MESSING WITH MISTER IN-BETWEEN PT. 2

Not long after finishing IVANHOE, I also completed Neil Gaiman's NEVERWHERE, a 1996 novelization of a British teleseries on which Gaiman collaborated. I didn't care for the book, but I must admit that its lack of imaginative scope is probably due to the fact that all elements had to be kept within the bounds of an inexpensive live-action series.

In keeping with what I wrote earlier about the Scott work, I'm only interested whether or not NEVERWHERE qualifies as a combative work, and if not, why not. (SPOILERS ahead.)


In the tradition of Carroll's Alice, modern-day British businessman Richard Mayhew falls down the wrong rabbit-hole. He ends up in London Below, a perhaps extradimensional domain that has a separate but sometimes parallel culture to that of the real world. Mayhew, who possesses no physical skills, becomes involved with a small coterie of freedom-fighters as they're pursued by assassins sent by a corrupt angel. The novel concludes when one member of the team, named Door, manages to propel the assassins and their master into another dimensional plane.

In my view, though Gaiman devotes a lot of space to Door and the other allies, NEVERWHERE's focal presence is not an ensemble of connected characters, but Mayhew alone. Thus, by the transitive principles I've advanced, the novel can't be combative unless Mayhew has some claim to being a combative hero.

Now, whereas Ivanhoe is a protagonist with a lot of battle-skill who doesn't get a final combat-scene, Gaiman does put the microdynamic Mayhew in the position of a hero. Without getting into the plot heavily, one of the coterie, Hunter, seeks to destroy a fabulous beast, a sort of oversized wart-hog. Hunter, who is a masterful fighter, attempts to spear the beast, but she's gored fatally. She gives the spear to Mayhew, and then Hunter distracts the animal's attention. When the beast attacks Hunter, Mayhew spears it to death. For the remainder of the novel, Mayhew is credited with the monster's death, and is even called "the Warrior," even though he has no illusions about his capacity in that respect.

There have been some occasions where I've judged a work to be combative even if the principal protagonist was not the most powerful person around. In Part 1 of MEGA, MESO, MICRO,  I discussed the breakdown of dynamicities in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, as represented by main hero Jack Burton and two of his allies, reporter Gracie and tough kung-fu practitioner Wang.

Burton, like Mayhew, is the focal presence of the story, and just as Mayhew's ally Hunter is far more powerful than he, the same applies to Burton vis-a-vis his ally Wang. However, I considered Burton a combative protagonist because he's like Aristotle's hedgehog, possessed of one really good trick. Mayhew may kill a monster with a great weapon, but the weapon's just given to him, with no sense of his having mastered it. Further, the fact that he can only kill the beast because Hunter distracts it defuses his claim to combative status.

Thus, even though Ivanhoe doesn't get a final fight-scene, everything else in the novel makes clear that he has the capacity for such a battle. Mayhew is the opposite: he does participate in a final fight-scene, but he never really has the capacity even to touch the boundaries of the *megadynamic* combatant, as does Jack Burton of BIG TROUBLE.