China Miéville, Un Lun Dun (part 4 of 4)

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So what do we learn from the several thousand words already expended on Un Lun Dun?

For me, the essential point is that Miéville’s “weird-ification,” as I’ve called it, happens at both cosmetic and deep levels, and sometimes even at a meta-level. In fact, the cosmetic weirdness is so wild and prolific that it seems many reviewers are blinded by it, not seeing the deeper weirdness that makes the book so extraordinary.

At a meta-level, a number of foundational tropes of YA fantasy are subjected to explicit criticism within the text, and found wanting. What’s more, acceptance of the stock tropes is aligned with authoritarian conservatism—and thus, in this book, with the “banality of evil,” as Hannah Arendt put it.

The Propheseers, realizing that the prophecy on which they’ve staked everything is wrong and unreliable, are (understandably) knocked for a loop. Most end up allying with the two principal villains. This is not because they decide to side with evil as such, but because they cannot function without telling everyone to behave in an orderly fashion and to have faith that all will turn out well in the end—to have faith, ultimately, in the Propheseers. We might say their existence and sense of self-worth depends on being in authority: they would rather wield authority blindly than consider questions that might challenge their position of power. Given the choice of trying something new or acceding to the increasingly dubious demands of obviously dangerous allies, they go with the latter, because ultimately although they’re used to giving orders they are also unable to think for themselves: they must take orders (from the prophecy, and now from the villains).

Thus Un Lun Dun attacks the YA trope by revealing that prophecy is necessarily aligned with authority and obedience, conservatism and narrow-mindedness. Instead of asking us to side with the hero because she’s the Chosen One, the book has us side with the hero because of who she is as a person—the UnChosen.

At a plot level, foundational YA fantasy tropes are made to serve this same anti-authoritarian, even anarchistic end. When Deeba is presented with an orderly quest to follow, she tries it—she’s not an anarchist for the sake of it—but soon realizes there isn’t time to do it the expected way. So she cuts to the chase, leaping to the end-point with blatant disregard for normal procedure. She succeeds, of course, but in the process the whole thing gets yet another characteristically Miéville twist.

In the second-to-last phase of the quest, the Chosen is supposed to present either the black or the white crown to two bishops, in return for which they’ll provide assistance defeating the Black Window (on the other side of which lies the UnGun). The bishops, who claim to be deadly enemies, are of a type: posh C-of-E gentlemen with upper-crust accents and oh-so-proper manners. They’ve been enemies since forever, because of some war nobody remembers now (they don’t have all the details clear either)—a war which ended but wasn’t decided because one crown was surrendered (black or white), but nobody knows which. Now that the Shwazzy has come to settle things, they shake hands and wish each other luck and promise not to be beastly whoever wins or loses.

Of course, Deeba hasn’t done the previous steps, so she doesn’t have either crown, and she’s not the Shwazzy anyway. So in essence she points out that the bishops’ lives and companionship—let’s face it, friendship of a kind—are based on the fact that they don’t know which crown was surrendered. They’re content with the status quo, and actually rather nervous and uncertain about what happens once the crown is produced and everything changes. Deeba suggests maybe they’d rather not know, because who really cares anyway?

Deeba’s approach relies on humanity rather than authority. What matters is that the two men get along well and enjoy one another’s company. What doesn’t matter is this abstract notion of the “real winner” of some war nobody even remembers. The ultimate truth of the story won’t solve anything.

Here we get at a deeper YA fantasy trope, the notion that once the heroes find out the secret truth of the back-history, they can reveal it to the Powers That Be and be home in time for tea and medals. The world doesn’t work that way, and in many books there’s at least the implication that it would be a better world if it did. Un Lun Dun goes in the opposite direction: Who needs Powers That Be to settle everything? Why should we grant them authority and power like that? Instead, our hero solves problems locally at a personal and human level, making the world a better place a little bit at a time and not depending on the approval or power of higher authorities.

I suppose what all this means is that Un Lun Dun is, in my reading at least, a rethinking of the YA fantasy genre on a different political basis. Miéville isn’t just objecting to the stock tropes because they’re boring (though that’s part of it), but also because they tell kids to obey authority and behave themselves—even when it doesn’t look that way. You may think Harry and Percy and their ilk are rule-breakers, but at a deeper level they’re not: they sidestep or violate trivial rules but obey the higher principles handed down to them, and they accept the authority structures which underwrite the rules. Miéville takes these systems and overlays them on one another, so that the rules and structures within the fantasy are shown to be equivalent to those of the fantasy as novel. Then his characters assault the structures in UnLondon, thereby revealing (without the heavy-handed pedantry and allegorism of this column) the failures of the genre—and all without seeming to dislike or disrespect the genre!

When my son was struggling with his essay on Un Lun Dun, he was asked to find a song that could serve as the “theme music” for the novel. I dug up a number of examples, but we settled very easily on The Clash, “London Calling.”

I like to think that China Miéville would approve of that choice, and of my calling his novel a punk YA fantasy.

As always, thanks for reading!