I'm trying to generate a list of ensemble stories, preferably stories where the ensemble forms prior to the main conflict, or at least is loosely formed, and where the ensemble works together for the sake of some good rather than merely to destroy an evil.
Ender's jeesh isn't a bad example in Ender's Game. Sorkin always does a good job. The West Wing and Sportsnight are paradigm examples, but I'll looking for a books. The are a few scenes in For the Love of the Game that are pitch perfect. The Three Musketeers is a darn good example because all three of them have different dispositions, yet they are oriented towards the same good. The only books I can think of have been fantasy, but that need not be the case. Cannery Row had the qualities of an ensemble piece. Also, try to make their ability be dependent upon their heart and moral sense, not merely physical or technical acumen.
I want to see the interdependence and trust, and lastly, it would be nice if these qualities surfaced absent any physical danger.
Can anyone, off of the top of their head, think of any books that fit the bill.
Edit:
As I think about it, the best candidates for this would be people who don't make a distinct between politics and philosophy. I'm trying to think of stories where the ensemble acts publicly.
[ May 19, 2005, 11:49 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
You have such a difficult list of requirements that I can't begin to guess what you're looking for. Why shouldn't clandestine ensembles be eligible? What does a lack of distinction between politics and philosophy have to do with anything about ensemble formation?
It seems that far more useful criteria would be whether the group formed voluntarily, without a plan; according to the plan of a member; or according to the plan of an outsider (i.e., Ender's jeesh, which was formed by adults who were not actually in the ensemble).
It's clear you have a very specific thesis in mind, so maybe you should just tell us the thesis, and then we'd have a much better chance of finding examples (or counter-examples).
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
Little Women?
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
Would the Foundation series fit the bill?
A family ensemble exists in the Stainless Steel Rat series, especially in the later stores (after DeGriz marries and they have children.
Most good "quest" stories have an ensemble, of course, but they'd almost always be for the purpose of fighting an evil of some sort along the way. All the Arthurian legends, for example. The Robin Hood stories likewise (though not necessarily traditional "quest" stories, would violate the restriction against fighting evil. But they are there to do good too, right?
I think they're a lot like the 3 Musketeers in that respect. I a group of people formed to do good, who necessarily must fight evil along the way, right?
You could think of the Hitchhiker's Guide stories as including an ensemble too. They're there to fight the insanity of bureacracy, mostly. And continue a quest for the ultimate answer, um, question...
I can't think of any others at the moment, but it might help if you give feedback on whether these ideas are on the right track or not.
Maybe the Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn stories?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
In general, Irami, in narrative, politically-active ensembles are formed specifically to fight evil. You may have trouble finding many examples.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
*grin* The names aren't coming easily to mind because I'd have to go back to the library I grew up in to find the books on the shelves, and it doesn't exist in the same configuration anymore since they moved it to a bigger building.
However there are several series particularly of childrens detective or adventure stories that could probably be considered "ensemble". In fact I'd say it's far more common in childrens books than adult books. Adults have more patience to stay with a single character while kids like to have more variety.
From the dregs of my memory: The Happy Hollisters (Jerry West), The Boxcar Children (Gertrude Chandler Warner), The McGurk detective series (E.W. Hildick) There are more, but I'd have to walk those shelves to tell you about them.
AJ
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I'm reading, A Short History of Ethics: A history of moral philosophy from the Homeric age to the twentieth century, by Alasdair MacIntyre and it's turning out to be the clearest, most engaged ethical theory book I've ever read. It's philology and philosophy in one book, tracing the sense of the words connoting justice and virtue and happiness from Homer to the present. That he can do it all in 250 pages is astounding.
His understanding is that conventions change over time, as do the rules of those conventions, and language use changes along with those conventions, but the words stay the same, and people run the risk of degrading themselves unless they know the history of the convention and the word.
For example, one was good(agathos) and possessed arete(virtue) in respect to performing their socially determined function. Agamemnon was still agathos when he lorded over Achilles, because it belongs to a King that he be couragous, lordly, and take a larger share of the prizes of war. Goodness and virtue could only be predicated on ones fulfilling their role in society, the idea of a good individual, as an individual, was unintelligible until travel and a plurality of world-views made problems. The words agathos and arete survived but the evaluative criteria changed in a meaningful way, which degraded their use to an expression of approval or choice or taste rather than a description of someone fulfilling their role in society.
He also makes arguments that the transposition of characters from previous eras within the same tradition is what gives the sense of someone who is outside the institution. If they were not in the same tradition, the person would be unintelligible. For example, if we just scratch Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic, we'll find Agamemnon. We may not recognize him as Agamemnon because where as Agamemnon was a fit perfectly within his time and position, Thrasymachus was outside of his, but the words we use to describe Thrasymachus' behavior selfish, greedy, are rooted in our clear conception of how he stands in relation to our present conventions.
A more mundane example is that one needs to play baseball in order to cheat at baseball, or to be a bad baseball player. If one brings a ham sandwich to the plate, the gesture is unintelligible, not malicious. And one needs to already be entrenched in the rules of baseball to even understand the ham sandwich as unfitting or unintelligible.
This has interesting implications, not to mention, it explains why time travel stories work so well and stories of people trading places work so charmgingly. He traces this conception all the way through to the end of the greeks and Aristotle's description of the great man, who lives within a polis but is self-sufficient, making possible the elevation of the private sphere.
"Independence and sufficiency become the supreme values; the only way to avoid changing circumstance is to become radically independent from the circumstance," and Macintyre goes on to talk about the skeptics and the cynics and the epicureans, where we are individuals beholden to the order of the cosmos, not to our role in society.
His argument is much more penetrating than what I've laid out, and if you have any sort of philosophical background, this text is impressively readable, but I wanted to discuss the myth of self-sufficiency, and more importantly, I wanted some stories of groups whose members retained their individual dignity as thinking people, but really attained divinity in their work as a polis, where it was obvious that nobody was self-sufficient and nobody was subordinate, where they embraced a sense of mutuality and purpose.
Anyway, I'm excited because now he is going to trace how justice and dignity changed through christianity, and I'm interested to see where it comes out.
Bob, I was thinking about the Authurian Legends. I have a copy of Steinbeck's version that I've been looking for an excuse to read. The Alvin maker books had some moments in them.
[ May 19, 2005, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
<Also not sure entirely what you're looking for.>
Not sure what genre or reading level you're looking for, but here are a few that came to mind that might fit the bill:
Homecoming series by Card
Rings of the Master series by Chalker
The Dancing Gods series by Chalker
Myth series by Asprin
Young Jedi Knights series by Anderson/Moesta
X-Wing series by Stackpole/Allston
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Card
Alvin Maker series by Card
Harry Potter series by Rowling
Several of these have physical danger issues, but that isn't necessarily the motivation.
--Pop
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
quote: nobody was subordinate
That's going to be hard to find because it's just boring literature without one. There's always a leader. There was with Ender.
Arthur was still the leader with his knights, even if they acted totally independently. All the subordinates may be relatively equal but there's almost always someone at the top.
AJ
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
Both of these suggestions are somewhat tongue in cheek, and neither of them is a book. But the first stories I thought of from reading your descriptions were The A Team and the Overlook game going on over at sakeriver. Perhaps because I just finished reading today's update. Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Subordinate is the wrong word. The member's humanity was never degraded. Ender and Arthur may have been the leaders, but there was a sense that that was a contingent fact, and anyone one of them could have done the job pretty well, just not as well as Ender and Arthur did the job.
For some reason, the only analogy I can think of is a group of people taking a pay cut and demotion as heads of their respective operations to serve for the sake of a better cause. An even better analogy is the dynamic of an orchestra.
[ May 19, 2005, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Add Elizabeth Enright to my "childrens ensemble authors" list. She wrote back in the 1940s and still is enjoyable to read.
*grin* Irami, you might actually like the economic premise on this book. (from Amazon.com)
quote: Elizabeth Enright's Melendy Quartet follows siblings Mona, Rush, Miranda (Randy, for short) and Oliver. First published in 1941, The Saturdays kicks off the series and centers on the foursome's Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club (I.S.A.A.C.), an allowance-endowed venture formed so one lucky Melendy can enjoy a solo sojourn each week.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
(and if that is the way you meant subordinate Irami, then all of the children's authors I've listed apply)
What do you think of the possible proliferation of those kinds of stories in childrens literature and not adults?
AJ
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
The Hardy Boys!
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Trixie Belden and her gang
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
*Thinks fondly of Chet Morton and Biff Hooper.* I always had a bit of a crush on Biff, more so than Frank or Joe.
AJ
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
They didn't call it "Fellowship of the Rings" because it was all about Frodo.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
True "Frodo-centric" was invented for the movie.
AJ
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: the ensemble forms prior to the main conflict, or at least is loosely formed, and where the ensemble works together for the sake of some good rather than merely to destroy an evil.
Also, try to make their ability be dependent upon their heart and moral sense, not merely physical or technical acumen.
I want to see the interdependence and trust, and lastly, it would be nice if these qualities surfaced absent any physical danger.
...the best candidates for this would be people who don't make a distinct between politics and philosophy. I'm trying to think of stories where the ensemble acts publicly.
The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter
It's all there in truckloads, and it's a quick read too.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
MacIntyre admits being baffled in the face of tracing the metaphysical ground of justice or goodness for Judeo-Christian tradition:
"the successive expression of the forms of life of Hebraic tribalism, Hellenistic monarchy, the Roman imperial proletariat, Constantinian bureaucrats, and the long list of their successors results in a theology which can accommodate a wide range of views in ethics. To an age which, like our own, has been continually exhorted to find the solutions to its own problems in Christian morality , it will perhaps come as a relief to consider that the whole problem of Christian morality is to discover just what it is. What bishops and journalists suppose to exist somewhere-- if not on tables of stone, at least in materials of undoubted durability-- turn out to be almost as elusive as the snark."
He lists a few themes "God is our father. God commands us to obey him. We ought to obey God because he knows what is best for us, and what is best for us is to obey him. We fail to obey him and so become estranged from him. We therefore need to learn how to be reconciled to God so that we can once more live in a familial relationship with him..."
He devotes two chapters to the moral insights of Luther, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza, and how word use and ethical grounds changed through each writer's conception of man's relationship to God.
[ May 19, 2005, 10:35 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by breyerchic04 (Member # 6423) on :
AJ, I love Elizabeth Endright, my favorite is the Gone Away Lake series, but Melendys and Thimble Summer were good too.
Posted by JenniK (Member # 3939) on :
Try looking at the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis..they are an ensamble cast, each within their role, and each making their own journey.
I realize that large portions of this are under danger/duress, but not all of it...they are a family.
Kwea
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Mr. Card,
quote:You have such a difficult list of requirements that I can't begin to guess what you're looking for. Why shouldn't clandestine ensembles be eligible? What does a lack of distinction between politics and philosophy have to do with anything about ensemble formation?
It seems that far more useful criteria would be whether the group formed voluntarily, without a plan; according to the plan of a member; or according to the plan of an outsider (i.e., Ender's jeesh, which was formed by adults who were not actually in the ensemble).
I didn't put my emphasis on group formation because I'm not sure that it's important. The kind of groups I'm concerned with aren't formed by choice or compusion, rather, the groups always already are in virtue of some sort of shared metaphysical comportment. The kind of groups that are volutarily chosen or brought together by force usually exist for the interest of either the members or the interest of an outside party. I'm looking for a group that has a deeper, though not necessarily biological, bond, where the only trick in group formation is recognizing who is in your group and who isn't.
All that said, the ensemble relationships I'm looking for have the qualities of a marriage, not a marriage of convenience(voluntary choice) and not an arranged marriage(outside compulsion), rather, an ensemble of people that belong together in a deep and meaningful way. The work of this thread find some books that depict this belonging together in a deep aand meaningful way, hopefully figure out what it means to belong together in a deep and meaningful way.
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