By DAN SCHERAGA
"The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange" (Soho Press. 288 pages. $25), by Mark Barrowcliffe: As the recent cult documentaries "King of Kong" and "Darkon" have shown, geeks make for great entertainment — even for those who don't necessarily share their weird interests. Mark Barrowcliffe's humorous, self-deprecating memoir of his misspent youth, "The Elfish Gene," is another welcome addition to the growing nerdsploitation genre.
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"I knew far more about the wants and needs of a golden dragon than I ever did a girl," he confesses early in his story. That's because at an impressionable age, he discovered Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy role-playing game that was a sensation among adolescents in the 1970s and 1980s before it was supplanted by such online games as World of Warcraft.
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With the fervor of a religious convert, a young Barrowcliffe immerses himself in his newfound fantasy world. His imagination shifts into overdrive as he applies the game's mores to his everyday life, whether they have any bearing on reality or — far more frequently — not.
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An example of this appears early on when Barrowcliffe tries to extinguish his family's flaming home by conjuring a rainstorm as he waits beside his weeping mother for the fire department to arrive.
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Usually, though, the stakes are little more than Barrowcliffe's own social standing and self-esteem. D&D soon becomes his main interface with the world, and he manages to disenchant nearly everyone he meets — even other devotees — by smothering them with his obsession.
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This especially frustrates his efforts to charm the opposite sex, as when he insists on describing an admirer in D&D terms and unwittingly offends her by assigning a low score for desirability. "I have to say, she picked it up quickly," he writes. "Perhaps, I thought, there was promise she could learn the game."
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The saddest thing about Barrowcliffe's childhood is how easily it could have turned out differently. What sets him apart from the other boys is not his addiction. Many of his peers are nearly as obsessive, although they tend to imagine themselves as soccer stars and commandos and other roles more rooted in reality. Over time, their fascination fades as they discover teenage pursuits such as girls, fashion and looking cool. Young Barrowcliffe covets the maturity he sees growing in the boys around him, but can't understand that his own development is confounded by his devotion to a game of make-believe.
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However, he is far from alone, and that's where the book's appeal lies. Many of the experiences he describes resonate because they are universal to adolescence. Gamers, especially, will recognize themselves in the author's follies.
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D&D's success isn't surprising, given kids' hunger for escapism, especially in the dreary British Midlands where Barrowcliffe grew up. It's also little wonder that some of the more sensitive young players of a certain disposition lose themselves in the game, finding its world of wicked sorcerers and rampaging ogres more hospitable than the school yard.
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Unfortunately, Barrowcliffe spends little time describing his actual adventures in the game, which may make it difficult for readers who have never played it to understand how D&D could be so consuming. But he keeps it accessible to newcomers by skipping over the more arcane mechanics of gameplay.
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D&D exerts a worrying grip on Barrowcliffe and his young companions, and some of them never grow up completely. Luckily, Barrowcliffe himself is just a late bloomer, and by the end of the book, he's a successful, married writer. His ability to look back at his experience with humor and grace is what gives his story a happy ending.
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Well worth a read,
By David Gee
Mark has a very engaging writing style and as I read I found myself transported back to my adolescence. I think the experiences Mark shares are common to a lot of males of that age and era, whether or not they were consumed by D&D. I did laugh out loud on several occasions and found the book "unputdownable".
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Outstanding…
By David Lee Stone "Author: The Illmoor Chronicles" (Kent, England)
I'm incredibly picky about books. I used to review for SFX and Interzone, and I'm always aware that I can be ferocious with anything I find less than outstanding. Occasionally, I can even muster a snarl when I'm negotiating my way through a real stinker. However, I'm even more hesitant when it comes to reviewing a book I actually like. I continually have to ask the question: is this book truly a brilliant piece of work, or is it just particularly tailored to my own tastes? Well, the latter is certainly true of The Elfish Gene by Mark Barrowcliffe...but it's pretty amazing, too. Before I delve any deeper, here's a brief synopsis:
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In the summer 1976, twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had a chance to be normal. He blew it. While other teenagers were being coolly rebellious, Mark--and 20 million other boys in the 1970s and 80s--chose to spend his entire adolescence pretending to be a wizard or a warrior, an evil priest or a dwarf. He had discovered Dungeons & Dragons, and his life would never be the same. No longer would he have to settle for being Mark Barrowcliffe, an ordinary awkward teenager from working-class Coventry, England; he could be Alf the Elf, Foghat the Gnome, or Effilc Worrab, an elven warrior with the head of a mule.Armed only with pen, paper and some funny-shaped dice, this lost generation gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games and everything that went with it--from heavy metal to magic mushrooms to believing that your bike is a horse named Shadowfax. Spat at by bullies, laughed at by girls, now they rule the world. They were the geeks, the fantasy wargamers, and this is their story.
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My favourite thing about Elfish Gene is that, excluding the undeniable talent of the author, it could have been written by just about any of the kids I grew up with. Hell, I could have written it, myself - though I tend to gloss over the effect gaming has had on my life, so it wouldn't have been anywhere near as balanced and as honest as this undoubtedly is. Mark Barrowcliffe is immediately likeable, to the point where anyone who spent their teenage years immersed in D&D will genuinely have to stop themselves from hunting him down on the net and confessing, in a heartfelt sob, how delighted they are to see written evidence that they weren't alone. This book isn't just for gamers, though: it's a warm, funny and moving story ABOUT gamers. These are people all around you...the curious kids you grew up with who wandered around staring distractedly at the clouds and always seemed to take four or five minutes to answer relatively simple questions about the weather and what they were having for dinner. As adults, most of them move around you, now, albeit not shouting about their hobby from the rooftops. I write fantasy books for a living, so I might be an obvious gamer - but the others around the various tables I sit each week include a motorbike dealer, a principal consultant for an insurance broker, a museum education director, a customs' officer and a railway engineer. We're all around you....and this book contains everything you need to know about the people we were growing up. I absolutely loved it, and am personally devastated that it's over. Highly, highly recommended.
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