“Magic, Quentin discovered, wasn’t romantic at all. It was grim and repetitive and deceptive. And he worked his ass off and became very good at it.” - Lev Grossman, The Magicians
Every aspect of Lev Grossman’s 2009 fantasy novel The Magicians is a brushstroke in a painting depicting the horrors of growing up and facing the realizations of adulthood. Many of these strokes are intentional, as I’ll discuss and which you’ll see in the quotes I’ve included throughout this piece.
A few instead arise from the act of reading and engaging with the novel. Any pitch which accurately portrays The Magicians as a fascinating and adult blending of Harry Potter, Narnia and The Secret History will leave a bitter taste in your mouth when you learn just how unpleasant the narration can be at times. (Point-of-view character Quentin Coldwater is a little toxic and insular to begin with, growing into a real asshole over the course of the book until an abrupt and arguably unearned change of heart at the eleventh hour.) Of course it’s impossible for this book — or any — to be perfect. Welcome to adulthood.
“Sometimes I wonder if man was really meant to discover magic … If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life. Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded.” ― Lev Grossman, The Magicians
That quote comes from Dean Fogg, headmaster of Brakebills magic school, on the night of Quentin’s graduation. In any other fantasy novel, this message would be incredibly positive — maintaining one’s childhood imagination and sense of wonder is fundamental to the genre. Here, it is instead wistful and a little foreboding; it questions everything the students have done for the past five years, as well as most of Fogg’s own life.
Quentin’s class has more reason than most to question the presence of magic in their lives. During a long and frustrating lecture in their third year, Quentin follows a sudden urge to get one over on their professor by distracting him in the middle of a long and complex spell. He succeeds, causing Professor March to forget a single syllable, and The Beast appears in the room as though it has always been there. It looks like a man in a simple grey suit, with a face obscured by a branch of leaves hanging in space.
The Beast, whose face is obscured by a swarm of moths in the show - by Kris & Jen
This scene is a marvel of abject tension, fear and regret for Quentin. (Apparently it is also one of the best scenes of the adaptation, though the number of departures from the book put me off a little.) He, the class and Professor March find themselves locked in place for hours while The Beast explores the environment with idle curiosity. One student (her bravery and magical skill evoke a certain House, if not character, from Harry Potter) manages to break free and attempts to attack The Beast, and is eaten alive for her trouble.
In the end The Beast simply disappears of its own accord, despite the combined efforts of the school’s faculty to break into the room. A crucial part of the scene hitting home for me is the incredible soreness of everyone’s muscles when they are finally released; they were literally trapped in place, rather than being frozen in time, and feel every minute of that incredible physical stress afterward.
“I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is it because you're special? Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.” ― Lev Grossman, The Magicians
I love the sentiment that Dean Fogg is conveying in this quote, since it brings together the seemingly disparate aspects of prolonged childhood and brutal reality that the book is dedicated to exploring. Magic is the key to making the change you are desperate to see in the world. Unfortunately, the wrong characters are hearing it — as will become clear, Quentin remains lost for much of the book to come.
It could be that the author just wanted to squeeze this idea in, regardless of whether it fit (I've done that once or twice in my time). But I think it works. After all, when is the right time to hear a wake-up call about the meaning and direction of your life? Isn't there always something else that seems more immediately important, which holds your focus in spite of any argument to the contrary? It's been a few years since I read the sequels, and I'll be curious on returning to see whether Fogg's words ever ring true for Quentin and his friends. As far as The Magicians is concerned, purposelessness is the true enemy.
The Magicians: New Class variant cover art by Alexa Sharpe
“You don’t have to do anything. This is what you don’t understand! You don’t know any older magicians except our professors. It’s a wasteland out there. Out here. You can do nothing or anything or everything, and none of it matters. You have to find something to really care about to keep from running totally off the rails. A lot of magicians never find it … I know you think it’s going to be all quests and dragons and fighting evil and whatever, like in Fillory. I know that’s what you think. But it’s not. You don’t see it yet. There’s nothing out there … It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be so much harder than you think. They don’t even know, Quentin. They think they’re happy. That’s the worst part.” ― Lev Grossman, The Magicians
Alice Quinn is a classmate of Quentin's who had to fight for her place at Brakebills after her brother died while attending the school. Her parents are skilled magicians undertaking niche arcane pursuits, but simultaneously are barely functional as people. She is terrified of following in their footsteps and tries to get this through to Quentin when they begin dating, but he just can't get there. Even seeing the abyss for himself doesn't stick:
“But where was he going to go, exactly? It was not considered the thing to look panicked or even especially concerned about graduation, but everything about the world after Brakebills felt dangerously vague and underthought to Quentin. The bored, bedraggled specters of Alice’s parents haunted him. What was he going to do? What exactly? Every ambition he’d ever had in his life had been realized the day he was admitted to Brakebills, and he was struggling to formulate a new one with any kind of practical specificity … the worldwide magical ecology was suffering from a serious imbalance: too many magicians, not enough monsters.” ― Lev Grossman, The Magicians
It can be terrifying to take a second and really consider our place in the world; That's part of why we work and play so damn much. The Magicians removes any need for work — though amusingly enough, Brakebills regularly places graduates in pointless corporate administrative jobs to give them something to do — and takes the fun out of most mundane play. Quentin graduates with the ability to shape the world to meet his desires with the flick of his wrist, and does nothing with it except lose himself in drugs and alcohol alongside a few of his classmates.
Cover art for The Magicians Comic by Qistina Khalidah
Alice's burning belief and Dean Fogg's moral reflect the reality that Quentin can't see until the bitter end: We need a purpose in this life if we are going to survive it and make any sense of it. Sure, that idea is heightened and confused in a book where the characters go on to explore a world straight out of their children's fantasy novels. But it gets cloudy in our own lives too, doesn't it? Stress can make it nearly impossible to see the forest for the trees which constantly get in our way.
As in real life, Quentin's lack of purpose makes him easy prey for the manipulation of others. Following one tasty-looking breadcrumb after another, Quentin gets people hurt and killed while constantly complaining about the injustices done to him. The climax tries to suggest that he suddenly becomes his own character, but that development is followed by two further moments where adventure and opportunity have to come and find him.
The world we live in his harsh, complex and vast, and it is all too easy to become lost. It's tough for us to screw up bad enough to summon The Beast and we have a lot of crap in our way before we reach the level of purposelessness of a graduate magician, but it's still important to remember what we're doing and why we're doing it. Choose again.
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I still highly recommend this book and it's sequels, if you have the stomach for Quentin's crap! Then we can chat together about how Alice, Julia and Amanda deserved so much better 😭
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