Archives for November 2008

I was 90% sure I was going to buy this book after just seeing the title: The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons, and Growing Up Strange. I mean, come on — memoir, Dungeons & Dragons, a nod to Richard Dawkins. Right up my alley. But I read the first two chapters in the bookstore just to make sure, then bought the book and read it straight through.

I would give 5 stars to the first 3/4 of this book. It’s a quick, fun read, and it’s a real rollercoaster between laugh-out-loud hilarity and cringe-inducing embarrassment. The author tells of how he spent his teenage years totally obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons. He spoke about nothing but D&D, hung out only with other players, spent all his money on books and accessories, and selected his clothes based on how much they looked like something a D&D character might wear. His focus on D&D was so over-the-top that it annoyed even other obsessive players, who ostracized him. (The book’s dedication, to the author’s wife, reads: “To Tabitha. Avoid this.”) One particularly vivid anecdote relates how one of the “bad girls” who hung out down at the local bus stop invited the author into a phone booth so that he could feel her boobs, but he blew his chance by first trying to impress her with his D&D knowledge. The author’s D&D friends were all male, mostly all megalomaniacal, and the atmosphere of the games was often one of ugly competition and verbal evisceration. Much of the book is a painfully acute exploration of the adolescent male psyche. (For example, in this exchange with his mother: “‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said. ‘Other kids ask for a bike. Why are you drawn to the macabre?’ My mum was very capable of unknowingly flattering me. For several weeks after she said this I couldn’t pass a mirror without looking into it, raising a raffish brow and saying ‘drawn to the macabre’ as if it was some caption for my image in the glass.”)

The book also sometimes conveys the excitement of playing D&D. “I had a dream when I was twelve that … I’d find friends who respected intelligence and wanted to learn things; I’d be in an environment where people told each other facts and read books and were proud of it.” And: “D&D is, I believe, something virtually unique and unprecedented in human history. It’s a story you can listen to at the same time as telling it … It’s like the best story you’ve ever read combined with the charge a good storyteller feels as he plays his audience … I have finished games feeling physically drained and actually wanted to continue to have my characters buy food at a shop or smoke a pipe in a tavern just to calm down before breaking with the game world entirely.”

My only real reservation about the first 3/4 of the book is that the author’s obsession with D&D minutiae is sometimes excessive, and I can easily imagine this boring — if not outright baffling — readers who aren’t familiar with the rules. (“When you’re in an underground or indoor setting one inch represented by the figure is to scale ten feet. When you’re in a wilderness setting one inch is ten yards … According to a very strict interpretation of the law, Billy’s fighter suddenly became capable of thirty yards a turn whereas the Ancient One — still underground — was only moving at sixty feet a turn until it got to the door.”)

Unfortunately, the last 1/4 of the book is dreadful, and is best avoided. For one thing it’s not funny, which is a real letdown after the earlier sections. For another, the author comes across as kind of a dick. Of course, the author’s behavior throughout the book has been insufferable, but this is forgivable and even somewhat endearing in a naive teenager. It’s not at all endearing coming from a forty-year-old man. The author expresses surprising bitterness about D&D, and makes bizarre claims, such as that D&D was so much fun that it forever ruined him for day jobs, since jobs just seem dull and unfulfilling compared to the magical world of D&D. (As if people who didn’t play D&D never find their jobs dull or unfulfilling.) He expresses withering disdain for any losers who still play D&D, and takes pride in having escaped back into reality. (Among the rewards that “reality” has to offer he lists “my wife” — okay so far — “the dog” — sure, why not? — and “TV” — TV? Um, hello?)

By the book’s end the author feels he’s grown up because he’s discarded D&D, but it’s pretty obvious that D&D was never his problem. He was his problem. (The fault is not in our TSRs, but in ourselves.) Throughout the book the author demonstrates some pretty constant and grievous character flaws — among them a tendency to desire women’s company merely for the status that he feels it affords him, and also a pattern of desperately seeking the approval of jerks who despise him while at the same time he alienates his true friends. Toward the end of the book he mentions that after he stopped playing D&D he started dating, but he never talks about any of the women with any kind of specificity or affection — certainly nothing approaching the kind of sensitivity and concern with which he illuminates his friendship with his best D&D buddy. Maybe he’s just choosing his topics, but overall this contributes to the impression that the author regards women as some sort of trophy that reformed nerds can win. In fact, at the same time that he lauds “reality,” he makes reality sound rather dreary, and only writes about it — drugs, jobs, women — in the most perfunctory way. You’d think that “reality” might have furnished him with some interesting anecdotes that would really illustrate just how empty all his time spent playing D&D was, but actually it comes across as the other way around. Which leads us to character flaw #2. The whole final section of the book seems like a repeat of his same old pattern — desperately seeking the approval of people who despise him anyway (in this case “normal” people), and who don’t really notice or care what he does, while at the same time he disses his one true friend — D&D, in my analogy here, the one thing in his life that he seems capable of writing about with real passion.

There’s one particular incident toward the end of the book that’s not just off-base but is actually disturbing. In college, the author is participating in a live action role-playing session, and somehow the group has roped in some young teenagers to play monsters. The author accidentally pokes a makeshift sword into the eye of one of the kids, which injures the kid badly. As the kid writhes in pain, an attractive girl whom the author knows walks by and asks him what he’s doing dressed up like that. Suddenly the author feels embarrassed to be hanging out with all these dweebs, so he goes off with the girl instead, leaving the other role-players to cart the injured kid off to the hospital. And this is presented as an example of the author’s growing maturity and of choosing reality over fantasy. Huh? Am I crazy? To me it seems more like borderline sociopathic behavior. Wouldn’t the “mature” thing be to say to the girl something like: “Oh hi. I’m doing some live action role-playing. I guess it looks a little silly if you’ve never seen it before, but I enjoy it, and, you know, you can’t let other people’s opinions determine how you live your life. But listen, this kid here is hurt pretty bad, and it’s my fault. I’m going to go with him over to the hospital and make sure he’s all right. I’ll see you around, okay?”

So, I’m conflicted. I really loved the first 3/4 of the book but was deeply disappointed by the final 1/4. I’d recommend it for old D&D fans, but definitely put it down around the time the author starts going on and on about heavy metal music.