NEW YORK — "There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell," says novelist and Time book critic Lev Grossman, over drinks at a hotel bar in the Time Warner Building.
"I remember ['Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' author] Susanna Clarke telling me about the first time she wrote a scene with a fairy in it and saying to herself, 'Am I really writing a book with a fairy in it?' It's definitely a naked-lunch moment where you're going through the portal and declaring yourself as a fantasy novelist."
Grossman's new novel "The Magicians" is his first clear declaration -- and, not coincidentally, his best book by a long margin. Spells are cast, demons unleashed; indeed, a fairy is present (albeit one who notes that "pixie" is the technical term). The novel manages a literary magic trick: It's both an enchantingly written fantasy and a moving deconstruction of enchantingly realized fantasies.
Grossman has approached the portal before, in his slackerific 1997 debut, "Warp," and "Codex" (2004), which set up mysterious resonances between a rare medieval manuscript and an interactive computer game. But "The Magicians" doesn't just take us through the portal -- it's about the portal. "I've always been interested in those moments when you cross between worlds," Grossman says. He cites C.S. Lewis' "Narnia" chronicles, Norton Juster's "The Phantom Tollbooth," as well as the cartoon based on Dungeons and Dragons.
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In the tradition
"The Magicians" is the story of Quentin Coldwater, an off-the-charts brainy, socially awkward high school senior from Brooklyn (where Grossman currently lives) who gets two unbelievable opportunities: to learn magic (at Brakebills College, a school in upstate New York) and to visit the land of Fillory, as described in his favorite fantasy series (a wholly convincing Grossman concoction). Why, then, is he so unhappy?
"There's powerful anxiety-of-influence action going on when you're attempting to slaughter an effigy of your elders and betters," Grossman says. He's talking about writing one's own fantasy novel in the shadow of such giants as J.K. Rowling, Ursula K. Le Guin, the aforementioned Lewis and Clarke, T.H. White and Fritz Leiber.
Grossman might also be referring, more generally, to his own identity as a writer. As a book critic for Time, he covers the books you'd expect a major news weekly to cover, and enjoys it. He marvels at having met Philip Roth, Joan Didion, John Updike and other literary lions as part of his day job.
