Fritz Leiber's "Bazaar of the Bizarre"

This morning I read “Bazaar of the Bizarre,” a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novelette by Fritz Leiber which was published in 1963 in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, a pulp magazine that focused on fantasy. First off, I love Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. If you don’t know who these guys are, then I highly recommend checking out their wikipedia page for more information than I can provide here. A basic summary: aside from being two of the most famous characters in the sword-and-sorcery tradition, they are also skilled swordsmen. More detail: Fafhrd is a giant, red-haired barbarian; the Gray Mouser is a tiny, tricky rogue. Without turning this article into an introduction to these characters, I do want to say that, aside from Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser define that particularly American version of fantasy known as “sword and sorcery.” And, yes, Dungeons and Dragons derives more from American “sword and sorcery” than Tolkieneqsue “high fantasy.” I could spend some time talking about the distinction between the two, but now is not the time.

This specific story is great for its humor. It kind of reminds of me of Don Quixote in that its main theme is about the disconnect between what one character perceives as beautiful and what other characters perceive as mundane/ugly/absurd. Here’s the premise: a sorcerer has set up shop in the city of Lankhmar. The goods he is hawking are useless garbage; however, he has bespelled his garbage so that it seems to those influenced by his magic that this garbage is exactly what they desire: delicious food, interesting books, beautiful treasures, attractive girl-slaves. Long story short, the Gray Mouser is enspelled by the sorcerer and Fafhrd is not. I won’t give away the conflict which ensues, but this story was highly entertaining.

A simple writing exercise: Write a 200 word summary of a character who has a personality trait that corresponds to a particular skill. For example, a *greedy* merchant who is very good at *selling* his wares. Or, an *honest* priest who is very good at revealing lies. You could start with coming up with the personality trait and then thinking about skills that might correspond to that trait. You can use the word-count of your description to justify your decision or to trace the history of your character or to physically describe them. Afterwords, file this character away for development later.