, I'm obviously a Zelazny apologist, but I don't think I'm just forcing my own interpretation into the text. Corwin assumes his sisters are irrelevant to the succession struggle, but (and here's where that spoiler alert comes in) his sister Fiona in particular is absolutely critical to the outcome. Corwin is wrong about her, repeatedly.  She's more powerful than Corwin, and understands more of the universe's secret truths than nearly all of her siblings, and is a far smoother schemer than any of them. She employs magics that Corwin can't hope to understand, breaks the laws of the physics, and makes it look like child's play while she's at it. She makes an assassination attempt in a room full wary, hyper-vigilant warrior-gods, literally under their noses, and then calmly interacts with them all for an hour after the blade is found sticking out of someone's kidney before strolling away olly-olly-oxen-free. If she had not parted ways from Brand, the villian(s) would have won. But that's not exactly clear-cut feminism. I mean, you could interpret Fiona's witchy ways and changing allegiances as yet another form of misogyny on the part of the author, especially if the Amber novels are the only thing you've ever read by him. For a long time, I've hoped I was reading authorial intent correctly, but also worried that maybe I was just giving Zelazny way too much credit.

Recently, I read A Rose For Ecclesiastes, which was one of the first stories by Zelazny to have ever been published. It's a remarkably clever myth-laden tale of a human linguist meeting an alien culture and falling in love with an exotic alien woman. As you read through it, you find familiar tropes of the star-crossed lovers, with an undercurrent about an ancient prophecy and a dying civilization. You think you know where it's going, and the glorious but predictable way it will surely end. Then you get to the last two paragraphs, and the rug is pulled out from under the main character and the reader alike. Gallinger is as wrong as Corwin. The woman he's in love with does not reciprocate his feelings, and he's a big dumb wrong-headed idiot for not realizing it sooner. And where you might expect then the story to follow other tropes about him carrying a torch and trying to win her love, it instead just ends. The brief but powerful realization of the sudden completion of the story is clearly this: being the main character of your own life story does not automatically entitle you to the love and admiration of others. Neither does it guarantee that the truth of the  world in any way resembles your biased perceptions and opinions.  Sometimes you're just wrong, and the only mature response is to incorporate the new information, and move on. Apparently, that's been part of Zelazny's message from the very beginning. 

(That, or I'm falling victim to confirmation bias.)