Fritz Leiber, "Adept's Gambit," and Embedded Narratives

Over my coffee this morning I was reading more Fritz Leiber and I came across a passage I’d like to share. It demonstrates Leiber’s playful, yet not-entirely-superficial style in an intense way. It’s from the first section of the story, “Adept’s Gambit,” which relates a time when Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser get magically whisked away to the Hellenistic world. A little more context: Fafhrd is upset because he can’t woo any girls because he’s suffering from a curse. Whenever he starts “making out” with girls, they turn into swine (not proverbially, but literally—a strange curse, I know). In the story he encounters a philosopher who tries to give him solace.

Excuse the long quotation:

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It was then that an ill-advised curios young Greek philosopher suggested to [Fafhrd] that the soul or inward form of the thing loved is alone of importance, the outward form having no ultimate significance.

‘You belong to the Socratic school?’ Fafhrd questioned gently.

The Greek nodded.

‘Socrates was the philosopher who was able to drink unlimited quantities of wine without blinking?’

Again the quick nod.

‘This was because his rational soul dominated his animal soul?’

‘You are learned,’ replied the Greek, with a more respectful but equally quick nod.

‘I am not through. Do you consider yourself in all ways a true follower of your master?’

This time the Greek’s quickness undid him. He nodded, and two days later he was carried out of the wine shop by friends, who found him cradled in a broken wine barrel, as a new-born in no common manner. For days he remained drunk, time enough for a small sect to spring up who believed him a reincarnation of Dionysus and as such worshiped him. The sect was dissolved when he became half-sober and delivered his first oracular address, which had as its subject the evils of drunkenness. (Leiber, Adepts Gambit; New York: Ace, 1968, pg. 111).

***

So, there is a thread of “frat-boy” humor to this. I fully admit it; however, there is nuance here that truly makes Fritz Leiber great. First off, you have an exhilarating juxtaposition here. Here we have married both a high philosophical register with a low, base register. You have philosophy over quaffed wine, a discussion of metaphysics shaded by liquored up blood. You have humor with a serious theme: outward appearances and inward beauty. And even more interesting, on an explicit level, this embedded story has nothing to do with the overarching narrative of the plot. It’s kind of an aside, a pleasurable little jaunt, a quick flash of humor.

I love how Leiber follows these little anecdotes out. It’s almost as if he identifies a thread and then follows it to its source to illuminate this or that unique element of his imagined world. This is how, in spite of the fact that so many of his stories are about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, much of the focus is the city of Lankhmar and Newhon itself. The setting, usually subordinate to the characters and their actions, is set on an equal plane in Leiber’s work. These kinds of fun, “embedded narratives” work to achieve that effect.

Exercise: Write a brief story, no more than 300 words, where a character talks to another character. Have one of the characters relate an embedded story to that character that is somehow connected to their relationship. In other words, write a story within a story using dialog. Save this. It might serve as the beginning of a new story.

Feel free to post your work on the workplace. I'd love to read it!

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.