A fellow geek recommended Ethan Gilsdorf's Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks to me and so I dutifully procured a copy. A book by a geek about being a geek sounded interesting.
Gilsdorf was 12 years old when his mother suffered an aneurysm. She went from being a rather care-free spirit to a figure the boy and his siblings called "Momster", who was prone to tantrums. This was the late 70s and the geeky neophyte discovered a cadre of like-minded outsiders and turned to Dungeons & Dragons as a means of escape from life at home where the Momster might be having a fit or needing the physical assistance of her children for her quotidian activities. His late teens brought other things into his life such as girls and the first pangs of adulthood and freedom. Gilsdorf abandoned his geeky ways and went out to make his way in the world.
After turning 40, he stumbled upon his stash of D&D books, maps, dice, &c. It brought back memories and placed him in a position where he had one foot in the past and one in the present. Gilsdorf was having a mid-life crises a bit earlier than normal. Struggling to find direction for his future – was he ready to settle down? – he embarked on a journey into his geeky past. Unlike other geeks and freaks in a similar moment of crisis, Gilsdorf had the luxury of a book deal which meant, not only was he able to travel across the States in search of kindred souls, but he had the funds to boldly go to foreign countries.
The result of his journeys (both around the world and in his own mind) are laid out in the book. Part of it concerns Gilsdorf returning to his geeky roots and trying to sort out the discommodious process that is aging while another part is travelogue. Somewhere in between the twain meet.
He begins by flying across The Pond to hang out with a bunch of fantasy freaks – the members of the Tolkien Society. As a geek myself, I appreciate how Gilsdorf punctuates his personal quest with history and sympathetic, but not uncritical, profiles of other geeks. For instance, we learn about Tolkien himself as well as about the genesis of The Lord of the Rings. Gilsdorf even stops in at the tavern that Tolkien and his fellow writers frequented only to find it has modernized itself a bit too much for his taste.
Gilsdorf is a bit Tolkien fan so he also makes a trek to New Zealand to see where the films were shot. But most of his destinations are closer to home. He hits Dragon*Con, for instance, as well as the Lake Geneva Gaming Convention, a smaller con that tries to be the opposite of GenCon. This chapter lays out the history of D&D but it also gives Gilsdorf a chance to do some ranting. Gilsdorf likes to impose his conception of geekdom on others and so traditional pen & paper RPGs are superior to video games because they allow players to flex their imagination, be social, &c. I take his point but there are times when he makes this argument that he comes across as an old man yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn. Fortunately he doesn't do this too often and the book is much better at showing the great diversity of geeks.
Ranting about how old school RPGs are superior is a minor gripe in comparison to how Gilsdorf tends to transpose what he gets out of gaming onto his fellow geeks. It seems that the simple concept of gaming, reading fantasy/sci-fi, being in the SCA, &c purely for fun escapes him. He spends a lot of time in this game of circumlocution where he avoids the idea of geeky activities as just being fun in the same way some people find playing tennis enjoyable and instead is constantly trying to apply pop psychology to people to find out what they are escaping from. Not everyone had a traumatic childhood as he did yet he assumes that, if you have the same or similar interests as he does, then you are running away from something. You're avoiding reality instead of possibly adorning it with games, stories, and activities that you simply like.
I found this particularly annoying because I most, if not all of my gaming friends, enjoy D&D, computer games, or whatever on their own terms. It's not about running away from a dysfunctional family or from some societally sanctioned notion of manhood. It's just that we find them fun. Gilsdorf seems to think that because D&D played a certain role in his life it plays a similar role for everyone who plays it. A lot of the time it seems that he's seeking validation. "These people spend weekends reenacting medieval battles so it's OK for me to game" or "Tolkien said it's healthy to retreat into fantasy occasionally so my love of his books is fine". There were times when I was reading when I thought to myself, "Dude, grow a set of cajones. You're 40 years old so it's time to finally be yourself without asking others for permission." He spends time arguing that gaming and the like aren't childish, that they're perfectly suitable for adults yet he seems stuck in a childish mode.
For me the strength of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks is the peeks it gives into the variety of geeks out there and the history of their chosen obsessions. Some people like to join the SCA and reenact life as it was hundreds of years ago while others enjoy cosplay. There are those who play video games while others stick with pen & paper RPS. (And some love both.) I found the chapter about the folks building a castle in France using the same methods they did hundreds of years ago to be extremely interesting. It's a project that will take decades to finish just like it did in the days of yore. But it goes beyond geekery and fantasy into the realm of rejecting modernity in one way, shape, or form.
I have to admit that the denouement was a disappointment. He writes: "I know I don't want to play Dungeons & Dragons regularly again. I don't want to become a World of Warcraft addict, either. I can't say for sure I'll never read Lord of the Rings again, or see the movies. I probably would. Nor am I certain I'd never go back to that spot on Mount Victoria to dig up the figurines." What is significant here is that there's so many negatives here. He says what he doesn't want and what he's unsure of so what about something positive like "I do want to play D&D occasionally"? Rather than asserting his geekiness and listing positive changes, he hedges his bets and sits on the fence.
Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks works well as an introductory taxonomy to it titular subjects. The reader will learn about their passions and find that they are interesting people. Gilsdorf writes well about them with stories that range from amusing to poignant. However, the author's own journey is less interesting. At times it takes a back seat to the taxonomy and is brought back only briefly as if to remind us what this book is really about. But more often his story is pathetic, in the literal/Greek sense, because a 40-year old who is seemingly unwilling to be himself deserves pity.
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