Xanth Is a Four Letter Word

The Xanth episode of Crap Books has come and gone.

While we had fun discussing just how awful the books are on several levels (the prose is not great, the misogyny and objectification of women that’s the norm is awful, the internal logic and plots are nonsensical, and so on), one of the things that I’ve been thinking about is how awful the politics of A Spell for Chameleon are. Bink, the supposed hero, just following the rules no matter how unjust or cruel they may be is truly something that I’d forgotten. To clarify, not every hero or protagonist of a book needs to be an exemplar, but nothing that happens in A Spell for Chameleon challenges Bink’s spinelessness. If anything, Bink suffers no lasting consequences for his continued existence as a human doormat, which seems to hint at the author’s own beliefs and privilege.

I’ll be the first to say that writing isn’t as influential as direct action and activism are in changing personal politics, but when a purported escapist work targeted for young people echoes the status quo, I start to question my assumptions a bit. At the risk of being accused of making Xanth all about me, I’ll admit that I laughed with horrified recognition. I spent so much of my formative years following rules (even though I had my own doubts) and not knowing when to stand up for myself that I wonder if some of those behaviors were modeled after fictional “heroes” like Bink. I may be ascribing too much importance to Piers Anthony’s influence, but who really knows. As I’ve delved a bit into my own genre mis-educations, I’m seeing links and influences that are so deep they’ve been almost invisible to me, so I’m torn.

In any case, I feel like the Xanth books have fallen out of favor, and while that may affect Piers Anthony’s livelihood, I’d say he’s likely made as much money as a writer can over the course of his life. I’m not exactly going to cry when my nieces have no clue what Xanth books are by the time they’re in high school. One parting shot at the man who brought my past self some very dubious entertainment: