The portals into the lands of childhood are well established: wardrobes, mirrors, rabbit holes, mysterious letters. Known, too, are the obvious pitfalls: evil sorcerers or witches, malicious and capricious monarchs, fantastic and fearsome beasts. These lands have rules; protocols apply to the formula. Like cooks plugging ingredients into a recipe, many authors have created their own variations from this mold. Just as any home cook can follow a recipe, any author can step into a trend. The difference between the creation of a pallid copy and genius lies in the understanding of the fundamentals of the craft and in the creator’s ability to deconstruct and completely recreate the mold.
I’ll admit to some trepidation when Lev Grossman’s The Magicians was first released in hardcover. The comparisons to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter intrigued me, yes, but they were also cause for concern. In the hands of a less inventive author, the basic premise of a troubled teenage genius finding his way to a magician’s college could have resulted in an uninspired journey to an ersatz Hogwarts. However, The Magicians instead demonstrates the alchemy produced when a master builds upon an idea. Just as a Michelin-starred chef may deconstruct and rebuild a sophisticated fantasy from a concept as humble as mac-n-cheese, so Grossman has taken the nursery fantasy world to a darker, richer, and far more sophisticated dimension.
Lev Grossman appears to have recognized the inevitable linkage in the popular mind of his collegiate sorcerer, Quentin Coldwater, with Rowling’s boy wizard. Rather than attempt to obscure the connection or to blink coyly away, Grossman inserts several sly nods to Rowling’s world, and indeed comes right out and makes the comparison himself, knowing perhaps where the judgment of the discerning reader will lie.
A chill settled over the group, where they lay on the sun-warm turf. Even Quentin knew that using magic to alter one’s physical appearance never ended well. In the world of magical theory it was a dead spot: something about the inextricable, recursive connection between your face and who you were – your soul, for lack of a better word – made it hellishly difficult and fatally unpredictable. When Quentin had first gotten to Brakebills, he’d wondered why everybody didn’t just make themselves ridiculously good-looking. He’d looked at the kids with an obviously flawed feature – like Gretchen with her leg, or Eliot with his twisted jaw – and wondered why they didn’t get somebody to fix them up, like Hermione with her teeth in Harry Potter. But in reality it always ended in disaster.
If Rowling’s world is literary comfort food, Grossman serves up his version of adolescent fantasy piquantly spiced, truffled, and accompanied by a fine, astringently dry, wine. Brakebills College is no Hogwarts. No wise headmaster exhorts the students toward a greater nobility. Instead, upon graduation, the world weary dean passes bottles of whiskey around the circle of graduates and delivers his theory of the role of magicians.
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